The frame of hot water: what am I?

Going to work everyday with the subway offers me a lot of time to read and to observe things I did not before. Flipping the pages of a magazine, I discovered the "Inspiration" section and it draw my attention. Even thought the title was a bit ackward because I was thinking about food, I decided to spend some time on it. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, a young lady goes to her mother to visit. She just said "Hello" and started to talk about her life, to complain about how hard it is at her job, how many problems she encountered, about how difficult can be to have beautiful relationships. Everything around her seemed negative and biased, and more than that, overwhelming. She was asking herself if it was the time to give up as she was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of finding solutions and tired of being awake every morning and facing problems, one after another. Like they have never stopped coming. 

Her mother listened to her to the end and then took her hand and lead her way to the kitchen. The girl was amazed about the gesture and whispered she is not hungry. Smiling, the old lady grabbed a chair for her and brought 3 pots with water in front of her. In the first one, she put carrots. In the second one, she put eggs and in the third one, she added beans of coffee. The young lady became skeptic but she sat there quietly as her mother nuddled to relax. 

20 minutes after the water in the pots with the 3 ingredients have been  boiling, the old lady brought 3 bowls and got out from the pots the carrots in the first one and the egg in the second one. The third one was filled with  the beans picked from the third pot. Then, the old lady decided to break the silence and asked her daughter:

What do you see? The answer was: "Carrots, eggs and beans of coffee". "Come closer", replied her mother, "and feel them". She touched the carrots and they became soften. She took an egg and shed tried to break it, but it became really solidified. At then end of the experiment, her mother asked her to smell and taste the coffee. A smile came up imediately on her daughter's face when she felt the rich flavor of the coffee, who instantly asked : "What is the point of all these things, mom?"

Her mother explained that all of the ingredients encountered the same resistance to a phenomenon -"the boiling". But each of them reacted differently: the solid carrots became soften, the soften egg has become solid and the beans of coffee generated a special result. After boiling, the beans of coffee changed the color and the taste of the water. 

"Who are you?", asked the mother. "Who are you when the challenges of life come to you? How do you face them?...Like a carrots, like an egg or like the beans of coffee?"

So, thinking about it, I should be aware of how do I react and how my behavior is going to be translated to future. Am I like the carrot which seems solid but once it encountered a challenge it became softened and loses its power? Am I like the egg which seems strong/solid but faced with a problem, it became solidified, meaning to become rigid on the inside? Or am I like a bean of coffee - changing the water during the process of boiling? The process of boiling is the context, the frame of the challenges I am going through. 

Therefore, if I am like the beans of coffee, even if my "boiling" situation is causing me suffering, I will still be able to become better as a person and to change what is happening around me. And no, that does not mean that everything is solved but it means that I am able to lift me up to another level. Another level of experience and existence. 

From my point of view, you cannot always be like the beans of coffee. But having this in mind, I will tend to be and learn from the situations when I'm like a carrot or an egg. 

The power to accept the things I cannot change

And Yes. I project my values system to others. Hence, I have false expectations from the people around me. Most of the time, I thought they need fixing when they only needed to be listened. I did the listening without taking into account that, what matters to me might be the last thing to preoccupy the person next to me. No two people have the same values system.  The concept is called the Pauli ExclusionPrinciple.

This is not easy to live up with. I am aware of it now and I know that everybody had its own set of values. It is not like I did not know about it before, I had knowledge about but in practice, I did not apply or integrated the implications. Mine is composed of the time and space I allocate to people and things. What I actually lost of my sight until now is the way I spent my energy.  What am I thinking at is another thing I kind of missed when discovering what I want, feel or what/who I am.

So, at a certain point, I thought maybe something is really wrong with me. Maybe my order is a kind of chaos because in theory, I support ideas and some things but then, when put in practice, my behavior and my actions are guided upon other values.  

Recently, a thing struck me. I am trying very much to accomplish my objectives without being aware of the fact that my life is in a continuous change. It is a period that overlaps the self-discovery process with a full professional learning environment. I have a strong belief that hard-working people will get their dreams come true and they deserve it. And I also believe that life treats us as it does due to a reason and not a coincidence. Therefore, I had in mind all the time that, if I do my best and I work for what I want with all my power, knowledge and passion, it cannot go (that) wrong.

It is a feeling of powerless in front of what is happening that overwhelms every muscle in the body. It is like paralising when being caught in a spider's web.Still fighting but you know what the end is, after all. 

I guess life had to show me the opposite to understand that in this situation, no matter how much I tried, offered or prayed, some things are not meant to be realized. I do not know the name of this phenomenon, faith, destiny or randomness, but I sure know that Absolute and Never are words that I should stop using them.  Unless I want Life to prove me wrong again. 

And it's not like I am challenging life. My happiness is just slightly surrounding the road I had in mind. That's fine, cause I guess good things are on the way :)

It takes Time

How come we rush into actions, feelings and dreams? Is true that we don’t have TIME? I don’t have an answer to the question even though I say the exact words sometimes. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that we DON’T HAVE TIME. I believe that the time had the same dimension and speed from the beginning of the world so it’s not the TIME that changed but WE DID. And especially, we have changed the usage of it.

So what do we use our time for? Making a count on this ending week, I can see in my schedule that beside work, I spent most of my time at work, on the second place on the way there and back and I did not have much left for cooking, washing, running, reading and mails/calls. Therefore, almost nothing left for ME. ME. An observation popped-up: I am the last in the list o priorities lately. And that part of me is screaming. It wants attention. Fair enough. So, I will apply a new design for my time management. Already sketched, I am now doing that for the next week to test it. Seems like the relaxed, “let it come to me” style needs a bit of…make up.  And this way I will see if I can “make some time”. It sounds so weird, like I can create time. Oh, I wish I could create time. (Barney Stinson would be so jealous of me!!) I already have it, I just misuse it.

Next step: figuring out what is more important to me. Everything I did it will stay, all of those important things for me. The idea is to ADD things to my life that can make me feel…fulfilled (within the conditions I have). I don’t wish for perfection or “pinky life”.  Still, I believe I can do more. It’s not a “”if …then..” situation or another type of pressure in my life but I feel that I want to do it and I have the capacity to succeed. I did in Denmark so I have to find a suitable receipt for Romania. Applying that one did not work (I tried - silly me).

It takes time to do the real important things: to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved, to respect, to share and to give up pride. I suggest the length in time because such strong feelings and actions are internalized and integrated to a body system step by step. I am fooling myself if I believe that just by repeating that to my brain and my soul, it will do.

 It takes time especially because we live in this world where values like integrity, honesty, happiness or solidarity are just…beautiful words, utopias(and the number of those who believe this is increasing day by day- I guess they are making babies and putting this idea into their head – otherwise, I don’t understand how the dynamic of pessimistic people has increased so much! ). It’s a world where I am being said at every step that I can’t/shouldn’t’ trust anybody. But I want to trust people. And I want to love. It takes time for this. But I already made the first step. I gave up my pride.

And the song that followed in my player when writing this post:

(It takes time/ Living a world where you don’t know who to trust) Lyrics

One of my kind

Singing mood again. And thats' alright, usually. The last 2 days I've had small cold in such a warm (HOT!) city. That did not helped in balancing the temperature of my body. So, I am singing again!:D



and the original version :D



This song comes into my mind especially due to the wonderful people I had the honour to meet at HR Club Next Generation 2011. The everyday discussions I have with them, make me feel that I am in the right place at the right moment (almost feels like recruitment:P ). I am happy to see optimistic and ambitious people, young determinated people to bring more choices and changes in a world where money and power are almost fully promoted (aka Romania).

Congrats to them!
Meeting this kind of people makes me keep going and trusting that the future will bring something beautiful. I am sure that these events are meant to happen and to bring together passioned people!

It feels so conforting to talk with people with a common language and interest and more than that, determined to ACT and not just to TALK.  It almost feels like I found the belonging feeling (which is a need of every living person).

Sometimes, I am not sure how this works but it just does. When you want something very much, even the universe works for it. The law of attraction? Luck? Coincidence? God? Maybe one, some or maybe all of them together. I am grateful for the opportunity and I promise to promote and support this type of initiative.

I can say now to any of the participants : "You're one of my kind", like in the song. :P:P Hopefully, some of them will become my friends :D This means, to breakdown the walls of facebook :)
And this kind of events reminds me of my AIESEC family :X

How can I remember today’s lesson?

Often, I hear people that they like to learn by doing. True story, it’s very useful indeed. Let’s not forget that every human being has its own characteristics and needs. Therefore, generalizing is not a good solution in any case. Remembering everyday’s lesson is a big challenge. And I asked myself if I really want to remember a lesson from each day. Oh well, it would be unrealistic to say that I will. The next step comes in my life comes from the advice from 2 different persons with the same passion: training. And it is something that I was doing just before I started to write this post: writing the most important ideas from that day and my target is from 3 to 5. Not more and not less. 

Simple. Almost like life. Is it? Is it simple? Yes and no. There’s no correct answer but different perspectives. The main ideas of the day are:

1.     Give yourself at least some time to answer to a question à Less than 10 seconds.  (This idea also contributes to my active listening objective)

2.   Ask. Ask questions and I will obtain the most important part of the power: information. (Overcoming my fear of asking stupid stuff)

3.     Don’t under-rate yourself no matter how other rate you. Your identity shouldn’t become one of a loser just because one/some person(s) believe this. 

Writing. I came back at this. I cannot explain the feeling. It feels so natural. Remember, my goal is not to promote what I write.

These ideas are not new or revealing. I write them to remember myself that even though I should have them integrated in my actions and behavior, sometimes, I lose focus and my fears overcome my strengths. 

Having this said, my last remark for today is: some people learn from everyday’s lesson, but other..they just say  this  and repeat the mistakes over and over again.   

A life long learning process

When I woke up today, I just had in mind, what will I do for myself today as I have so many things to do and the deadlines are really close? Will I have the time (a short one, of course) for myself? The answer in my mind was: probably not, maybe tomorrow. Well, I then realized that if I do that every day, I will never have time for myself. 

So, starting today, I will have this page as an engagement to myself that I will give myself time to discover and enjoy life. I will give myself time to ask questions, to reflect upon the answers and to see my progress. 

 I choose not to procrastinate and to dedicate the time that was meant for procrastination to silly small things that can and will make me happy. 

This idea mainly came from the bike accident that I had 2 weeks ago when I realized that I cannot stop working unless I am hurt and I have to. It's not that I don't like to work or I don't like to rest, it's just that, I forgot the most important thing: balance. Well, that's not easy to get but I also forgot to try to find it. I was simply believing that it will come by itself. I could have waited for a long time......... it was just a small and very useful reminder. 

It's strange how the moment of the accident felt so long, it was like a neverending moment. The time was dilated and I felt powerless in front of the situation. I couldn't think aout something else than the moment and nothing mattered anymore: responsibilities, problems, tasks or wishes. I felt alone and without control. 

It was not the first moment of this kind in my life and it has reminded me that even though work is so important, if I am not healthy and I don't take care of myself, no one else will. For good reasons. I mean yes, friends and family are supposed to be there for me (and by all means, they are) but I am the first responsible for what happens to me. No one else is responsible for my happiness and my feelings. Of course, the external factors have a big word to say in this but still, we can make our way through life happy or miserable. We have a choice and mostly, often I choose to blame faith. Now, this is not valid anymore. I take over the lead for my    way and I choose to be happy  because I do not know what is going to happen in my life in a minute, one hour, a day or a month. So planning is good., I will still do that but appreciating all the moments in my life (good or bad) is my next purpose. All the moments have a meaning and a sense and they become part of us. 

And I got it! I have the next step of my life learning process: I bought a notebook, a very nice, small (I can have all the time with me), colored notebook and I will write:

* dreams

* crazy thoughts (good and bad) to remind me that I am not an angel, I am just human

* interesting things that I find out

* happy moments

and of course, all the other things that I will consider necessary. 

In order not to become a burden, because I tend (sometimes) to do that with things because I have the purpose of making them daily, this is free of deadline in my to do list. When I feel like writing in it, it will be wonderful. If I do not, the same. 

Hmm.. it will be interesting to see (for me) what I will write by the end of my Erasmus stage in Denmark. Then I will have another notebook at home and I will see if Aarhus is "to blame" for my happiness here because after all, I am living in the city with the happiest people on Earth.  

Love moments

How can I recognize a LOVE moment? Sometimes I forget how happy I am. This is a reminder for me and for all the people who feel the same. We alk a lot about happiness and what that means but do we really know? Do we really appreciate and enjoy those moments when they come to our life?

I will watch this every time I feel that I should give up. Cause sometimes, those moments appear in my life and I feel that I cannot do what I want anymore. This is like a hope, an energizer and a constant proof that I do not need extraordinary things to smile and to feel fulfilled.

When are you  happy? Because I am happy when...

Love moments on Prezi

Love moments on Prezi