Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Tag: life Page 7 of 8

How We Love, We Live And Grow

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On May 13, 2014

In Life Stories, Self-improvement

FacetsThere are different kinds of love. As you go through life you get to taste many of them. There is no how to manual on any and as for the one that can run deep enough to change your life, you’ll know it by seeing it not with your eyes but with your heart.

You’re ready to love when you’re willing to know more. Of life, of the temporary state of being, of yourself, of being weak and strong, of being right and wrong, and knowing that being right or else has nothing to do with being. You learn, you grow some more; again. And grateful.

 

OneSome people love in ways that make them reinvent themselves or forget themselves.

Some love in ways that make them want to know themselves because someone shows them they’re worthy. Someone showed them the path to themselves, and they’ll never be lost again.

That is the kind of love that will help you find yourself and blossoming as you do so.

That love that won’t let you live a second more unless you drink its cup to the last drop. And the last drop will never come because there is no end to it.

You’ll know it when you feel it. If you’re lucky.

The certainty will be astounding and humbling. Like a thunderstorm opening the skies and letting out the light like a bunch of wild horses pounding down from the clouds right into your heart, and then stopping there to let you enjoy their wild beauty. They’ve come home.

You’ll fear they’ll leave until you see them feed on the grass and drinking the brooks that you once thought were dry and the land underneath cracked and tired. You’ll fear until one day you won’t anymore. You’ll know they’re there to stay.

Forever becomes permanence and it humbles you. Do you deserve it? Don’t ask that. If you ask of yourself, you’ll ask of others and that makes many dreams crumble before they take off flying. Fear kills dreams.

To seeThere are many kinds of love. You’ll never know when and how, you’re never ready and the game has no rules other than a necessity for open-heartedness. It’s not a word, you say? That’s just it. You’ll have to invent many as you go. You’ll have to write stories of losing and finding yourself, stories of daring to believe, courage to let yourself be shaken, courage to fly high when flying low is all you thought you could handle.

Most of all, stories of being vulnerable. Of learning how to. Of learning to never pretend you can smile when a smile burns the inside of your body.

Stories of being true.

If you are ready to be true, you will find the rest. It’ll come. Just open your heart.

Many, every one different, all the sameMost importantly, never judge any kind of love that comes your way. Be grateful. You’ll grow in kindness and patience and strength. You’ll feel alive. It matters.

 

Joy In Routines? Here’s Why

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On April 29, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

Soon to beThe morning had no particularities unless you count the half-an-inch added to the tiny marigold plants in the front yard.

Write, get the boys up, get their lunches ready, take them to school. Come back, coffee time on the porch, back to writing.

Routines fragment the day into segments that make it feel familiar and also grow on top of each other as you approach the end of the day, giving you a full measure of where your time went.

If you’re not in a good place, soul uneasy with the action of being, routines are like heavy metal pins nailing you to a ground you do not want to be walking on.

But if you’re in a good place, where you soul resides without frowning, then routines have a magic message written all over them: Life is unshaken. Life where you are is not uprooted by any groundbreaking events. Routines mean you’re safe.

Routines change with time. Growing children, people coming in and out of your life, routines evolve, get dusty, fall to pieces and then they grow into new ones,

But their mere existence is the sign you want, the sun that guides your life with no eclipse shadowing its face. It’s a temporality we’re guilty of misplacing though.

A friend wrote today about his critically ill father. It has come down, and suddenly so, to making the best of the time they still have together. Life is fragile, he wrote. It is, I echoed. It always is.

I let it sink in.

Life as we know it could change at any time. It is not pessimism to think so. Nor is it an invitation to live in fear.

Live. With all that you have. Laugh with your loved ones, share time with them, with friends, with people who mean something to you.

Never wait. Never make concessions on waiting. You’ll always get the short end of the stick. Time, even shorter than it is, because you used it to chew your own misery, your relentless negative thoughts, your fear to connect, to live, to live fully with the awareness that you’re opening a gift with every breath you take. You are.

Still there...Life is fragile… Fluid. There is no going back.

To live without regrets is not to live mindlessly but to take each morsel of life and taste it. Mindfully present in everything you do and say, in how you share yourself with those you love and love you. Fully. No regrets, never holding back.

I thought of my friend’s dad all day. He will be on my mind for many days. Thoughts, prayers, wishes for being at peace.

Will you, when you’re sitting near that gap that divides our world as we know it from the one we don’t know? If someone will be holding your hand, will they be at peace? Or will there be pockets of unsaid restlessness, life unlived, life gifts you never got to open because you thought you shouldn’t, or you didn’t want to? You saved for later…

Later…Will it come? Would you build a home leaving holes in the walls that are supposed to keep you warm and protected… Would you add those bricks later because now you’re apprehensive, forgetful, mindless, cheeky (yes, we are,) overconfident that later is tomorrow and if not we’ll make it so.

Can you? Can I?

The solid ground I walk on today are routines. Walk back from school, chat, debate, listen, encourage, smile, hug, listen some more because things have to be said again and again, for safety and comfort. Kids’ words pearled up in colliers of worry, and you polish them to a nice safe shine. Every day, the routine of love and providing peace of mind.

Make food, eat, shoo away silliness when it’s teeth brushing time, hugs, say the soft words that you say every night, again and again, pearls of comfort and warmth.

Nighttime drapes, send the photo newsletter, remember where the photo was taken, right near that warning the boys find funny… ‘Uneven terrain, watch your step.’ They snicker, every time… Who would trip on that?

Both worldsSome would, I tell them. Some don’t need to be told, some will trip as they read the very words… Warnings we never heed. We know better when we don’t. But then we don’t know much anymore when we’re stopped mid-flight, plunging suddenly and not knowing how deep in.

We will rely on the senses we forgot to use a while ago, we’ll have them revived and sharpened by pain, surprise; we’ll be understanding the meaning of it all. Time. When we had it.

We still do. What now?

Tomorrow, routines again. It’ll mean nothing has changed. I am safe. Aware. Mindful.

You?

 

This Is Also Part Of Life

By

On April 24, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Life Stories, Self-improvement

(Originally published as a column in the AM News on Friday, April 18, 2014.)

Passing...It is the part of life that many of us only whisper about and parents often try to keep children protected from. Mine did. Because it hurts. But hurt is also part of life. Better processed when you’re not trying to make sense of it on your own as a kid, or dragging its shadows into adulthood.

I was six years old when my beloved maternal grandmother died suddenly. Something went wrong during a routine surgical operation that was meant to be just a couple-of-days-in-the-hospital procedure. I never got to say goodbye and no one else did because no one knew of what was to come.

When I was nine, my paternal grandfather passed away. I loved him dearly and had no clue about the long illness he was battling or about his impending death. I never got a chance to say goodbye.

As taxing as that would have been, it could’ve provided the kind of closure we need in order to process such events with grace.

My paternal grandparents died a few years later, and goodbyes were not said that time either.

My mom passed away suddenly eight years ago and though there was no typical goodbye, there was a premonitory conversation that included a farewell that had both closure of some sort and a good lesson in it.

My dad has been chronically ill for many years now and I have been given enough time to say some of the things people should say.

I had time to think of life as it slips away and appreciate its richness, its bittersweet flavor and its colorful shreds as I am trying to put them together to make sense of the tapestry we keep on weaving with every day that passes.

With my sons, I choose to celebrate both life and death. Choking on some words as they try to build themselves into sentences that describe life, understanding that they are becoming the very foundation we have to build today and all the tomorrows on, but most of all learning that appreciation of every day and of people we have around us can only be tangible if we are aware of both life and death as we go.

Withholding the reality of death from children is like not telling them of night because it brings darkness.

Giving ourselves and our children a chance to understand death and accept it helps us all appreciate life and better our ways as we go. It’s when we forget about the finality of it all that we can take it for granted.

My sons often play the game of ‘If you could have three magic powers, what would they be?’ and the one power I keep on pushing away from is to be immortal. It would make everything less worthwhile, I tell them.

They are puzzled every time. But think of all the things you get to do and never be afraid it all ending, they try to convince me.

But fear is, for once, an element that adds to life, I tell them.

If we choose to acknowledge it, it can guide us towards being grateful for every day as it comes and goes, and for people as they adjust their steps to match ours or walk in that tap-tapping cadence we share as we go through life, for as long as we do.

Awareness of an impending finality is what makes life precious. No season that lasts forever can bring the kind of joy that seasons as we know them do. Or sunsets. Or watching a child grow or sharing precious times with our loved ones.

We are strong in how we carry ourselves through life, in how we overcome challenges and in how we face new ones.

Knowing that everything ends somewhere adds the kind of humbleness that makes the journey worthwhile.

In building farewells as we go, we embrace time and people with all the gusto one can have knowing that we only have a limited time to make it happen. To make it last long after we’re gone. Because it will, as the ones we leave behind will carry it forward and make the best of it. Life, that is.

Life As I See It. So Far

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On April 16, 2014

In Life Stories, Self-improvement

Mirrors in lifeI always had this fascination with balls of yarn and spools. Questions. I’d try to undo the ball of yarn just to get to the other end. Because that was where it all started, deep inside. Or was the beginning the end that I was holding?

See what I mean? There is no way of settling it unless you pick one just because and that’s that.

People’s lives are like that too. That’s what they look like to me. Balls of yarn. There is the end that is available for all to see but more unravels as you listen to their stories, or see how the glimmer of sunsets and full moons makes them tear up, by how they talk of times past and broken dreams and life happenings that untangled more yarn they expected and now they are half undone, shreds hanging here and there.

It’s like that with all of us. With some more than others.

Sometimes you get a glimpse of where it all started, or enough pieces that, if you take the time and courage to put together, may reveal the way it was in the beginning… The end of the spool. The beginning. The way all life adventures begin.

Unraveling a bit here and a bit there is how it’s done. Life, I mean. It can be ungracious when too much gets undone, or when the yarn breaks and you have to tie knots to keep on going and they show. Truth is, we all hide knots of one kind or another. Until one day, when we bid goodbye to righteousness and decide to stop hiding.

The day we start living our own truth. As we see it, as we live it, as the only one there ever was.

Truth, counted in knots, just like the winds at sea. Because, in a way, that’s what they are. Tattle-tellers of grace and ungrace, of coming undone and realizing that though painful at times, our wings expand further than before. And with liberating freedom.

There’s much to be learned when knots are considered not faults but facts of life, or life as we know it. Ours and others’.

That’s how life is. Everyone unravels at some point. Yarn breaks. We tie it up. And we keep at it. But if we spend too much time of judging everyone else’s knots, how they are much too weak in how they are tied, or too big, or too tight or not tight enough… we may just miss that it’s not about how knots are tied but in how unraveled yarn comes together to help weave the pattern of life.

Life is ungracious in how it unravels us. In how it shows us what humble is and what being human is all about.

I came to realize that it is not in whether we are graceful or not as we step through life, or in how we tie our knots, but rather in how we learn to help others tie theirs when they struggle through it, because somehow, life is the kind of weaving that can only tell the real story of us when all the broken, knot-full yarns become part of it.

TapestryAnd that only happens when we acknowledge that being human is one of the faultiest, most beautiful and humbling adventures we’ll ever be in. When we have the courage to face it in all its truth that is.

Why Be Mindful, Starting Today

By

On December 10, 2013

In Life Stories, Self-improvement

It is early morning, the house is dark and quiet and there is no better time to be aware of where I am.

I pull the curtains because it snowed overnight and whiteness makes me feel safe and cozy.

I open the door, breathe in the cold and look at the sleepiness around. Across the street, smoke raises from a smokestack, pointing straight to a sky that’s so clear it squeaks when you look at it. No more snow. I know that from my dad, about the smoke going straight up.

This is the time to be where I am and nowhere else. No planning the day, no urgent this or that, no deadlines.

This is the time to stop.

So much is happening every day, even on those days that seem slow and dull. They are not. They are life. And we barely acknowledge it, even on the good days.

Why so hurried? Because it’s what we do. Life hurries and we hurry with it. Hurrying is a choice; but you knew that. Or not. Is it really? (yes)

Like heading straight down a wild river that we know for a fact ends up in a waterfall, we ride a raft we barely hang onto. White knuckles scream desperation and a need to stop, a need to readjust here and there and take a look around. We’re moving too fast, we know that much.

Speed enables us to persist in thinking we’re doing it right. And speed even more.

Everywhere we look, white knuckles are interpreted not as a sign of desperation but as an acknowledgement of being on this wild river. It’s what everyone does, right? Very few of us will say otherwise and the ones who do, are on the shores, looking around and telling us to slow down. Can they be believed? How would they know? Why are they there to begin with?

The answer is as simple as it is troubling: Because they know that knuckles are connected to the heart and the mind. Not when they’re white and cold though. They only get warm when we stop. But that’s slowing down, isn’t it? That means losing something? More? Less? Enough? At all?

Where’s the truth? Who has it?

Somehow slowing down does not appeal enough to our competitive nature. Slowing down is a right we don’t want to make much use of. We take odd comfort in saying “But I am not the only one.” And oddly enough, that truly is the weakest argument of them all. It really will not matter who was with you and why when you reach the waterfall. You’ll reach it by yourself. As it’s always been.

Gravity evens things out for us all. Which is why it’s so important to mind things along the way, to stop your raft by shores you deem necessary to see, or to simply stop to see. To listen, to breathe and know of yourself. To make sense of why you’re on that wild river to begin with.

To be grateful.

White knuckles will not let any feelings sink in deep enough for you to feel that. Perhaps that’s the best reason why stopping every now and then makes sense.

Quiet after all...Also because when you stop, you learn how to. And you’ll know how to do it next time. And next. And you’ll be ready for everything that comes. Or for most of the things.

You’ll have made time along the way to know faces, not just see them in that mad dash down a river that was never intended for us ride so recklessly and white-knuckled but we do it because everyone does.

Which is never a good argument to begin with. So learn to stop. Today.

The Big Circle Of Life. A Story

By

On July 14, 2013

In Life Stories

20130711_170243(1)The cry pierced the soft quietness of early night. It sounded like a child crying and I knew it wasn’t a child but a baby goat. I covered my ears. I was sitting under an old walnut tree, with my sister, my nephew and the man’s wife. She smiled when I covered my ears, a calming smile almost…It has to be, it’s all part of it, her smile seemed to say.

 

I felt ashamed and I put my hands down. I am not a vegetarian, I told myself. If I choose to eat meat, then I should know that this is part of it. I tried not to imagine the baby goat. It’s called a kid, I know, but I have trouble calling it that.

The man loves his goats, my sister said before we went there. The goats spend their days on green pastures among healing wild herbs and carpets of wildflowers. He talks to each of them and keeps them clean. He cares.

We make our way to the side of the barn where the young goat hangs upside down, skinned and hoofless. I don’t look away. This is part of it. I might not eat part of this one, but I eat meat occasionally.

The man cuts the young goat open, no choppy moves. He moves the knife fast and sure of himself. He asks for some clean bags to put some of the parts in. I run down to the house and get some. I hold the bags, one by one, and they get filled with various parts. Still warm.

I realize I am holding my breath and let go. This is part of the oldest ritual there is. I breathe the warm night air in. There’s more than the usual sweet night air smell but I will not hold my breath.

My nephew asks jokingly about the crime scene. The man calmly replies “This is not a crime, it is a sacrifice.” Everyone is silent. Thinking. Knowing.

Ten minutes later we are ready to leave.

We pass by the goats’ pen. They are all white except for a brown speckled one trying to pick fights. It got ignored and for a reason. Goat or not, a day spent in the sun makes you pleasurably lazy and unwilling to respond to fights.

On the way home, I think about it all. We’ve strayed from understanding the actions that bring food on the table. To grow vegetables is an act of grace, some say. There’s nothing inconvenient to witness.

To put meat on the table, you have to sacrifice the animal. Buying a tray of drumsticks or a round steak will not bring understanding. Gratefulness for every morsel comes from looking at the animal, thanking it for the sacrifice and not letting anything go to waste. It is not blood thirst that makes one opt or meat.

Tomorrow. Step to further life...It is part of life. Death is part of life. Sacrifice without a purpose is cruelty. It does not honor us, nor does it make us appreciate life. Not caring to know where our food comes from and how also shades us from the very act of gratefulness, which makes us humble and responsible for our choices.

 

If you choose to eat it, have the courage to look at it and understand its connection to you and respect it. No need to cover eyes or ears, you need to see in order to be respectful of every morsel.

Anyone There? But Of Course

By

On November 21, 2012

It’s the journey that each of us have to take. Life that is. We are ushered into life and expected to make the best of it. Along the way, we stumble. Grind teeth, get up, keep going. We allow part of that grinding of teeth to be heard and discussed. “It’s hard, yes, but you can do it…” Or the opposite “Well, maybe this is not your thing after all…” Choose what fits and move along. We let parts of us be seen but, secretly so, we leave out the parts that make us feel inadequate. Because where inadequacy starts, so does fear of failure.

So we want to have companions for the journey. We find people along the way and we learn how togetherness gives one strength and inspiration. We bump into people and cannot believe the luck of it. What a gift! We laugh and cry on each other’s shoulders, we talk crazy talks and let each other peek into each other’s soul. We let parts of it be seen but, secretly so, we leave out the parts that make us feel inadequate. Because where inadequacy starts, so does fear of rejection.

We stumble upon things we love to do. Uplifting things, they fire you up and making you shiver with that unmistakable feeling of knowing you’re growing into a better you. You want that. Don’t we all? And nothing stands in the way or so you declare. That nothing is perfect you already know. But you boldly and stubbornly assume that (undeclared) perfection – a perfect you, a perfect plan, perfect days lined up like birds on a wire – would be the key to making that feeling immortal. You got it figured out. Or so you let others understand. You let them turn you every which way hoping that the small crack in the pants (inadequacy, fear of facing one’s limitations) will not be seen. We hope, secretly so, that we covered the parts that, once discovered, might reveal our inadequate nature. Or actions. Or habits.

Truth is – my truth, that is, which might or might not be universal – some inadequacy is part of life. It powers the next step. But that’s beside the point of today’s rumble. The point is, as we take the journey, we learn, we succeed and fail, we keep trying and then we learn again. And succeed at some and fail at others. And we might get cheers or be advised on how to do it better. The insight could be too much or too little. It happens. But there is always the one little presence tucked in a corner that will simply be there. Always. It’s you. Or me in this case. Always along for the ride, always privy to all the parts that we might be left out for fear of inadequacy. Always willing to give the gentle (or less so) shove that means come on now, don’t give up just yet…

Always there. And once we make peace with the truth that we truly only have ourselves for the ride at all times, and that nakedness of self is a state of being that makes the journey worthwhile, then we can let (some) people into our souls, we can show them the clear lakes and the stinky swamps, we can do things that we will succeed at with grace and others that will make us appear boorish and heading in the wrong direction.

But most of all, we will know that we are never alone no matter what and making peace with the one being that’s always there (until, that is, but we can overlook the obvious for now) is the first step towards that simple tingle in the heart that means I’m getting somewhere. And that somewhere is the point where your acceptance of yourself will allow you to accept others and make them comfortable with you seeing the parts of themselves, those parts that they, secretly so, have been hiding for fear of inadequacy. Because where inadequacy starts, so does fear of rejection. And lucky you, you have already learned that the two do not need to be associated anymore. For inadequacy is part of being alive. It powers us to take the next step. The courage to do so. And it allows you to be you. And it allows the ones around you to be themselves.

And that is, as far as I know, the first step towards that beautiful tingle in the heart that says we’re getting somewhere. Because we are.

 

 

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