Civil disobedience and cherry pie

Oddballs and black sheep

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:30:00 +0000

I like people like me, oddballs and black sheep, and I instantly recognise them on the street. Sometimes it’s the way they look, their size, their dress, make-up or body art. Sometimes it’s their overconfident posture, their backbone, and some other times it’s their shyness; slightly reserved, slightly hunched, they don’t hold your gaze for long.

Our path is long, filled with weeds and rocks. No truck has gone before us to open the way. And whilst we walk through the wild vegetation, we upset some wasps, and they don’t know what to make of us, they’ve never seen something like us before, and we scare them, so they sting. They sting and sting and sting, and it hurts. They feel they have the right to sting, because this is their world, and we disturbed it. God knows what kind of habits or secrets we carry in that unusual-looking nonconformist backpack of ours, and so we must die.

But my friends, after a day's battle, whilst we’re nursing our wounds and mending our hearts and sucking the poison out, we must remember one thing… That we are here today, enjoying the privilege of freedom and of life because of our oddball ancestors. Because from the beginning of time all the way to today’s modern-day jungle, it is the oddballs and black sheep who got their hands dirty, who dared, who fought, who propelled the world forward and opened the way for the future generations. Us Edward Scissorhands of this world, we can’t change, and we shouldn’t want to, because our mission is sacred. So we must keep on, stay focused and replenish our strength in the friendship, understanding and companionship of fellow warriors. Be each other's pom-pom girls and rah rah team, and build each other up. Share our battle stories over a hip flask of sweet-smelling wine, together. Death will ultimately free our soul, but until then, let’s make the journey on the road less travelled a little more comfortable. Together.

This and that, here and there, aka the golden ability of flexibility

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:50:00 +0000

Do you sometimes feel like you’re inconsistent, all over the place, like you can’t decide whether your personality is one way or the other way? Do you feel like a “schizo” (as a friend put it), puzzling yourself about being serious one day and silly the next, quiet and gregarious, hard-working and sometimes lazy, involved and aloof, and pushing yourself to finally MAKE-UP-YOUR-MIND?

If so, congratulations! You possess an absolutely essential ability that life’s toughest survivors possess: flexibility.

I used to consider myself terribly inconsistent. Here’s why: I will work myself to the bone for very long hours (workaholic), but then for days I will just sit on my couch and veg (lazy). I will strip at a club (far out) but I also consider myself to be quite conservative (square). I will plan my day/month/life (consistent) but then I will have bouts of complete unpredictability (erratic). I describe myself as positive (happy) but I enjoy the sounds of the cello most because of its moodiness (melancholic). Crazy right? Wrong!

Life’s best survivors often feel like misfits because a key source of their strength, flexibility, is viewed by some people as emotional instability. Those with rigid thinking can't handle complex people very well, and often view them as defective. Take any test in a magazine that they tell you you’re either one way or the other, not both. But it is in fact healthiest to have two opposite feelings. Having a very wide range of emotions and traits makes us very adaptable, as we are equipped to handle all types of different circumstances. To react in the same fixed way to all situations reduces our ability to adjust to changing and unpredictable events. The knack of responding in a variety of ways gives us choices, even though being two extremes at the same time may feel very weird.

Which of the following pairs of traits do you recognize in yourself?

sensitive, tough
strong, gentle
cowardly, courageous
mature, playful
humorous, serious
distant, friendly
self-confident, self-critical
trusting, cautious
dependent, independent
impulsive, well-organised
happy, discontent
cooperative, rebellious
proud, humble
selfish, unselfish
involved, detached
lazy, hard-working
logical, creative
calm, emotional
shy, bold
loving, angry
consistent, unpredictable
messy, neat
optimistic, pessimistic
...
feel free to add your own.

So, rather than thinking you're mental, embrace the conflict in your traits as they make you a person perfectly equipped to hold up well in "cross-fire". Shifting traits and changes are not superficial. Nor are they signs of emotional stability. They indicate deep inner resilience. After all, adaptation is key to survival in nature. If as a plant or animal you are unable to modify yourself to the changing environment, you vanish forever.

Daydreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:44:00 +0000

I think the power of imagination and fantasy has been a mental sanctuary during my hardest times. When the pain gets hard to bear, daydreaming releases the fist that squeezes my heart. I dream about the past and I dream about the future.

THE PAST

I go through really tough times in my life by taking flight into the past. I lose myself in vivid recollections-of walking along the ocean shore with my mom and dad. I totally lose myself in experiences of playing my cello, watching my favourite musical, dancing dancing dancing, laughing, making love. I run around with my dog, dead nine years, with an indescribable sensation of joy. In my darkest moment, the past is a beautiful escape that lifts the spirit and makes the day a little better.

THE FUTURE

Now this is my favourite type of "fantasy". I love dreaming of the future so much because this is more than escaping, this is creating a future for myself, moulding it tiny bit by tiny bit. Because if you’ve thought about a future scenario, if you’ve really thought about every little detail of it, and you really want it, you get it.

Viktor Frankl is a holocaust survivor and a motivational speaker. He was unhappy in the concentration camp, quite understandably. So he made himself imagine something pleasant. In his fantasy he saw himself giving a lecture about the psychology of life in a concentration camp. He said that by imagining himself in the future he became detached from his daily sufferings. He observed what was happening as though it was in the past. He converted his experience in the camp to an interesting scientific study that he would lecture about on a world tour.

Viktor found that he was able to endure a lot of pain because he had a mental picture of a pleasant future ahead for him. In his book he wrote, “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future-his future-was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”

For Frankl, faith in the future meant faith in one’s ability to live through present danger, grief, or trouble and to carry oneself forward into a time to come. This is not hope. It is instead a process of steeling yourself to handle the present in order to make a good future possible. With hoping, you may get what you want, or you may not. With faith, you hold your desired outcome close, whatever happens. It’s what I call “tunnel vision”. You are on a mission and nothing can stop you.

I hear that life’s calmest, happiest people meditate. Maybe I should try that. Or maybe meditating is daydreaming without the fancy name. Whatever it is, thinking of happy things makes me happy. Quite simply.

Update 05/11:
woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun: Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

Loving this word!

Happy Valentine's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:36:00 +0000

What the world needs now,
Is love, sweet love,

It's the only thing that there's just too little of.

What the world needs now,

Is love, sweet love,

No, not just for some but for everyone.

Lord, we don't need another mountain,

There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb,

There are oceans and rivers enough to cross,

Enough to last 'til the end of time.

What the world needs now,

Is love, sweet love,

It's the only thing that there's just too little of.

What the world needs now,

Is love, sweet love,

No, not just for some but for everyone.

Lord, we don't need another meadow,

There are cornfields and wheatfields enough to grow,

There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine,

Oh listen Lord, if you want to know...oh...

What the world needs now,

Is love, sweet love,

It's the only thing that there's just too little of.

What the world needs now,

Is love, sweet love,

No, not just for some oh but just for every, every, everyone.

Excited!!

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Think excitement, talk excitement, act out excitement, and you are bound to become an excited person. Life will take on a new zest, deeper interest and greater meaning. You can think, talk and act yourself into dullness or into monotony or into unhappiness. By the same process you can build up inspiration, excitement and surging depth of joy.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Mistakes

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:14:00 +0000

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
- Anatole France

This day

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:00:00 +0000

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision:
But today well lived
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

- Sanskrit proverb

Feel-good exercise of the week - I am...

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:46:00 +0000

Late 2007 events have forced me to be with myself. Space in my flat, space in my mind, space in my heart, just loads of empty space everywhere. I don't cope well with empty space. Makes me feel lonely and like I'm wasting time. 'How the fcuk do I fill the space?' has been my no1 preoccupation the last couple of months. Well, this question has just been my mind rebelling to a little foreign voice inside that tell me 'it's ok to have space, nothing wrong with space'.

Space forces you to look within. Do I like what I see? Been quite some time since I looked.

I'm about to make a list of all the qualities that I love about myself. Not the qualities that have to do with my performance, but simply my qualities of being. For example, cheerful, kind, creative, generous, adventurous, innovative, loving, committed, devoted, etc. Now my list will be BIG - at least 50 items. And I will add to it daily. I will add everything big and small that I am proud of. I will gush all over myself.

Try it.

Happy 2008!

The Andes survivors

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:46:00 +0000

Excerpts from interviews from some of the Andes survivors. I include the Alfredo Delgado interview in its entirety and some insightful parts from a couple of others. All interviews from top to bottom were intensely enjoyable and inspiring to read. Read them in Spanish or English.

Alfredo Delgado, 1973, one month after being rescued

- We are going to talk, but not about what happened at the mountains, not about the external facts; we are going to talk about the things that happened inside of you, about the person you were and the person you are; about the things that changed in your relationship with the world and life, and the things remained as they were before the accident. Is this O.K?
- Yes, it is.

- To start…, something very vague: How are you? How do you find yourself?
- I’m not here yet, I still don’t find myself.

- How can that be possible?
- The thing is that I’m still floating; I couldn’t come down to earth yet and I haven’t come back to my old life. The interviews, the way back to Montevideo, the people’s welcome, each encounter with a friend is a new blow. It’s being hard to me to get back to my life, because there is always something that comes and blows me; a hug, an encounter. There is nothing I can do, I can’t finish waking up.

- Maybe you have already waked up but you haven’t realized it...
- I don’t understand your point.

- Maybe you have waked up but in a different way, so different that you can’t notice it, and because of that you are confusing your wake up to a new vision of the world with a sort of nightmare or something like that.
- Yes, it could be something like that. I’m waking up and I see everything different, but I’m sure I haven’t return yet, I’m not completely awake because I haven’t had a single break since I got here, everything is too recent. I can’t get used to be back I just can’t. I see that corner that I’ve seen many times but I see it for the first time since the accident and it makes me feel something strange. I see that coffee, that bridge, those threes and I feel that everything is new but old at the same time. Who was going to say that I would ever walk here again, that I would ever pass through this bike store again?

- How was the return to your bed and your pillow?
- Not very good. It has been hard to me trying to catch up on sleep. The first days I didn’t sleep much, little more than 4 hours, but now I’m sleeping almost 6 hours. This problem is because during those 70 days on the mountains I could never sleep more than 3 or 4 hours a day. I spent the nights without sleeping a wink; I could only sleep during short periods of time because I was afraid of sleeping and also being awake. That wasn’t living, that was surviving. We used all our energies and thoughts to find a way out, and by doing that we learnt new things, things unknown to us.

- What sort of things?
- Among other things I learnt, together with the rest, something which is essential to live together in an extreme situation like the one we were living; I learnt to grit my teeth and to hide my feelings. Due to the circumstances I learnt to withdraw myself into a sort of shell that didn’t let the others notice what was happening inside me. Doing this we avoided to hurt the others and we could give strength to each other. It was with this shell that I could remain without having shed a single tear, not even when my friend died, two months after the accident and being only at ten days of the rescue. That friend was my closest friend since we were very little, he died on my arms but I didn’t let my tears out because the tears of one of us could make the whole group collapse.

- How was the cold?
- The cold, how cold is the cold… It’s so hard to describe how freezing the cold is… when there are 30 degrees below zero nothing can relieve the cold, so you learn something you didn’t know; what the “human heat”, the body’s temperature and the warmth are, especially the warmth which comes from seeing a person with faith and will to survive in front of you, at half a meter or at ten centimeters from you. If after the accident only 4 or 5 of us would have survived, we would certainly be dead because surviving depends almost entirely on the state of mind of the others. In a group of more than fifteen people is always possible to find six or seven in a good mood and those are the ones that hold the group up; when these ones are no longer in that mood there will certainly appear another six or seven to hold up the rest of the group. The cold does not affect only your body but it affects also your soul. We piled ourselves up in the endless nights inside the plane, we squeezed up, we heard our breading, we warmed each other up to heat the bones but above all to maintain our state of mind. I never knew what the human heat was, but now I know it and I will never forget it.

- And what happens, Delgado, when men are starving?
- The cold, the anguish, the hunger, are successive steps which start to undress us more and more. We started to get prepared for the inevitable before the reserves were off. All of us philosophically bore the idea of taking the dead bodies to feed ourselves, but not all of us bore it physically. Anticipating this possibility it was commented once and when the moment came of taking that tremendous decision we expected an atrocious reaction… but we didn’t reach the desperation or the limit because the cold consumes lot of your calories, and taking this to the limit was falling into an abyss. We were forced to decide before we run out of strengths because after that it would be too late to recover from it. The cold, the loneliness, the isolation, the death surrounding us, the hunger it was one step after the other; each step seemed to be the last, the end, but in each of them we learnt that there is always a strength remaining somewhere, strengths unexpected that come from the most unexpected places of us. I learnt this too, how enormously strong we become as we become weak.

- On these nights in which you slept three or four hours could you balance the anguishes of the day? Did you dream? What did you dream?
- At first as I closed my eyes I was already dreaming …, it was terrible. I dreamt that I was living my life normally, my ordinary life in Montevideo and I believed inside the dream that the accident was a nightmare. In my dreams I saw myself at Montevideo, going to the university, with my girlfriend, at home, with my parents…, every time I woke up was a tremendous shock, I opened my eyes and I saw the phosphorescent letter of the plane’s sign which says “EXIT”. It was so depressing! On the first few days it was all the same, sleep and dream about that, my life in Montevideo and the nightmare of the plane’s crash and after that the slap of waking up and seeing the plane’s sign “EXIT”. I felt that I was going crazy. The depressions that came after my wake up were devastating me more and more. And it was for that reason that I decided not to sleep, but without sleeping I wouldn’t stand much, so I manage to go my mind blank before sleeping. That was a big effort but with the time I made it, I could finish with the torture of dreaming.

- And during the slow and long days, what effect did the memories and the distance of both your family and friends have on you?
- With the memories it was the same as with the dreams. At first I remembered my parents and my girlfriend very clearly, but when I stopped remembering and went back to the reality it was a shock. I realized that instead of helping me that was weakening me, bruising me inside. So I decided to stop hurting myself by cutting the people from my memories.

- How did you do that?
- I remembered places, moments, but no people. Sometimes I traveled to my home in my memories and I walked through it, I sat on a corner or I read in my bedroom; others I remembered a summer, a three and some shade and I stayed there for a while. But I always took care of taking the people out of my memories; doing that I could take my travels as stimulus to avoid getting depressed. I knew that if I got depressed too frequently, that depression would turn into madness.

- Delgado did you ever have the premonition or the feeling of what happened to you at the mountain?
- Yes, I knew that the plane was going to crash. It was when we were at Mendoza, in The Plumerillo; I was just about going into the plane when I felt that something was going to happen, I felt it clearly, very clearly.

- And what did you do?
- I just delayed a few seconds, but it was too late to regrets, I entered the plane convinced that we were going to have an accident, convinced but quiet at the same time; I was so convinced that I sat on a seat at the back, because my experience told me that the plane’s tail was much safer than the other parts of the plane. The stewardess cleared those seats saying that it were for them. I ended up on a seat in the middle of the plane…and at the first turbulence I confirmed my premonition, so I just closed my eyes and prayed. The accident happened right after that, and I saved my life by not being seated at the tail, because the tail came off the rest of the plane’s body.

- That premonition, the feeling of death was just for that moment or does it happens frequently to you?
- I’ve never had such a clear feeling, but I always felt that I was going to die young and in an accident. I told my mother and my girlfriend that feeling.

- Have you found out the reason of that supposition?
- I always thought that, because I had the feeling that I had lived too much, because in spite of not having an opulent existence, life had been very generous with me.

- So, you saw the death as a sort of compensation?
- Exactly. Although I haven’t had an easy life, I was very happy; that’s the reason why when I was a boy, being 17 or 18 years old, I already felt that and I told it to my relatives.

- Did you take that feeling of death with fear or with anguish?
- No, I’ve never had fear of death… I think that nobody has it, what’s feared is the way in which death can come, for example: the death which comes with lot of pain and agony.

- And at the mountain, facing the death so close to you, did that attitude change?
- I was surrounded by deaths whether it were at the accident or because of it or even the deaths caused by the avalanche. I learnt to live with it with the feeling that there is something superior. That life sheared with death, let’s say pacific, was possible because I became more convinced that after the death comes something better… it couldn’t exist something worse than that situation. I had the idea of dying inside me, and I took it with clearness of conscious. I could almost affirm that I felt it like a companion.

-All that is over now Delgado, the mountains were left behind. Now you are here so, what happens now between you and that idea of the death?
- Some years ago I had the feeling of a prompt and accidental death, but now I am completely calm about what may happen to me. It’s not that I don’t want to live any more, actually is right the opposite, but if somebody comes and tells me that I have only three days left, I would remain immutable, I would keep walking with you across this street.

- You are another man; you know that, another man different from the one who boarded that plane to Chile, Aren’t you?
- Yes, I’ve moved to another world, to an unknown maturity. Now I know, or I think I know, what happens inside an old man who sees the death like something that could knock his door at any moment. The religion was essential to my way of seeing things and to accept the death. I could only put up with that horrible situation during 70 days and 70 nights because I saw a life purgatory in it. Many times I wondered why we had to put up with such a terrible and unnecessary pain. I always answered myself that it was a prior act, a requirement to enter a better life. Many times, up in the mountains, I said to myself: “Maybe this is the purgatory”. This justified absurd and unbearable facts, like the death of a friend sixty days after the accident and at ten days of being rescued.

- In the middle of that nightmare, did you ever stop your thoughts and enjoy the landscape? Is an absurd question but maybe it isn’t so absurd considering the situation.
- During that “season”, or that “summer”, there were moments in which, effectively, I stopped my “travels” around far empty places, and I enjoyed the silence, the landscape. That was a new sensation. That silence wasn’t a bedroom’s silence or a sea shore silence or a plain silence… that silence had other sound…

- Wasn’t that sound of the new silence overwhelming to you?
- The feeling of being overwhelmed was due to the snow to me, you can’t imagine how I missed the green. It was like a desperation I had for something green, it was like being thirsty of something green. The snow was unknown to my eyes, and suddenly it invaded all…, it was all white, white, white…

- Another absurd question: Don’t you miss sometimes that feeling about the white color, or that sound from the silence?
- No, not yet. In that situation there was a side of peace, of deep peace but I haven’t came down yet, I haven’t had time; maybe later, when I found myself immersed in this agitated world, I could miss some peaceful moments in the middle of the snow.

- How was the relationship with God up in the mountains?
- My faith in God was crucial. The God I talk with has nothing to do with any specific religion, or has to do with all of them. The God I’m talking about, to define him, is something, somebody who is very close to the conscience, which is in fact the only thing people can’t lie to.

- Talking of conscience, what happens between you and her during those 70 days?
- Lots of things happened, much more than a revision of facts and situations of my life. I did a behavior test. That test gave, as a result, something that may seems a banality: terrible wills to change and to be a better person sprung up on me… It seems a bit childish, but I can’t express that strong will to be good in other words.

- That will is still alive? How long would last in you?
- I can’t tell you how I will be in six months or in a year if I don’t know what I want to be. I can’t tell you if this feeling I had now will still be here in a year, two or more. But I’ve reached at the conclusion that I must live in the most upright way possible. Things have changed: I used to think mostly about me, now I’m thinking more about the others. …Material things, comfort, dollars and all that it’s in the background to me.

- Has your opinion about the world and the century we are living in also changed?
- Yes. There are very elemental things which I now feel deeply inside. I know this is an extraordinary century in many technical aspects, but the madness about comfort, the lack of concern about other people’s problems, about what happens to the others, about the spiritual values, all this spoil the rest. The spiritual side of us, which is so left out now, is precisely what allowed us to survive. We were realistic but even in the most terrible moments we thought about the others, we resorted to our internal strengths, which were withdrawn and neglected.

- Your personality and your relationship with the others have also changed?
- Yes, pretty much. I used to be very witty and nice, cheerful, funny, but now I have that shell on me, and my love and affection don’t show anymore. I want to be like I was before; I want to show my feelings. Now, when I want to caress somebody or when a tear comes to my eyes they remain in the middle of the way. In that aspect I want to be the one I used to be.

- And in what aspects you don’t want to be the one you were?
- Before the accident, although I was a good-tempered person, I had periods of very bad-mood. I’d like to modify that. I also used to sleep a lot, but now I’m going to sleep only the indispensable hours, I’ve understood now how valuable a minute of life is, and I don’t want to waste my time.

- How was your childhood? Go back to your first memories.
- My childhood? The earlier memory I have from childhood? No, I can’t remember.

- Make an effort, try to remember something, some situation, some face, something you saw, or something that happened to you.
- Let’s see… my childhood, no it’s useless, I can’t remember anything.

- Nor even a special prank?
- No, I just can’t, it’s very difficult for me to remember. You can’t imagine how hard I’m trying… Childhood, with those seventy days is something so distant to me that no matter how hard I try, I can’t remember anything clearly.

- Don’t you remember your school days?
- Yes, but vaguely… from the school, what comes now to my mind is my best friend, Numa. ..Numa Turcatti, Turcatti with double “t”. He was in the plane too I convinced him to go, I convinced his mother first to make him go because he wasn’t very enthusiastic about going out… Numa died sixty days after the accident, only ten days before the rescue, in the morning, in my arms. He was like a brother to me, even more than that… and I didn’t cry, I couldn’t cry because I already had the shell on me.

- How old are you?
- Twenty-five, I spent my 25th birthday at the mountains.

- Some minutes ago you said: “When I was a child”, referring to your 17 years. You speak as if you were a man approaching to his 40 or 50 years. How long do you expect to live now?
- I place myself in God’s hands. Look, what are the premonitions for? I used to believe that I was going to die young in an accident, and that was not true…, it doesn’t matter if I die tomorrow, I’m not young anymore, I’m 25-years-old plus those 70 days and nights.

Nando Parrado

- Does what you did at the Andes amaze you?
- There are questions that don’t have answers and you can’t spend the rest of your life wondering about those things otherwise you can’t live. I’m very practical and I have inherited it from my father who once said to me: “Nando, what happened is already past, and the sun which rises every day doesn’t care about what happened, you have to continue with your life…” I assume that I had an enormous trouble, a fatal accident that I wish it hadn’t ever happened, but it has happened and I had to assume it just as it was. I lost my mother, my sister and my best friends in there; I had to pay a huge cost. Today I don’t suffer it but Roberto can tell you how horrible and inhuman was what we had to live at the Andes. He’s the only one who can tell you, better than anyone, because nobody imagines what was that walk like. On the 25th anniversary we went there and we wanted to do the same rout but just the other way round, but we couldn’t although we went really prepared with a great expert’s team of mountaineers, people who climbed the Everest and horses; the glaciers were so dangerous that we couldn’t, and I see that the difference is that we had only our lives, nothing more than that, and still we did everything we could to get out of there, we didn’t notice if we were dying or in danger, we just didn’t care about that. It’s a situation that goes beyond anything; it’s all lost for you. I couldn’t have done that without Roberto and he couldn’t have done it without me because we encouraged each other. That rout was just for two people. We were a perfect team we did a perfect combination. When we saw the laborer we weren’t just tired we were dying, there was no more strength, energy or muscle; you have to bear in mind that we had been walking for ten days over the snow and constantly in danger, and after being more that sixty days in inhuman conditions.

- Did that prove that you have to pass change your attitude towards life?
- It has given me the opportunity to believe in human spirit, in people, what people is able to do facing some situations; all that helped me on my way, comparing my problems today with the ones we faced at the Andes, today’s problems are very small. I consider my problems and I say, luckily I’ve problems. Today I should be buried in a glacier. I’m optimistic in a hundred per cent.

- What’s the most important thing you taught your daughters?
- This might appeared a bit twee but the most important thing I taught them is “love”. I totally agree with that song that affirms that “love moves the world”. The economy, politics, those things don’t exist; the most powerful strength in the world is love. The love for my father made me find the way out of those mountains because I had to save my life for him. The love towards my wife changed my life , the love for my friends makes me happy every day. It’s proved statistically that every man that has done something important in his life did it for somebody else; and generally for a woman.

- Talking about women have you fell in love more than once?
- I’m a difficult guy. I had my passions like everyone else but I think that I’ve fallen in love only once. The day I met Veronica, my wife, my life changed for ever. When I return from The Andes I was still a boy and due to all the things that happened to us I wanted to swallow the life in one go. I lived out of control for some years, I wanted to do everything, to experiment everything I could. I didn’t stop. I used to do motor racing, which was my passion, I used to run motorbikes. I used to travel all the time, I knew lots of people, I was kind of Kamikaze. I had the feeling that I couldn’t waste my time , not a single minute, it seemed to me that the time wouldn’t be enough for me. Veronica calm me, she showed me another world. She took me out of that intensity that for moments became infuriating and injected me some peace.

Carlos Paez

- It was “a miracle” to you having survived, or it was just “something provoked or made by men’s hand”?
- If there is a miracle, that is certainly “the man”, how is he been created with the ability to support and adapt to extreme situations. But this was not a miracle. Some people entitle it as a miracle and called it “the Andes miracle”, but I think that it’s more a natural men’s fight for life. We keep the holiest human right up to the end, which is fighting for our lives. More than a right, it is an obligation. I think that God influenced in this, but it would have been a miracle if the 45 of us would have appeared alive after 70 days. This is not our case.

Gustavo Zerbino

- Do true leaders come up in hard moments?
- Leaders are everywhere. It is in the adversity when they seem to have stepped forward but what really has happened is that somebody has stepped back. The leader is who gives examples by little gestures. At the mountain the leader was the one who laughed, the one who comforted you, it was somebody different each time. Being at 4.000 meters high you don’t have strength not even to stand up, but when you see that one partner with a broken leg stands up, that’s your leader. The love we felt in those adverse moments was stronger than ever. You have to accept the reality and decide from that point.

- So you’ve decided to be happy for the rest of your life?
- My days are intense. It’s an explosion. I live each day as it were the last one. When I got angry I’m fierce because I try to give people my best and if that effort is not seen by the others then I got very angry.

Renaissance

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:56:00 +0000

From the ashes of my relationship, my dead cat and my half-empty flat, emerges an opportunity for rebirth. Once my tears have washed away the ashes, a blank canvas will appear, one on which I can paint a new landscape.

Who am I without the love of my life? How do I fill the void of the half-empty closets and the half-empty bookcases of my half-furnished apartment?

I throw away my half and build from scratch.

A new year, a new me.

Renaissance.

I think I'll go left

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:55:00 +0000

The year of being the opposite of who I know myself to be

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:05:00 +0000

After a dramatic turn in life people change. Life is not how I know it anymore and I feel a strong urge to redefine myself. I spent 30 years carefully crafting myself to my present state, and all I want to do now is take a step back and explore ways in which I can be different. This doesn't come from feeling lost or insecure. Ok maybe a little bit. But it also takes courage to leave what you know to be true behind in order to explore aspects of you that you've forgotten about or aren't even sure they're there. I want to bring it all out again and play; I want to revisit the loft of my heart and look for old, dusty, forgotten play-doh crafts and see what new figures I can mold. I almost feel like I did when I moved out of my parents' house; I was young, I was no one and I had nothing to lose, which is a wonderfully liberating feeling. Only now I am just more mature and my shield is stronger, which is a slightly more fortunate place to be.

Who knows if I find what I'm looking for; I don't even have a destination in mind. I shall turn into a beautiful red autumn leaf, throw myself into the sea and look forward to the exotic shores where the currents will take me.

As someone wiser than me once said, and I paraphrase, you have to travel to faraway places in search of what you need, only to return home to find it.

See you in 2008!

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:22:00 +0000

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Let’s do something, while we have the chance! It’s not every day that we are needed. . . . Let us make the most of it before it is too late!
-- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
-- Mahatma Ghandi

There is no responsibility, without freedom;
No freedom, without power;
No power, without knowledge;
No knowledge, without love.
-- moi

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:17:00 +0000

If you are lonely I will get lonely so you are not alone.
- Dimitra

2007 is coming to a close-hurray!

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:05:00 +0000

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
~G.K. Chesterton

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
~James Agate

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.
~Henry Ward Beecher

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
~Oprah Winfrey

And ...

Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you've met your New Year's resolution.
~Jay Leno

;-)

It

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:54:00 +0000

They say do your best
strive to be great
claw yourself through your fears
make mistakes
and learn.
They say never give up
dream big
aim high.
Visualise a grand future
make it happen in your mind
in the greatest detail
and it will eventually become
your reality.
Don't let setbacks
destroy your faith.
Be joyful
considerate
kind
respectful
and the universe
will reward you.

So I do my best
to be strong
I hush my terrified heartbeat
my knot of a stomach
from the agony of bravery.
I put myself
in the dragon's mouth
sacrificing my sanity
and risking humiliation
at the altar of knowledge.
I make lists
I cultivate my dreams
I visualise my scenarios of excellence
when I go to bed at night.
I am joyful
considerate
kind
respectful
and good
expecting
that the universe
will reward me.

And I just know it in my heart that
one day
something will happen
and as clear as day
I will see
it.
All the pain
all the disappointment
all the courage
all the faith
they were not in vain
because they brought me to
it.
My gift
my legacy
my reward
everything I went through
will make sense
everything I went through
was worth
it.

But sometimes
a terrible
terrible
thought crosses my mind.
What if
it
never comes?

What if
in my deathbed
my last thought is
"I never made it
I never succeeded
I never found my gift
my purpose
my legacy.
I never got my opportunity
to reach my full potential
and make a real difference
in the lives of fellow living things
everywhere.
I never found my treasure
like the Alchemist".

Well
regrettably
that is a possibility.
However
even though my last moments
could be filled with heartbreak and regret
I will still enjoy
a little reward.
I will take comfort in the fact that
I lived my life to the full
I was brave
I took risks
no stone was left unturned.
So what if
it
never comes?
Without having achieved anything special
now and forever
I will always be
the best thing anyone could ever be.
A fighter.

I might not have won the war
but I went down
fighting.

Better than having surrendered.

How to fight loneliness

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:28:00 +0000

How to fight loneliness?
Smile all the time

Shine you teeth 'til meaningless
And sharpen them with lies

And whatever's going down
Will follow you around
That's how you fight loneliness

You laugh at every joke

Drag your blanket blindly
And fill your heart with smoke

And the first thing that you want
Will be the last thing you ever need
That's how you fight it

Just smile all the time

- Wilco

Convention of those wounded in love

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:40:00 +0000

by Paulo Coelho

General provisions:

A – Whereas the saying “all is fair in love and war” is absolutely correct;

B – Whereas for war we have the Geneva Convention, approved on 22 August 1864, which provides for those wounded in the battle field, but until now no convention has been signed concerning those wounded in love, who are far greater in number;

It is hereby decreed that:

Article 1 – All lovers, of any sex, are alerted that love, besides being a blessing, is also something extremely dangerous, unpredictable and capable of causing serious damage. Consequently, anyone planning to love should be aware that they are exposing their body and soul to various types of wounds, and that they shall not be able to blame their partner at any moment, since the risk is the same for both.

Article 2 – Once struck by a stray arrow fired from Cupid’s bow, they should immediately ask the archer to shoot the same arrow in the opposite direction, so as not to be afflicted by the wound known as “unrequited love”. Should Cupid refuse to perform such a gesture, the Convention now being promulgated demands that the wounded partner remove the arrow from his/her heart and throw it in the garbage. In order to guarantee this, those concerned should avoid telephone calls, messages over the Internet, sending flowers that are always returned, or each and every means of seduction, since these may yield results in the short run but always end up wrong after a while. The Convention decrees that the wounded person should immediately seek the company of other people and try to control the obsessive thought: “this person is worth fighting for”.

Article 3 – If the wound is caused by third parties, in other words if the loved one has become interested in someone not in the script previously drafted, vengeance is expressly forbidden. In this case, it is allowed to use tears until the eyes dry up, to punch walls or pillows, to insult the ex-partner in conversations with friends, to allege his/her complete lack of taste, but without offending their honor. The Convention determines that the rule contained in Article 2 be applied: seek the company of other persons, preferably in places different from those frequented by the other party.

Article 4 – In the case of light wounds, herein classified as small treacheries, fulminating passions that are short-lived, passing sexual disinterest, the medicine called Pardon should be applied generously and quickly. Once this medicine has been applied, one should never reconsider one's decision, not even once, and the theme must be completely forgotten and never used as an argument in a fight or in a moment of hatred.

Article 5 – In all definitive wounds, also known as “breaking up”, the only medicine capable of having an effect is called Time. It is no use seeking consolation from fortune-tellers (who always say that the lost lover will return), romantic books (which always have a happy ending), soap-operas on the television or other such things. One should suffer intensely, completely avoiding drugs, tranquilizers and praying to saints. Alcohol is only tolerated if kept to a maximum of two glasses of wine a day.

Final determination: Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflict, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they have to accept both the agony and the ecstasy of their choice.

And those who have never been wounded in love will never be able to say: “I have lived”. Because they haven’t.

Love you Drew!

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:26:00 +0000

I think that whatever scares you is exactly where you should go because safe and comfortable means you've already done it.

- The Amazing Drew Barrymore

Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:00:00 +0000

There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.
- Ralph H. Blum

Endings

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:13:00 +0000

You lose them the way you get them
Jobs, loves, friends...
We make our own endings, when we make our beginnings.

If he betrays another to be with you
why are you so surprised he betrays you to be with another?

You have the power to see the ending at the beginning.
You make it so.
The ripples in the water are from the rocks you throw.

On life in the woods

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:52:00 +0000

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden 1854

O Me! O Life!

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:44:00 +0000

O ME! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here-that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 1891

What you seek is what you find

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:54:00 +0000

I used to wonder what will my life be like, and now I know.
It is what I make it to be.

Seek the darkness, you will find it.
Seek the light, you will find it.

When I complain, I cannot point at others. Them them them, their fault.
That which one seeks, one shall find.

I don't like red, I don't like red, I don't like red, I don't like red, I don't like red, I don't like red.
Tricky thing... I am seeing red here, red everywhere.

Get it yet?

Change the way you think and you will change what you seek. Soon you will see, this life can be anything you make it out to be.

Now's the time

noreply@blogger.com (Godmama) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:15:00 +0000

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
- Napoleon Hill