A city of decay and long lost glory.
Valentine’s Day: the world as a mirror to ourselves
There is a theory in psychology about characters, a “Mirror Theory” which might explain why we got so irritated by other people or why we like them so much:
When we observe and analyze the behavior of other people we actually unconsciously see ourselves in them and what we see is shaped by our own personality. When we observe flaws in other people and we criticize them, we are irritated by them because the very same issues are unresolved within ourselves. What we notice in others is actually what is inside us.
I take this with a pinch of salt but if there was a lesson to be learned from mirroring, then I think it’s that this should work nice as an exercise for empathy towards others and of self-reflection and forgivness towards ourselves. This might be the most cliché thing that’s written in magazines for women, but if The Mirror Theory it’s true, then this is the logical intrinsic consequence of it: loving ourselves first and being understanding and forgiving to ourselves might take us one step closer to being more understanding towards each other.
In the end, we humans might be more similar then we’d like ourselves to admit. Hence the best would be to give ourselves some self acceptance. Hence I wish you for Valentine’s day a bunch of self love!
Some sources to read:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-your-body/201401/seeing-you-in-my-mirror
New favourite movie: Roma(2018)
I consider Roma (2018) by Alfonso Cuarón to be a beautiful piece of cinema and a delicate yet ravishing story of humanity. It shows a slice of life of a raw simplicity yet it is so powerfully able to inspire empathy. There’s very much to admire about this movie including it’s visual splendour. My favourite scene of them all is in the ice-cream eating one (enough spoilers!) because it’s very close to how real-life resilience looks like. Highly recommended (am I saying, while tearing up).
In praise of bad break-ups
“I heard you once say that a lie is sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end, and the truth is bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end.” (xtc – dj koze)
A positive but maybe not so good idea of getting over a break-up is to romanticize the idea of it, like shampoo commercials: you can have a perfect break-up in just 3 steps!
- You have to take the past, put it in a nice box, wrap it in gift paper and say thank you, (next). You are grateful for what you lived with your ex lover and feel lucky for all the memories.
- Now you shake the dust from the feet and claim you learned another precious lesson about life that made you a better version of yourself.
- Your eyes gaze upon an imaginary horizon and you say to yourself “there are a lot of beautiful things coming in the future for me”.
So you are satisfied with yourself and got nothing more to reflect upon. In the end, everything is positive: the past is nothing but “wonderful”, the break-up is “not so bad”, and at the future… you will only win. That’s completely rubbish!
The truth is, a break-up can be an unique tool of self-reflection, but only if you want to use it. Dealing with the negative and digging deeper into yourself might be the way of true healing. Covering the shit under the carpet is good enough but that will keep stinking until you admit to yourself that you were one of the two that did it and then take your part of shit out. To fit some Buddhist quote so that you excuse me for my dirty language: “purity or impurity depends on oneself, no one can purify another.” The truth is hard to admit but it’s inherently the only way to our true selves. We are all bad humans, we have plenty of flaws and it’s terribly hard for other people to live with us. We might be loved but let’s be honest, putting somebody to deal with our unresolved issues might just ruin their happiness. And if you’re not a cold block of ice lacking empathy for someone else besides your own self, I think the thought of hurting the ones you love should be enough to move something inside you, to blow off your imaginary bubble.
And the future starts now. Yes, the deep hurt that you feel makes the beginning taste kinda bitter. But maybe in the end it will be better than a lie.
Love is an organ in our bodies
Love feels so physical sometimes that I can imagine its shape, texture, color, vascularisation and innervation, like it is a real organ in the human body.
I bear witness that it can be the most powerful one. It produces a large scope of derivates of the spirit molecule, the divine one that was released into our bodies the moment we were born and came out of our mother’s womb. Tryptamine, serotonine analogues, just to count a few. Receptors become more aware of the tactile sensation of our lover’s skin and it will spread quickly through our fast fibers to our central nervous system and we will feel such an abundance of pleasure that it’s addictive. Our eyes see the goodness, our retina transmits a reality seen through a pink-colored glass. Our bodies become so fluid it feels like we are water flowing into a waterfall of love. It never ends, it overflows, it is the evidence of feeling alive. It’s life’s most liveful thing. It’s almost mystical.
But the misfortune is that love is also such a sensitive organ. You can cut it’s blood supply with carelesness and it will quickly become hypoxic and suffer. Little focal points of necrosis will emerge and after that – fibrosis. Which means it regenerates swiftly, but those parts that are now stiff. The beautiful hard-working cells full of life are dead. The organ is big enough to resist a long period of time, it can go through an incredibly amount of pain and still beat the same and still love fully. Sometimes, the lover directly uses the sharp knife of harsh words and slashes through causing an escape of blood – it’s a hemorrhage. That’s why some artists represent heart broken hearts as bleeding. It pours and it pours and it becomes depleted and weak and sometimes it can even go through a schock! That’s an emergency.
Our lover is the only one who has the key to it. He is the perfect criminal, the only one who can decide that your love is not good anymore. He cuts all the tissue that binds it to your body and takes it out. That place is now empty.
You take yourself to the intensive care station to fully recover. No other hospital section can take better care of broken hearts. There you find other kinds of doctors who take care of you the way they can – a perfusion, a thought, their time – you are not alone. They are your family, they are your friends. And after some time, which can be hours, weeks or years, you get out of the dark intensive care unit and step out into the light.
That’s why sometimes after a breakup, your body also feels lighter. The organ that was bleeding, dying, going in overdrive is now just gone. Every other cell gets back it’s normal supply of oxygen and you can feel them again. Your breath feels easier. You do good. You keep moving.
It’s place is now vacant, until a new seed will break bravely it’s coat and vanquish through all those adhesions. Henceforth you will love again. Just take good care, my darling.
2018 in pictures
My heart is so full. Forever grateful. Much much love.
Thanks to the loving Universe and to the loveful people.
The black dog
I think it was late at night when we started to have this conversation. We were in my room, he was sitting on the coach and as the pale light of the lamp was half-lighting his face, I could tell that he was a bit distressed. As he started talking, his voice was suffocating, almost like his lungs would get depleted of air and with every word he would swallow more air in an effort to make the next sound work. He told me that he saw no point in living if living means so much suffering. “I felt so happy once and now I can vaguely recall those moments. What was the most important thing in my life now it’s just vague memories that I can not even remember it in all its splendor.”
I used all the wisdom that I knew and I answered him “You would not appreciate happiness if it wasn’t for the sorrow. One can not exist without the other”.
“I know what you mean but it’s not like that. I can have good times and I can feel just all right about life but most of the days i feel like a drag, like I’m just waiting for this day to pass and for the next one to come.”
“It’s pointless crawling through the day, feeling that life is just a race I have to get to the finish line. If life is only that, I see no point in being alive.”
My heart broke but I didn’t know how to comfort him. Is it just a temporary thing or it’s irreversible? Is he just going through a phase?
“Just wait a bit more” I said, hoping that things will somehow change.
