Glitch

          

                           The older we get, the wiser we become and the more mindful we should turn to be, supposedly that should make life easier. But the truth is, the more thoughtful we are the harder life gets. We are animals that were primitively designed for survival. The animal/us developed intellectual capabilities beyond survival which keeps fucking up our brain constantly. Because the human brain is a very complicated evolving mechanism with very simple programming and slow adaptation capabilities. The smarter we get the bigger chances our brain will glitch with the simplest of a concept. 

                     Happiness, for example, biologically very simple concept. The brain reward system is very primitive, it keeps us aware of good things and constantly searches for rewards to keep us motivated and learning but it forgets about their happening immediately. on the other hand, our defense mechanism keeps reminding us of the bad moment to avoid repeating them to help us survive. Which leads us to believe that bad moments are far more than good moments and we eagerly keep trying to experience the rewarding feeling. The issue with these two systems that they are very intuitive and basic. There is no deeper sense to their exact function except survival. BUT they have the ability to complicate our lives due to the lack of mindfulness in our modern life. 

                        If some functions of our brain are simple that doesn't mean life will be. Life has its own rhythm. There are good moments and bad moments, however, our brain seeks the good moments and wants more of them. In the same time, it usually keeps remembering the bad moments and tries to avoid them at all cost. What happens if we are not aware of ourselves and our lives, we keep chasing good moments in an attempt to reach happiness, because our brain translates happiness as a reward (brain chemistry) but in fact the more we chase good moments the less happy we become because we realize they do not last. To the contrary of that, our brain tries to skip bad moment and feel pressured by them which makes us remember more of them. The more we follow this pattern of thought the less happy we become and the darker we perceive life. Our brain glitch simply because it tries to keep its simple programming of reward and defense for survival purposes which not necessarily needed most of the times. Which we need to make a mindful effort to realize and stop.

                   Life is good and bad equally. What makes us happy is the inconstancy we have in life between good and bad. If life was all good we wouldn't be happy with it and we would've got bored and despaired from life. All we need to constantly remember (be mindful) is that not good nor bad can last forever. All comes to an end and it is part of the cycle of life. We need to train our modern brain to stop and think whenever a pattern persists and analyze pragmatically. Whenever you feel like life getting darker stop and think of all the good things that happened to you recently and compare them to bad things. Make a list, keep a journal .... It doesn't matter which way you will try to keep a record; just train yourself to keep a record. Make a comparison and see yourself and you will realize that life has its own balance. Go back to good moments and be grateful that you experienced them. Go back to bad moments and let them be a lesson for you to be a better person and to remember that nothing lasts forever. That's why I believe, many ancient teachings connected happiness to gratitude. Gratitude helps us to keep grounded, it makes us able to fool our brain thirsty reward system and make us feel genuinely happy as we should be for experiencing raw life even if we think we shouldn't be. Life is a continuous cycle and whether you see it dark or bright that will not change the outcome in any way. The better you feel, the more mindful you are, it helps you to keep a clear perspective and a peaceful outlook on almost everything. 

Although I almost worship the human brain and fascinated by it. But we should remember, The brain is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. We better keep it on a short leash whenever is needed to keep the balance in our lives.

Memories

              

              At the very end, what you really leave behind is just a strange memory of who you are, how you lived, loved and connected. And the funny thing is; these memories will rarely match what they intended to be!

             One day you will die, and one unexpected person will shed tears for losing you, will suffer a real heartache whenever your name is mentioned. They weren't your best friend nor someone you have seen often, not necessarily. What actually made your loss matter to them is the memories you left them with, the kindness you offered them when they weren't expecting. The true human connection that touched their heart. Life is NOTHING more than a collection of memories we live to accumulate but as well, leave for others. Everything in life ends and what is left are the feelings lingering afterward.

           Hell and paradise are just the feelings and memories left for the soul to take with to the journey after. Regrets and remorse are the pain of hell. Peace and contentment are the joy of paradise. Your life is just the equation that will result in how much of each part you are going to offer to your soul. However, It is easier to think life is arbitrary. It is simpler to live the delusion of immortality. Even better, to think there is a bigger picture to life than what actually is, and chase the years trying to figure out that purpose unsuccessfully. Yet it is that bluntly simple, life is nothing more than what meets the eye - or in this case " what meets the brain"- Life is just a collection of feelings and memories.

             Funny how most of the time you live wasting your life trying to make sense of it and give it a bigger meaning than it has. While the whole thing is just in front of your eyes all the time. You live a whole life following stupid programming to discover after many years that simply your childhood instinct was what is life is all about. The genuine moments of being are what really matters, the genuine moments of right here, right now. This GENUINE NOW creates our life (past-present-future), this now makes you who you are and leave a trace of it is happening in a dark corner of your brain to be used sometime, somehow. All the money, success, glamour goals are a distraction or at best a sham attempt to replicate this childlike moments and memories that you fail to recreate simply because you cannot fake it.

              Clarity is all you need to adjust the equation of life, to produce the weight you want to carry around and the memories you want to share in life. Mindfulness, mushin, peace, zen, tranquility ... really doesn't matter which word you use and which state of mind and heart you chose to live by. All comes down to clarity and awareness of the meaningless of life. Meaningless in a humble sense, not the desperate one. Your biology controls your being and through evolution created an iron shield to protect its existence. A very effective system to survive as a collective group of animals yet not very suitable for modern neocortex humans. All the ego, defenses, and survival mechanisms play a major role in your survival as species yet can be detrimental to your being ... to your memories

             Eventually, even bitter memories are better than nothing. Death is not scary by itself, rather the feeling of nothingness we associate it with ... the feeling of the unknown. Memories are the only remedy we have against the nothingness of life and death.

          In memory of once was a friend Kacper 

Good Enough Love

Perfect is one of my favorite vocabularies ever. It expresses the absolute harmony and peace!

For many many years, "my perfection" was the golden standard of all standards and I required "my perfection" of myself and of others consciously and unconsciously. No matter how big or small; I demanded a certain level of perfection without real consideration of others' perspectives of what they thought of as perfect. Generally, I praise myself for being pragmatic, yet when it came to perfection; then fuck pragmatism. I am practical and realistic as long it serves my illusions of what is perfect and that's that.

Then came the day when I decided to live with two of my best friends. I knew it was a big gamble but it was a bet I was willing to take. I had my doubts; I knew it could turn to a blood bath but I loved them enough to know deep down that nothing will change the way I love them and that was enough. That was over a year and a half ago, filled with turbulence for so many reasons but within the storms, I found peace and I learned how to coexist mindfully and be a real pragmatic.

For long I lived alone, I loved my own company and I adored my peace of mind. I never have seen myself sharing my space with anyone, and it was grrrrrrrrrrreat! I built up a small perfect world where I did what I wanted precisely and perfectly as it can be. My home was almost always perfectly clean, I had time to read to walk and to cook healthy. I woke up at 3:30 AM to go to the gym, I went to work and I lead a life an apex of perfection for me. I had my absolute freedom to be myself and it felt awesome, I had no doubt and I still don't have a doubt about how much I enjoyed that. I think I enjoyed it and practiced it too much that it created an active illusion of how life should be.

A little by little, I started to see the world from my own bubble and nothing was good enough; even myself. I was running my world like a Swiss watch and I could do that even through shit storms, so how come once I am out in the real world I can't manage anything perfectly, or even close to perfect. I felt like the world was collapsing and couldn't find my way to myself anymore. I felt I had to compromise myself to exist and that feeling attacked my sense of freedom ... my sense of being!

Within that struggle, I moved to the new place with a willingness to run it as I did many years before but what I forgot was that my world now exists with two strong-willed people with their own definition of perfection "which could mean chaos and mess too" and oh boy, first few months were something. Between the fights over who cleans or who shops, to what can be done or not. It was a huge mess and a battlefield mainly because of me. I was so determined to make this new environment as my previous one and had no intention to let go. Eventually tired of fighting; slowly by slowly we started to work things out. The flat still a big mess many times but I learned to live with it peacefully and we found a mechanism to make it work .. somehow!

That wasn't the end of it, the power struggle ended but then the emotional struggles surfaced. The three of us got closer and closer and we had to fight to be able to laugh. We smothered each other with care sometimes but through all of that, we learned to live in relative harmony. We still disagree and we will have many fights ahead of us but now that is normal. That was completely new to me. I was always calm as a stone; no one could irritate me or make me fight. It was relatively easy, whenever something doesn't go my way I disengage and let it go. Was an awesome technique to avoid conflict yet wasn't a resolution! Until we lived together my two best friends have never seen me angry or seriously upset. I never allowed myself to show that, how can I do that when I am the "perfect" queen of cold and ice "the free-spirited unattached soul" but having two of my most important relationships under the pressure of daily life taught me to express my feelings, and sometimes even get angry because that's how you express your feelings and from that you learn to embrace the other truly and fully and tolerate the differences.

My perfection was beautiful but exhausting and unreal. It made me live in a world of my own making. It was good and even sometimes I miss it but it didn't teach me how to live with others in the real world and coexist! My flaws taught me how imperfect I am, it taught me to embrace the imperfection within myself and others. It showed me that good enough is perfect because good enough is sustainable.

Most importantly, it taught me something completely new. It showed me that to be able to love is to be able to compromise; not compromise passion or love but pride and vanity. To see beyond my illusions and expectations, to seek true human connection and love.

Communication, compatibility, and harmony are never a given feature of any relationship. They are a status achieved progressively through the hardship of conflict. It is the recognition that this person is flawed as they are, you are flawed as you are and we decided to love each other and support each other as it is because that's good enough for us.

No fairytales, no great drama and no romantic perception of how it should be. If you care about the person beyond their obvious flaws, make it work. Don' try to change them and don’t ask them to change for you. Embrace their flawed soul and allow them to embrace yours. Realize that harmony is not a constant state of being and accept that. Work through cloudy days to be able to enjoy the sunshine with the company of people who agreed to live with your imperfection.

Thank you my best friends for showing me how to love truly. Thank you for accepting the stuck-up I am and loving me through that. For all, I had learned from you and for all the love I felt from you, I will always be grateful and will overlook all the mess and chaos generated through our time together 😋

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

 

- Rumi

How the fire died

     Once you were young, full of life, charged with faith and nothing can stop you or shake your foundation. Life seemed simple and straightforward. Whatever you desire seemed like within the reach of your hand. Challenges were nothing more than motivations to work harder and have bigger faith at what you are doing. For awhile life felt alright although it wasn't that glorious ... yet it felt wonderful enough for you. Years started to pull each other before you know it, all that felt exciting started to burden your shoulders. You keep doing what you were doing but now it doesn't work anymore, you try and try but it looks like life has changed; although nothing really has changed. All still as it is but you don't really know how things operate anymore. Supposedly you are more experienced, older and wiser but all these years have added nothing but doubts. And you feel sometimes as if you are sitting in a dark room unable to locate the light switch although you are certain there is one somewhere nearby.

     You grow older and became less happy for some reason, less secure and less trustful. You start to judge people harshly, believe you are always busy, unable to stop yourself from complaining, with this heavy feeling that your life is not going anywhere. When you were younger you thought at your current age you will have it all sorted out and you will have it all, so little you knew! 

You blame the world for how life turned up and feel you have no control over your journey. These feelings seem too real to doubt or question. Despair becomes a permanent resident in your soul and a bit by bit it blends to the walls of the soul making it impossible to recognize which parts belong to you and which parts belong to it. The humid cold of despair starts slowly to spread through you and suddenly in a dark night while you are lying in your bed looking for the guiding light of your faith inside you; you cannot find it! The warmth of the feeling "tomorrow is going to be better" faded and you are unable to feel it anymore. Suddenly, you feel all alone in the darkness of your own thoughts; lost, helpless and desperate.

     Not sure when did you lose the treasure of faith and when did hope departed you. At certain age/periods/situations? Seems impossible to retain the hope you once had and break through helplessness. Your heart still deep down hopeful and strong but got temporarily blind and nothing seems to work out no matter how much you try and how low you are willing to go to make things better. It seems like an eternal recurrence and no one is able to give an advise to prevent it or help with it except the usual statement "you need to go through it to know your own lesson".

The question is, what is the lesson? And what is the purpose? Life by itself is temporary so why you need to endure all this suffering and pain? Nothing in this life is permanent so why the hell you will need to learn anything at all? when what you will learn today will do you no good for tomorrow?? 
Little by little the fire once guided you to your true self start to die; you freak out not knowing what you can do to save it but nothing seems to help. You compose yourself and sit there watching the last flare of this warm flames, hoping helplessly it will reborn from the ashes like a phoenix.