Tag Archives: reality

Love the Life You Live!

emotions, human nature, , , , , ,

Going places to meet unknown people, unknown cultures and unfamiliar situations. I find it challenging and it makes me feel alive.

I am so fortunate to be in a deeply loving relationship. He lives at the opposite side of the globe. Melbourne < > Amsterdam. We travel many miles to see each other. And we are so fortunate to be able to see each other often. Which is great. Back home I look after my 14 years old daughter. The 21 years old one is looking after herself. Which is also a very fortunate situation. In Amsterdam I teach yoga. Which I love. While traveling I upscale my yoga practice. By attending yoga classes in foreign yoga studios. Which is pretty fucking awesome.

If anyone would have asked me eight years ago if I would love to live this life, I’d smile broadly and grab the opportunity with both hands. Even more, it’d be a dream come true.

The dream is true. But the reality of it is not one would expect it to be. Or at least my reaction to and feelings about this dream-come-true are not as I expect them to be. I certainly don’t find myself in a constant state of bliss. Quite the opposite. No matter how much I love being with my partner, love looking after my 14 years old, love teaching yoga and love to travel the world, life is forever challenging as can be.

I worry about my children’s happiness, about money, the health of my partner, my family and myself. I worry about relationships with friends and family. I don’t get to worry much about the state of the world, politics and climate change. Which turns against me. Because not worrying about it actually seems worrying in itself. And most of all I worry about myself. Doubting myself, do I do the right thing? Am I looking after my kids, my partner and my life as good as possible? With my life I mean, the life thrown at me on this planet. Do I live it as potent as possible? While focusing 95% of my attention on things that need to be done or can be improved. Every day. Satisfaction and contentment seem to present themselves as enemies to my existence.

So what gives me the right to exclaim ‘Love the life you live!’?

The experience that no matter how fantastic my life seems to be or how bad, it doesn’t change feelings of overwhelm, depletion, satisfaction, contentment or happiness from occurring.

What strikes me about it is that unlike what we think creates feelings of happiness – for example the security of a nice house or the health and prosperity of our children, moments of happiness occur when there’s nothing to strive for, when there’s no expectations or when there’s a sense of acceptance of everything that is.

How to trigger or induce such moments? And here I won’t give any of the best-selling answers our book stores are filled up with until the highest shelf and the internet can’t be stopped overflowing from. Treaties on how to do this or how to not do that, preferably quick and simple solutions to live one’s best life. It doesn’t exist. There’s no worse, better or best life. There’s just one life. You are living it. The only potential, the only option, the only choice or whatever you prefer to call it, is the life you live now. Complete, truthful, real, uncompromising, straightforward and happening every split-second.

Listen to it, see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, enjoy or despise what it does to you. But most of all open up to it, do not resist, accept it. Let it in, like water flowing into the bath tub you sit in. Warming the bones of your body, lubricating your soul, slowly transforming the skin of your fingertips into old people’s wrinkles. Did you know that the wrinkly skin on your fingertips and toes as a result of soaking long enough in water, is actually a biological phenomenon that enables you to hold more grip on slippery surfaces!

Life is as beautiful as it is devastating. Like love. Like you. Like the oceans. Like the climate. Like group energy and the ostracizing power of an individual.

Love the life you live. For no other reason than it being impossible to actually truly interact with it in any other way.

On Beyond The Edge

children, connect, emotions, human nature, wholiness, , , , , ,

On Beyond Zebra is a beautiful children’s book by the infamous Dr.Seuss. My second daughter Mahdee is reading it with me. Every letter invented as a continuation of our alphabet beyond the letter Z, she points at and excitedly exclaims:’wow, that letter is beautiful!’. We indulge in Dr. Seuss’ fantasy of ‘a List of Letters for People who Don’t stop at Z’. We marvel together at the Yuzz for Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz, the Fuddle for Miss Fuddle-dee-Duddle and the Spazz for Spazzim.

Life has got the capacity to go on beyond the edge of the end of the alphabet. To me it seems to shift into another realm, surpassing common sense and exploring the whereabouts of unique sensability. I read back the ‘About’ page of this website. It talks about living in the present moment. Like we all do nowadays. I pledge to somehow differentiate from ‘something else’, my five senses, i.e. how to experience life solely based upon the impressions generated by the senses.

How can we experience life other then through our five senses? I am talking about experiencing life through the mind. Which ridiculously enough opposes mindfulness. More on that later in life. Experiencing life through the mind goes by applying filters. Filters that tell you how life should be, as opposed to how it presents itself in her naked form. Superego, religious paradimes, legislation, society and it’s set of rules and ethics; all are examples of filters. It’s all like taking a camera and viewing the world through a lens, manipulating the edges, the brightness and the sharpness-depth of what we are exposed to.

What does life look like beyond these manipulations? What does life look like beyond the controllable frames? Words fail to communicate. We can share in words what is known. We can’t get the unknown across, other then living and witnessing it together.

Holy Days: the final part

#elevenyearsolddaughter#, holidays, wholiness, ,

Archery, a circus festival and full moon somewhere in the midst of a forgotten mountain village tucked far away in the Western Pyrenees. Medieval times revisited? No way! What we experience today is as happening and engaging as can be.

Luna and me are being installed next to each other with bow and arrows in front of two seperate targets. Our first attempt at archery is about to take place. I’m quietly impressed, wanted to do this already for a long time. Here we are, right now! Our Spanish instructor invites us to move a bit closer to the target. To prevent us from giving up too easily, my guess. Another repetition of how to stretch the bow pointing down, hence rising it while stretching it more and more until the left arm is horizontal and points perfectly straight ahead while the right arm pulls the cord. With just one finger and even that one, almost not touching the cord, holding it at the very tip of the finger, stretching the bow as much as possible. Until the right hand comes next to the right cheek and holds still to focus, finally releasing the cord swift and silently. That’s all for the instruction course. We’re being left alone and there we go. Over and over again. Figuring out which eye to close, searching our arrows somewhere in the field behind the target, competitively giving each other ‘the look’ if the arrow hits the target reasonably focused. The tip of our finger is meant to hurt. We don’t feel it. We go on and on, loving it.

The next day the inner part of my right elbow is completely bruised from the cord that’d slapped several times against it, the price for not keeping my arm completely straight at all times. I hope someone will ask after the exaggerated bleu-ish green bruise, just for the fun of proudly recounting of our first archery experience.

After some indefenite time we proceed further into the fresh and sunny late afternoon by driving on to the tiny old village centre of Villanau. We come across several well fitted outdoor walkers. A beautiful part of the so called French camino de Santiago trail passes through Villanau, supplying the scenery with yet another remnant of centuries past: pelgrimage.
At the tiniest Plaza Major I’ve come across in Spain so far, the decor is set for a circus festival. It uncommonly consists of three seperate artist ensembles, travelling together but each one performing on their own stage. So we find ourselves in between three different stages at three different sides of the little square plaza, already packed to the fullest with local and visiting Spanish families. The peaceful and impressive backdrop of rising mountains under a bright blue late-afternoon sky is pretty overwhelming. To me that is. The people around me are not for a moment being distracted from their cheerful chatting and laughing. Until the spectacle takes off and we’re soon all being dazzled by trapeze work, acrobat acts, music from the soundtrack of Grease and Indian folkoric songs. Twice we’ve got to move by ourselves the wooden benches we are sitting on, turning them into the direction of the following performance, facing the next stage. Acting as sullen spectators, leisurably being entertained by hard working artists, it takes a lot of confusion and unexpected teamwork to get this done. Interactivity at a very basic level, as engaging as it is funny. All this is taking place at the tiniest Main Square (Plaza Major) of the age old village of Villanau (new village), adorned by well kept rustic houses, bright red flowers dangling down from artisinal pottery outside the windows. Romanticism at it’s best.

After I don’t know how much time, the festival finishes. The Spanish quickly resume their laughing and chatting. We’re leaving the enchanted circus scene, happily surprised by the very present and deeply satisfied. A giant bright yellow moon is rising to it’s fullest. That beautiful feminine moon, as overwhelming as the mountains it highlights, is fooler then full tonight.

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