It’s annoying, frustrating, hovering all over the place and won’t leave us alone. It’s here to stay, it was here from the first day and will stay with us for as long as we live. It’s on everyone’s mind as well as in their avoidance. When you feel you are right, you use it, but feel reluctant to do so when you don’t want to face the truth. It knocks down believes, hopes, assumptions and mainly mindsets. By all means, it shakes whatever was there before it was spoken, before someone asked it: Why?

This is the most hated use of words I personally have found up until now: asking someone “Why?”.

Whether it is related to a decision, an action, a statement, practically anything done by a human being, this question brings frustration, perplexity and even the worst out of some. As I am a “Why Child” (note: the kind of person who always asks for the reasons behind a decision, a task, everything surrounding them), this question is my friend, my foundation and the only one that can bring me clarity. I use it to understand and explore, it serves my curiosity, I find it calming and productive.

I have been told by different persons that this question annoys, upsets, irritates and even that is related to Ego and it should never be spoken. But I think this question, plus the responsibility it brings, deserve a lot more than they do today.

Everything happens for a reason, everything and everyone is connected, we work through each other, with the help of each other and can only grow and learn from each other. Every decision that we make, every step we take has some roots, and, of course, consequences. The “Why?” is a very good question to begin digging for these roots, in case maybe your reasons are not clear. I have found people, over time, more than happy to share their reasons, their strategy, their believes and values, and a big amount of other people who not only got scared and were left in shock by this question, but even became irritated and aggressive. I can understand if people don’t want to let others know their thoughts, but at least it would be nice to not lie to themselves. The only thing I consider impossible (although impossible does not exist) is to not know why a person did what they did. I will never be convinced that there are no reasons behind an act, or there was nothing in the doer’s mind. We think every second of something, we make decisions and take actions every moment, and it’s all based on our elaborate mindset. Maybe a person is not fully aware of their actions, but not starting to look into themselves for the “Why?” or dismissing it from the beginning is not helpful for anyone and leads only to lying to everyone.

This question can shatter worlds, can destroy systems and can definitely save us on every single occasion. Because everything is to be questioned, especially our own beings and believes. Why am I doing the things that I am doing? Is it because I wanted to? Why did I want to? Is it because of some bias? Am I thinking someone else’s thoughts? Am I living my own life? Am I doing things in the best way for me? Or am I tormenting myself just because someone told me I should do so? And this is just an example of how the “Why?” can open an entire Pandora’s box for a lot of people, and that is a good thing. With answering the “Why?” and going deeper and deeper, up to our root cause, we find out that the only responsibility for our actions belongs to ourselves!

And that, is scary! Because if you are the only one responsible for your own actions and thoughts, that means you can’t expect anyone to save you, that means you are nobody’s victim and you can change everything in an instance, based on one decision. That means you have to take action, invest energy, do something!

The “Why?” brings responsibility, which in turn makes us grow and mature. The more decisions we make, the more we ask ourselves everything about the reasons why we took those decisions, the more we can learn from our lessons and the more we can move on in our lives.

I have seen people stuck in vicious circles, asking themselves rhetorically “Why?” but more for the ears of the passers, than for a real true answer. Because, like everything that surrounds us, this is just a question, nothing more than that. Its real value is given by the one that uses it, so the question itself is not wrong! But it can be used, indeed, as an attack, as opposition or even as a strategy to play the victim instead of truly answering it (e.g. Why me?). It is entirely up to the user, just like everything else!

The question itself exists as a tool, it’s every person’s responsibility to make use of it. Why do we hate it? Because it acts as a mirror, brings out all the things we want to be buried, shows us our true self. And that can be a real pain for the Ego!

The phone starts beeping, the hour turns to 7:00 AM and life begins. I have exactly 55 minutes to get out of the house, in order to get in time wherever life needs me. In time, I always do my best to make it in time. I never liked being late and I’d rather be 15 minutes earlier, and had to wait, than not make it on time and have the other party waiting for me.

Maybe because I am easily, but surely, approaching the middle of my life, according to most statistics, I took my time and took a look at… time! When I was a child I couldn’t stand sleeping, I even stated a few times (at the age of 5 or 6), that my midday nap was a waste of time! There were so many things that just couldn’t wait for me to sleep! All the novelty, all the life that was happening, all the fascinating things around me, all new and unexplored, and they wanted me to sleep?!?! I had so much energy and enthusiasm that you could have better convinced a horse or a bull to sleep, than me.

Then, the days got longer, school begun. Time started to have a totally different meaning, as everything suddenly changed, it turned from exploring time and space according to my own terms, into having my first timely deadlines: homework, bed time, waking up time, and school tests. Time started to feel like something constrictive, restrictive and punitive. It turned from my biggest ally and friend, from something that had to be exploited at full capacity, into a sort of annoying little thing, wrapped around my life, something that I would have wanted to ignore and never have to deal with again. After hi-school, life took over. There was no more time to think about time, at one point I even lost track of all the events that were going on around me, and I woke up… 10 years later.

I was fortunate enough to get to an environment where there is time! I had to learn not to rush anymore and take another look at time. I started contemplating where all the 30+ years went already, what I was wishing 10 or 15 years ago, and what happened to all that. The conclusion is that is all here! It would have been wonderful for my wishes to have happened during those years, but some of them happened 5 to 20 years later. With wishes like having a house or a family, now I am convinced it’s even better things didn’t happen sooner. The most important thing that time ever thought me was that wishes always come true, but only when you are ready, or as Time would say it: when your time is here and now!

I came again from feeling time as a constraint and my enemy, to seeing it as my ally, confident and best friend. I have come to the conclusion that time is irrelevant for the needs of the Ego, as the Ego demands everything right away, but it’s my best friend in self development and learning about myself. We experience time only so we could feel everything that is time related: joy, sadness, being head over heels and feeling yourself immortal, dreadful sorrow that seems to make days endless and time unbearable, enthusiasm, preparation, anticipation, everything! There is nothing in our perceivable Universe that is not related somehow to time. In time you can connect the dots, you can draw a conclusion and have things revealed. Everything is based on, uses and requires time, even our thoughts. A thought that is too short and not given enough time, will fade away and we might not even remember having it. But time goes along with focus, with being there, in the moment and with all your senses awake. Time is neutral, can live with or without us, just like the Sun. It’s only up to us, on a continuous basis, to see it as a friend or as an annoying burden. Time is not the same for all of us, even if we try to standardize it and give it dimensions. How we all perceive time is only up to how we choose to use it. And above all, I have never heard about an autobiography written, Nobel prize won or even the adventure or his lifetime being lived by a 5 year old.

Getting used to life takes time, as we are infinite individuals on a playground made of matter, with dimensions, structures and particular rules. We come from chaos and we shall return to it once our life ceases to exist, so it is only normal we need time to get adjusted to putting our infinite chaos into well determined structures. Just like children need time to discover fluent and controlled motion over chaotically moving limbs, we all need time to go through this life.

If you are ever feeling that you lost your time, don’t worry! There is no such thing to lose! If you had done everything sooner than it happened, you would have lost the entire experience and knowledge brought by it. If you ever condemn yourself for not speeding up enough to others’ standards, just take your time. It’s yours! Don’t beat yourself about it, just use it as you best consider, because, after all, it’s both subjective and irrelevant.

Time has the meaning we give it, and after years of conflict, I chose to call Time “my friend”!

Four years ago, I started actively and consciously working on my self-awareness. It’s been four long, long, very long years. I had more things happening during these four years, than in the previous twenty-eight.

I discovered natural laws, cause and effect relationships, I have seen good turn into evil, and evil undressed in a really good way. Most of my beliefs had been shattered, I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror and the way my life turned… let’s just say it’s on fast forward now.

I am more than amused, today, by the question “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”

I would say now, wherever it suits me best, wherever the flow takes me and wherever life considers I have to learn a new lesson. I have switched from a life lived inside my mind, in the future, always outside of my own self, to one where, even if I still have some more moves to catch, I can be myself and add onto my own reality.

As I started learning, the Universe grabbed me by the hand, and said “Let’s go!” When I said I wanted to learn, heal, or confront something, based on my curiosity, the Universe replied, “There you go!”.

There are so many lessons I have learned, and yet I am constantly learning every day. A friend once asked “So…when does the learning finish? How much more is there to learn?” The answer I reached during the last four years, is… you never stop learning, and the amount of information and experiences to be passed through is, in the end, infinite. But once you open the gift box and you start digging it with curiosity, more and more things unravel, turning into a waterfall of experiences.

Above everything, one lesson really got me thinking, and as I was observing it, it became more and more obvious. Everything repeats! Everything that there was, will be again, everything will get repeated at some point. But only until that repeating item is not necessary anymore.

I like to call all the experiences that we go through, as lessons. I know this word might seem severe, may imply an obligation or even a bad aura around itself. But these lessons are really meant for the greatest good of each of us. They repeat, time after time, as a spiral, which I know, sounds a little bit like a cliché. So, then, let’s just say there are patterns in life. And once you get the idea behind these patterns, impossible no longer exists. It’s like a Universal medicine for your entire life.

The catch is to, first of all, pay attention to yourself, your environment and the present moment. Don’t go into the future, don’t make scenarios, refrain yourself from the past and stop reliving the same situations. Rather, observe, without interacting with, the current situation. Try to remember, but without getting involved in hurtful feelings, when something similar happened. If it’s for the first time, think about the last time you felt that way. Many of the things that happen to us might seem new at a first glance, but the feelings they trigger are familiar for sure. So start with observing when, what, how was the situation caused, see if it’s somehow familiar and note how you feel. The situation will repeat itself until something changes, then it becomes obsolete, until there is no need for you to experience such a thing and you no longer need that feeling. The only way to stop the lessons from repeating is for you, yourself, to make a move. Logically, the only move or change you can make has to deal with your own self, as you can’t force things or acts on others. A small change, maybe like not taking something personally anymore, or not letting it get you upset/stressed/frightened is sometimes the only thing needed for the entire lesson to stop.

We are here to learn about ourselves, develop and improve every single day. The Universe will give us the same lesson, over and over again, until we make that necessary change within, so we can evolve. None of us is left behind, and fighting this is more than useless, as it’s meant for each and everyone’s improvement.

Once you unleash the flow, start the game and raise your hand to life’s invitation, there is no turning back, only looking forward, and maybe even on fast forward, as long as you learn the lessons. And keep in mind that the more redoes you need, the worse and deeper the lesson gets, the harder it is to focus on dealing with it and not get caught in a whirl of desperation. So, try to grasp it the first time, or at least from the second attempt. It will hurt and annoy you far less than a lesson being taught on… let’s say… a hundredth attempt. 

For the last four years, I have seen the patterns and the proverbial wheel. I have come to think that life rolls like a car, the more you press the gas the more accelerated and exciting it is. You are on wheels! And you are running the race of your life! Literally 🙂

Trust /trʌst/ – noun – firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.

Mistrust /mɪsˈtrʌst/ – noun – lack of trust; suspicion.

You make a wish… and you hope! Sometimes, you have already lost any hope before even ending the wishing sentence. And that is all you have, hope. Until, of course, hope is replaced by rejection, failure, an ending, a conclusion to a specific situation that is exactly the opposite of the wishful thought, exactly what we wished would never happen. This replacement is so typical and so universal, that I believe we actually expect it, and our minds would get frustrated if it doesn’t happen.

Across the years, we became familiar and used to not having our wishes fulfilled, to hope and lose, to hope and suffer, to hope for a peaceful existence, and yet have a tormented one. We lost trust, or we never really knew it, I can’t tell! But I find trust as the rarest thing to find. It makes sense that giving hope to someone and then failing him, causes a low self esteem in that person. It makes them feel unworthy, guilty and ashamed. The more you promise something, and you break your promise, the more you fuel the universal trusting issue: people don’t trust people anymore. We have built temples and religions and civilizations to make things work, to make sure our wishes will be granted, we tried to make all kinds of systems to make sure we will get what we are asking for. Just that we forgot one thing: the first trust wasn’t broken by a god, a culture, an idea or the Universe itself. The ones that invented mistrust were the people! A human being was the first one that broke her promise to another human being. For whatever reason that person had, it seeded the mistrust and lack of hope in all of us. It showed other human beings that even if you say something, that is not necessarily the truth, that even if you promise something and other count on you, you can still break that promise and mislead the others. Mistrust appeared among families, relatives, friends and even enemies. And it got to the point where it almost rules the world.

I met a lot of people that didn’t trust what they were told. Whether it was in my home town or on the other side of the world, skepticism feels like home everywhere. And the current greatest threat for mankind is… the human being. Nature never promised anything and then broke it’s promise. Neither did time, physical laws, the Universe and not even the animals. Nobody let us down more and more often than the human being itself. And each time one of us breaks his promise, he is just adding to the universal mistrust and waters it. The more we fail others, the more we lower their self-esteem, and the more we do that to more people, the more the entire species sinks in mistrust.

We were all there when the Big Bang happened, we all come from the same place. So do our wishes and possibilities to fulfill them. We know that place and we have been there, part of it since before time. So there should be no trust involved in the wishing process. We shouldn’t believe, or hope, or even wish. We should know! We should know that everything that we wish for will be granted to us, that we are allowed and entitled to receive everything that we need, that we are worthy of everything and everything is possible! But instead of this, we shame one another, we pull each other down and fill us up with unworthiness.

What would it be if starting with right now, we would take seriously every child’s wish, every crazy dream and promise only what we know we will deliver? What if we KNEW we could have it all, make everything work and…wish some more? What if the more we wished for something, the more we received, and what if we were sure, beyond any doubt, that we will receive everything is intended for us? What if we stopped believing other people when they say we don’t deserve it, we are not worthy of it or is not possible?

We are part of it all, of the entire Universe. We are not separated from it as we don’t exist outside of it. So, if we are part of something… how come that over the millennia, the human kind reached the point where we need to believe and have faith? We are already part of this, we should KNOW it, and act accordingly. And once we stop wasting our time with hoping and trusting effort and betrayals, maybe we get more time and energy to also look around us and make the world and our lives better.

To have or not to have? This is today’s question. To pay or not to pay? To give up or not to give up? To let things go or not to let them go?

When I was a child, I felt it like a burden each time I had to give money. Because this is how I would see it: giving money away! For nothing! It didn’t matter that I received something in return, it didn’t matter I finally had my dream toy or the experience I’d been waiting for. No! All that mattered was that I GAVE MONEY AWAY! I was never greedy, nor did I stick to my money, as a young adult, regardless of anything, I didn’t starve myself to not buy necessary things, but I still had, a rather unpleasant feeling, whenever I had to pay with money.

Luckily for me, credit cards got invented meanwhile, and that made is easier for me, in the way that I was spending numbers, not money. I was still very cautious with my finances, but part of the burden felt a little lighter, as I didn’t consider the currency anymore, I was paying with plain numbers. It seems like the currency gave the entire value aspect to any of my purchases!

Somehow, the currency meant the real deal, the real value, something serious and not to be played with, something that needed to be treated with respect and, overall, the real abundance.

A few years ago, I decided to take on a financial workshop, to see how I could improve my finances, of course, but also get to understand where the money issues and mentality come from, why are people so afraid of something they long for so deeply. I was also fascinated by the dualism of the man-money relationship, as everyone seems to want it, but nobody admits it openly, we love it and hate it at the same time, we consider we need it for everything, including happiness!!!, but then we curse it. This relationship always fascinated me because it was the most complex thing I could ever see, the most complex relationship between man and a manmade artificial value: money!

Beginning with the basics of economy (I am no expert, but I love ancient history), people started trading: what they had, for what they didn’t, but they needed. This would be the basis of commerce and money: need. But although what we need is intended for basic survival (see Maslow’s pyramid), the commerce flourished and started taking over the world because of what we wanted! Our desires started becoming more complex, more expensive. The price that we put on things got rapidly related to how much we wanted something, not how much we needed it! Although the needs keep us surviving, what we want feeds mainly our ego. So there you go, out of a twisted feeling that we will perish if don’t want get something (Ego’s death actually, not the real person’s death), we created a synthetic and artificial value scale and money.

Let’s take a look at what we had in the beginning, as human inhabitants or the Earth: free and endless food and water, all the land needed for hunting or crops and heat from the Sun. These alone could fulfil the basic needs. But control and possession came afterwards, once the Ego started to gain more and more territory into the human mind, and all this combined with the fear that if we don’t have something, we will perish, created the first scarcity mindset. Like any construction of the mind, this mindset developed into cultural values and beliefs, leading to the idea that if one person has more out of something, the others will have less. Which is wrong!

There is no amount of definite energy in the Universe! As we know today, from a scientific perspective, the Universe is infinite. The Sun still has energy for the next 100 generations of people (at least) and, most importantly, the Newton’s Third Law states that energy is always preserved, nothing gets wasted. So coming back to my issue with spending money, I got to the same conclusion.

Let’s assume money is energy and the human being is an object or a system. In this case, money originates from the Universe, passes through a system and changes! Just like the potential energy becoming kinetic energy. Going further with the hypothesis, everything originates from the Universe, which is infinite (at least for the human mind), so everything is available in infinite quantities. The only thing that matters is the system that the energy passes through: how does it affect it, change it’s behavior and change the frequency of that energy. Therefor, I have everything available at the same time, in infinite amounts, the only thing that needs calibration is the system that uses it, and that is the actual person.

If you assume money or resources are insufficient for everyone to feel good, the scarcity mindset will affect the way money flows through life. That flow of abundance will be modeled and adapted to the system that affects it. Just like light goes through a glass pyramid, with a single visible beam on one side, and a multitude and abundance of lights on the other side, compared with when it passes through a rather opaque element, where the same input beam gets dimmed and maybe even nulled on the other side.

The infinite possibilities are there, always, as time is just another way of explaining dynamics. We have everything and nothing in the same time. It all depends on what kind of a pass through system we work on becoming, so that the entire infinite flow available to us can be used in the best way.

Așa se face, așa este bine, așa face toată lumea!

Așa, și…? Atunci cum descoperim ceva nou? Cum găsim lucruri noi? Cum inventăm ceva, orice? Cum începem să ne punem întrebări despre cine suntem, unde mergem și ce căutăm pe aici? Și, poate cea mai importantă întrebare, cum facem să nu ne plictism de viață? Dacă nu căutăm și nu încercăm și altfel, cum ne menținem entuziasmul în fața vieții? Cum facem să nu ne doboare viața asta, care e atât de flexibilă, în continuă mișcare, aranjând și rearanjând electroni și molecule în încercări neobosite de a găsi noi combinații?

Să luăm un exemplu. Se dă un om, care trăiește într-o casă, într-un oraș, are o mașină și un loc de muncă. Mănâncă trei mese pe zi, la masă, corect și conform unor norme scrise și nu prea. Bea fix doi litri de apă în fiecare zi, chiar dacă îi este sau nu sete. Are un loc de muncă pentru că trebuie, pentru că asta înseamnă să fii adult: casă, mașină, carieră. Are bani și griji pentru acei bani. Sau poate nu are bani, dar are în continuare griji cu privire la bani. Oricum, banii, așa știe el, sunt ceva ce aduc griji mereu, că îi ai sau nu, nu ai cum să greșești dacă te îngrijorezi în privința lor. Doarme noaptea și se trezește devreme, că așa e normal, așa face toată lumea, cum să facă altfel? Chiar dacă ritmul lui natural poate l-ar face să fie mai productiv și mai expresiv noaptea, nuuuuu, noaptea se doarme! Și dimineața se trezește obosit, bineînțeles, de la toate regulile exterioare autoimpuse bazate pe ”ce este normal și ce face toată lumea”. Și crede că așa e normal, să nu îți placă să te trezești dimineața, să înjuri societatea, guvernul, jobul, după care să te îmbraci și să mergi înjurând în trafic către acel loc de muncă silnică. Dar așa fac toți din jur, deci este normal. Și văzând doar așa ceva în jurul lui, se convinge zilnic ca atâta este viața: un lung șir de ”cum este normal, cum trebuie, cum face toată lumea”. Și se simte nedreptățit de viață, nu o înțelege, este împotriva firii lui, simte că totuși ceva nu e bine, dar e normal, nu?!

Acum să luăm același om, de data aceasta un fel de ”Gică Contra”. Omul nostru de data aceasta întreabă, caută motive, logica din spatele tuturor ”așa se face” și își dă seama că ar fi căi mai ușoare de a face anumite lucruri, că sunt și alte metode, poate mai intersante, poate mai împlinitoare, și, nu în ultimul rând, mai aproape de ritmul fizic al unui corp uman. Din acest moment, putem formula două scenarii, comple diferite:

1. Omul își dă seama că cei din jur fac multe doar pentru că altceva nu știu. Dar asta nu înseamnă că ”altfel” e musai mai rău. Și începe să facă lucrurile așa cum simte el că ar fi mai bine: să se descalțe sau nu când ajunge acasă, să mănânce când, cât și cum simte nevoia, să râdă când aude ceva amuzant și să plângă (Da!!! Să plângă!!!) atunci când se simte trist. Să stea treaz noaptea să își scrie lucrările și să se odihnească în timpul zilei. Să bea câtă apă simte nevoia, când simte nevoia. Să învețe un lucru sau altul, să aibă ocupația care îi curge prin vene, nu o ”meserie la modă”. Și începe să fie fericit, să simtă că viața e frumoasă și că fiecare moment e unic si de ținut minte.
2. Omul își dă seama că cei din jur fac multe doar pentru că altceva nu știu. Și asta înseamnă că ”altfel” e musai mai rău. Și începe să facă lucrurile așa cum fac și ceilalți, cum i se spune, cum i se impune, pentru că altfel….n-o să se aleagă nimic de el. Și fiecare zi trece ca un chin, împotriva naturii lui, a dorințelor și a sufletului său. Nu mai înțelege nimic, totul i se pare amenințător, periculos și degeaba. Nu vede un sens, nici scăpare nici fericire. Ar trebui să aibă parte de cea mai împlinitoare fericire și stare de bine posibilă dacă urmează îndeaproape toate sfaturile de ”așa e bine”, nu? Dar nu! Nu asta simte! Așa că se luptă și mai mult să facă totul așa cum ”trebuie”, le impune și celor din jur același lucru, că poate în echipă totuși o să reușească să atingă acea promisă stare de fericire. Ce mare îi este șocul, panica și groaza când vede că se simte ca pe niște nisipuri mișcătoare: cu cât încerci mai tare, cu atât mai tare te afunzi!

Oare viața își consumă aiurea resursele? Dacă ne-a adus până aici, o să ne părăsească dacă nu ne facem patul cum trebuie sau dacă nu bem dintr-un pahar conform ”cerințelor sociale”? Oare drumul unei singure persoane e drumul tuturor? Sau ne dăm seama că suntem aici să vedem ce și cât putem, cum putem fiecare din noi, și de fapt nici un drum nu e corect sau greșit? Toate sunt drumuri și fiecare îl are pe al său.

Viața este flexibilă, se învărte, te aruncă, te aduce înapoi, te trece prin tot felul de schimbări și de situații. Dacă reacționezi după ”rețetă” cum o să poți să vezi care este experiența TA în acest vârtej numit ”viață”?

Și din câte am observat până acum, în lupta dintre rigid și flexibil, să luăm de exemplu un vas de lut și un jeleu, la un impact cu un perete (sau orice suprafață unde îți poți descărca nervii), vasul se face praf și jeleul… își revine, chiar dacă pe moment a fost contorsionat si s-a lovit! In acest caz, eu prefer sa fiu jeleu 🙂