Life Is What Happens When You Are Too Busy Making Other Plans

I am beginning this customary 'end-of-the-year-entry' with an incredibly commonplace quote by John Lennon. However, rhetoric has never been an enemy to me plus I the more I grow up, the less I find this quote to be far from being banal.

I seem to have spent way too much time during my adolescence worrying about what was right and what was wrong and, out of what I now perceive as legalism and stubbornness, doing my outmost to stick to those principles and ideals I had decided were worth pursuing. I was unhappy, always struggling just to get by, fighting to push through, never having a mental place I could call my own. I then seem to have spent the following few years waiting on someone else to tell me what to do, how to be. That didn't help either as I was always being used and disposed of emotionally as soon as they had used me for their personal gain. The day I finally managed to unravel myself out of my cocoon, to make decisions for myself, trusting what I loved, what I felt I was born to do, following my innate calling, I began to sore. So even on a day like this, when the whether outside is gloomy and the future is uncertain, I look upon life and feel God's sparkle in me leading me on and startling me to push forward with joy. Stop making plans, stop idealizing life, stop living in a standardized box. LIVE.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERY ONE! MAY IT BE A BLESSED ONE.

No Need For A Melody

I guess you could say I have been known to watch a fair ammount of movies in my day. Popular culture teaches us that films are a great way to interpret and analize reality without even having to live those experiences in first person. Some may call this escapism. Blaise Pascal, XVII century philosopher, talked about "the vanity of divertisement", those out of consciousness activities we engage in in order to, as a matter of fact, avoid reality. It may sound harsh, but through out the years I have begun appreciating this theory. I always seem to relate specific times of my life to a song, a sound, a bit like as if I needed a soundtrack to my emotions, yes, like in a movie.
A couple fo days ago, my itunes random selection brought to my ears "Sometimes you can't make it on your own" by U2 - that song,man,it totally captured a specific time in my life and by simply hearing it I somehow re-lived the same emotions I felt back than...like in a flashback. All this brought me to think this may actually be the first time of my life when I feel lucid, when like a person who has been fasting for a long time you manage to see your self from the out side, like some sort of out of body experience and see yourself and you are exactly how you had always hoped you'd become. Imperfect, with a past filled with mistakes but true, honest, sharp, happy, with no need for a melody, maybe just a wee accompainment. Loving it.

Cultural Homologation

In the mid '90's (gee,I am officially old referring to my childhood as a decade!) Daniele Silvestri released a song entitled "Le cose che abbiamo in comune" - the things we have in common - in the video he is a radical-chic who sings about talking to a girl who is has everything in common with - from having two arms,two eyes,two legs and one brain to musical taste which would lead one to think at first "oh,how cute,he's found the gal of his dreams!" wrong. In fact, the video shows that the fashion forwardly dressed young man is not talking to a girl, but to the prototype woman he is constructing in his lab and brainwashing thus crafting her into being his perfect match. It's a clever song,with a super catchy tune to it but it also expresses the scary truth of our times about cultural homologation - we all want to be surrounded by our speculars,coz,let's face it, a lot of us are afraid of what's different. We all know the things we fear the most are the ones we do not know, or have a personal experience with. In this sense, knowledge is empowerment. However such longing to fit in out of fear of discovering what's alien from us can be our worst enemy. Often, Fabio Volo writes, a lot of people call "L.O.V.E" their desire to possess. We often keep loved ones as "status symbols", medals of honour more than enrichments to our life journeys, additions to our experiences, water that makes our already joy-filled cups overflow!
So if I can give us all a piece of advice today is "USE YOUR BRAIN!" Stop aspiring to be like someone you see on tv,but only be inspired to be the best you can be..find out what you are good at and excell at it,live life to the full and good things will come your way..better things than the ones you could have brought your way by your own knowledge of what was suitable for you!

Grace

I am beginning to embrace that it is a big part of the maturing process in one's life to be willing to admit the things we have always been too fearful or afraid to speak out loud before. Like my dream to become a paediatrician for fear of stepping into a clique.
When I was in my first year at uni I read a book that spoke to a book that spoke to me in a very profound way, "What's so amazing about grace?"by Philip Yancey. From that moment I dreamt that had I ever had a little girl I'd call her Grace,there I said it! "GRACE is receiving freely something we could have never done enough to earn". Over the past few months I have realized more than ever that I am at the receiving end of grace. I have so much,besides from the Grace of God alone who sent His son to die for me even though he knew I could have never repaid him. In the Sound of Music,Maria sings "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good". I am not sure I have,Maria, but God's grace has blessed me and I am grateful.

Conquered with a smile

I love smiling. It keeps my mimic muscles fit and it helps me mantain a positive attitude to whatever I do in life. A few months back I was at a gig in a little pub near my house with my next door neighbour and a couple of collegues we were chatting and laughing when suddenly a handsome short brown hair-blue eyed young man in a tweeded brown jacket and jeans came towards me sporting the largest white smile I had ever seen, shook my hand and kissed me on the cheek (like as if he'd known me my whole life while in fact we had never met before). Then off he disappeared into the crowd. I didn't even know his name or where I knew him from, but that image stayed with me for days from then.
Exactly two months later, on St Patrick's day, the pub where I work to make ends meet was filled with people eating,drinking and having a good time. At one of the tables with a group of friends of mine was sat the very same boy I had seen at the concert to months before. He was very funny and joyous throughout the whole evening and we definitively made a connection. A few days later he got hold of my contacts and began calling me. We hit it off straight away. Within a week he had already given me a pretense "engagement ring"and had asked me out on a date. Everything from then on has been a constant and ever surprising discovery of each other. Whatever we have in common are mostly the things we both always thought, dreamed of, hoped for and never even verbalized out loud. Magic. And it all started with a charming smile..

..the homesickness of a childhood dream..

Life is a rough-edged thing..

..this is a line from a really beautiful song by an emerging indie local guy who used to attend the same lyceum as me. Giovanni Truppi, in my opinion, is an unassuming,rather talented musician-singer-songwriter. His music (guitarr-drums-winds) is surprisingly original and his lyrics are brilliantly introspective. As far as I know, he has been composing for a few years now, yet I first came across his music a couple of months ago at a local gig. It was a fun and inspirational experience. In the very same song where he states that "life is a rough-edged thing",he also asks the very profound question: "how long has it been since you last made a discovery?" - this line really spoke to me,and to this day I keep living by the principle that I want for each and every to be a discovery,maybe not, though hopefully yes,the cure for a neural disease, but more so a child-like excitement for one's emotional life, for the world around us and for the life we lead. today I want to break new grounds, make a discovery!