I sat and thought for a few days whether to write this post or not. Finally, here I am trying to explain something that can be called “the theory of the match, already burned”

During my life, I’ve come to the conclusion that understanding people takes time and huge effort. You know that moment when you feel like you know everything about a person you just met? We think it is enough to see the “about you” section and we feel safe somehow. ,But, truly understanding a person requires shared experiences, a mutual kind of “felt knowing” rather than “thought knowing.” 

Don’ t you agree that in an entire life, just a few people will truly understand you? As far as I’ve realized, if you truly understand another person, you do it in a very concrete way, willingly and free of judgment.

How many of us can say that we have these kind of persons near us?

If you want to truly understand other people, it’s important to clarify an important detail. Comprehending isn’t the same as understanding. People often get stuck on comprehension. In other words, they focus on deciphering what the other person is saying. They’re aware of the message and its meaning, but nothing more.

Understanding involves a much deeper process. Recently I had the opportunity  to read a book by Daniel Goleman, about emotional intelligence, he talks a lot about the need to understand other people. I suppose it takes some active listening and empathy , plus what I am always telling to everyone, „listen before judging!”, first you have the know the facts, and just after ask about the person did them.

So, why it takes so much to understand someone?

Well, first of all we all are different characters  People are complex. We all have our experiences, good or bad, beliefs, values . All these aspects shape the way we see the world and how we interact with the others.

I admit, it can be really challenging to understand someone’s else perspective, especially when this perspective it is different than yours.

Communication it is imperfect , even we try to communicate in a clear way , there is always place for misunderstanding.

So that I don’t get too long, from my experience, this is al least what someone can do in order to understand others. (it’s free, but takes some effort, just to answer to the question from the title of this post)

We must be, or at least try to, open-minded, to try to see the things from the other ‘s perspective. We must listen more, pay attention by what the other person is trying to say.

I don’t have to mention, I hope, that we must be respectful and to try to be patient.

Of course I tried to treat the issue in a “long story, short” style. But in fact this can be a very complex subject.

It takes time to build something. Anything.

PS: for this post, I chose to post a photo from my urban collection. This picture explains a bit of the lack of communication. The girl on the other side of the street was crying. I couldn’t help noticing the contrast between the “happiness” behind the girl on the sidewalk, (those billboards about fancy stuff), the world in front of her who doesn’t care about anything at all, and the girl in the middle of this incomprehensible communication, crying. She gave me the feeling that she didn’t belong there, she made me think about myself.

Made in Osnabrück, Germany, 2008-2009

I wanted to write all these just because some late events in my life. People never changes. That’s the truth.

Cortland Dahl twitter account

In every direction there is a star, if I would fly into the universe, any way would be the right way. I tilt my head, gazing upward, eyes more open than they can be in the fullness of day, not looking at one star, yet somehow seeing them all at once.

Often in life I have been called strong. Though I know they mean it as a complement my heart sinks and there is a wave of sadness in my soul when I hear it. For what I show is a forced resiliency, a way I’ve had to be my entire life just to survive. I’ve always wanted to find a good life, to be truly happy and for that I knew I must carry on, to keep walking through every pain and hurt. What I want is to be soft, and for softness to be alright. I want to be helpful and do what it is my soul and heart need to be healed. I believe in service, not servitude. I believe giving of the self, of giving always with love, yet I’ve learnt that I have limits. To call a person strong or brave sounds so nice, but if in reality they are like a horse being run to death and praised for its speed and beauty, there is a cruelty to it. From my beginnings I knew that crying summoned another person to inflict pain, so why cry? “If you cry I’ll give you something to cry about.” So please don’t look at my dry face and tell me I’m strong, because it hurts.

I’m not strong, I just learned to move on regardless of the situation. Life is unpredictable – it’s beautiful, it’s ugly, it’s easy, it’s hard. Regardless of the way we perceive it and the surprises it offers us, it is important to never forget that everything is an extraordinary journey that will never be repeated (oh, in some situations this is the best news, that it will never happen again)

I let things be exactly as they are instead of thinking about how they could be. It always seemed silly to me to think about how everything could have been. It is already history, past, let go and move on. You never know what the future holds for you.

I saw the sea recently, I was happy. Although I actually like the mountains, I have always been attracted to the sea. The sea has always caused me a feeling of emotion that never ends, it always moves forward and backward, without asking “what am I doing here? Where am I going?”

Imagine sitting on the sand that has just cooled, being hot all day in the sun. Imagine the face of love bathed in the moonlight, caressed by the sea breeze and accompanied by the voice of the waves… …And the footsteps left on the sand… … and the traces of salt that remain on your skin…

P.S: What if I fall? Oh, my dear… But what if you fly?

Image © Margó Wiessman, from the Letters project

I feel like a ghost in a world of paper dolls. I am the ghost in my own machine. I am a ghost running through time and space, looking, always looking in the blackness for a sacred spark. And all this world becomes noise, a distraction from my task to find the one – the one who went alone into the dark. For should all he be is a fragment of fire, barely a cinder, it matters not, because I will become a river of gasoline.

Spinning around here and there…

I just came to drop my new work.

When life hurts you… cry a river, make a bridge, and cross it.

ps: please do not use this image in any way since didn’t have time to mark it. (the original is on my online portfolio which everyone knows)

“The summer is gone, and never can it return. There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary of everything… I am alone.

The truth is that the rain falls for ever and I am melting into it. Black and monotonously sounding is the midnight and solitude of the rain. In a little while or in an age – for it is all one – I shall know the full truth of the words I used to love, I knew not why, in my days of nature, in the days before the rain: ‘Blessed are the dead that the rain rains on.”

Philip Edward Thomas

Image © Margó Wiessman

I’m tired, my love. As long as it can be a coat that you wear only once, then you leave it in the closet and the moths eventually take shelter where your chest, neck or shoulders would have been. And their wings are my fingers caressing you emptiness. I’m malformed, sad. Tired as the body after a nightmare in which, your love, alive and palpable, had suddenly become a field of poppies and each flower had surrounded itself with barbed wire fences. Fences I had to put aside … and your caresses they were hurting me. There was no more blood, only red flowers all around. Your body that someone was selling by the pound was still red … and I was crying because I was worried about too many things at once. To catch at least one tear …. or the heart …. or the soles …..

There are times it feels as if the music is teaching my brain how to flow, how to be so peaceful. It’s as if the slowly changing tone touches different parts, a sort of auditory massage for my mind. It is an invitation for slowness and to feel the presence of myself, the ever patient version of me who waits to be spoken to, and is content to do so. There are times light, wind and nature do the same, yet differently, each in their own way. Today is a day of music, to feel the soul within.
Music fills the air without effort, like the waves filling holes in beach sand; Some react to the beat, others continue in chatter, but always it speaks to them in some manner. A lively tempo can lift them, elevate the spirit, or move them to dance, whilst a slow one can relax the mood. Before the notes filled the air every person is an island, with it they all feel the same tidal flows and the beginnings of togetherness feels warm.
Music is my genesis and is my forever destination.
These musical vibrations synchronize the polarity of my soul matter, no more the lost, yet the found, attracted to the sound.

I could not live without music and I can not imagine what life would be like without music.

image from the Letters project

PS: speaking about music…