Inspiration
Articles to inspire authentic living on the topics of resilience, spirituality, and self-growth with touches of storytelling, depth, and humor.
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Catch and Release
Through my adult eyes, fishing has become a great source of life metaphors. And because I could not let the lessons pass, I started finding analogies between the art of fishing and an area of my life that continues to be my savior and my quickest ticket to confusion and sadness at the same time. Fishing, I have found, has a lot of parallelisms with intuition.
Both fishing and intuition require an act of faith. We can’t see what is underwater or what can come swimming in our direction. However, the true fisherman remains loyal to his belief in the ocean’s abundance, regardless of what can be seen at the moment.
Pinocchio and The Whale
There is no shame on admitting that since a very young age until these days I have always been a fan of Disney stories. I ate the whole plot of the world is difficult but the good ones always triumph, the evil lose and there is always a happily ever after. Before you judge me too strongly, let me clarify that I have grown enough to understand that life is not a Disney story and there are lots of exceptions to the plot we were made to believe.
The world at this exact moment does not look like a fairy tale. I doubt a pandemic will ever make it to a children’s movie. I certainly hope not, unless it is a science fiction story. So how come that in the middle of this unforeseen chaos my mind is going to one of the most iconic children’s stories?
The wishing bone
“Do you know what this is?” he asked me holding v-shaped bone in his hand.
I shook my head.
“This is a wishing bone,” he added as if he was holding a long sought-after treasure.
“What is that for?” I asked, my curiosity awakened.
He asked me to hold one side of it while he held the other.
“We are both going to pull this bone. The person that gets the bigger part will have a wish come true.”
I smiled, unsure if that was some kind of trick. He insisted I held one side.
“Now, you need to make a wish,” the butcher in the blood stained smock said.
Winter Wonderland and tears of pride
An ice storm. Icicles forming at the tip of tree branches and trunks and leaves perfectly covered in frozen water. After all the rain yesterday, the sun came out today and filtered through the ice. What a spectacle!
Maybe as an act of irony or synchronicity, this morning I attended a concert by elementary students at my son’s school that was titled “Winter Wonderland”. We have decorated the stage with gigantic snowflakes and branches covered in fake snow. The kids performed beautifully and although my son did not sang I still cried throughout the whole concert, but I always do, to be honest.
I pictured my son performing there in a couple of years and I felt my eyes watering up just thinking about it. Excuse me if I sound melodramatic but the idea of seeing him grow is quite exciting. The thing is that I want him to grow and at the same time, I don’t. I have come to realize how fast time flies.
Of Science vs Magic and tribal encounters
There is a saying that states “find your tribe, and love them hard.” If they make me think deeply, raise my spirit and make me laugh, they are my kind of people. I do not take for granted each of our encounters. This was a weekend full of beautiful get-togethers. Last night, our very diverse “tribe” got together for our annual Christmas celebration. I won’t deny that a few Tito’s and homemade coquitos later we were having lots of fun. I know it because my eyes started crying the way they do when I am laughing hard. In this particular group there are doctors, lawyers, artists, agnostics, religious followers and low-key “witches”, which helps transform every conversation into a diverse ground of interesting ideas and points of view. In a split of a second, the conversation turned from rules for our gift exchange to a deep topic: Science vs. Magic.
Being raised in a house by doctors, researchers and a self-taught computer coder, science was discussed regularly. However, my parents could discuss medical findings during Sunday lunch with the same passion that they shared holistic techniques and the power of believing in the extraordinary. That was a perfect ground to allow my analytical brain to reconcile with my highly intuitive, artistic soul. In other words, growing up we never had to favor one above the other, something I am beyond grateful for.
The Ephemeral Line with Eternal Repercussion
Maybe because I have always liked stories, or because I always enjoyed reading or maybe just because I was raised watching soap operas, but I always see life in chapters. There are plots, and subplots, beginnings and ends, and a hundred chapters that accumulate stories of one single theme. As if life was a collection of short essays. Lately, among the several topics that have been amalgamating in my brain, there has been one that keeps circling back. Today while I was listening to the radio, the host was talking about smiles. Bingo!!!! That was my call to go deep in the subject since so many conversations and thoughts kept going back to it.
On the radio, they were discussing if showing teeth in a big grin is actually a sign of aggressiveness. My first instinct is that is the most ridiculous idea ever. But the fact is that the first time that I had to face that idea was almost 15 years ago and since then I had revisited the discussion in an infinitive number of brain deliberations. At that time, I was working as a documentary photographer and I had the wonderful opportunity to take a workshop with my all-time, absolutely favorite role model in the arena and undoubtedly one of the best legendary photographers alive at the time.
The silence that spoke volumes
I took my car and drove in the middle of traffic to be near my daughter. The hospital was as most New York hospitals I have seen: overcrowded, noisy, modest, filled with a very diverse population. When I finally made it to the Emergency Room and after the security screening a nurse walked me through aisles full of patients and expecting relatives. She told me she was in bed #1272B. I was reading the numbered signs above each closed curtain but I could not see hers. The girl perceived my confusion and walked me to a printed sign next to the nurse station. “Here she is, ” she said without a trace of any apologetic tone.
Her bed was leaning over the side of the nurse station, a chair stuck on its foot and an IV placed behind her to avoid any of the patients or medical staff from tripping with it while they walk the narrow hall. I sat down on the chair and proceeded to ask the expected questions and to offer my love and compassion. Bed #1272B offered no privacy, however, it did gave me a frontal view of the gigantic screen where a spreadsheet showed the name and status of each of the thirty patients who were admitted at the time. More than half of those had Hispanic names.
The medical staff was as diverse as the population it served. An Indian doctor was speaking Spanish to the Dominican family that were accompanying the toddler they had brought. Behind the curtains in front of us was a tween girl screaming because she did not want to be tested for the flu and in between screams she started throwing up.
Building memories, one song and one fire at a time
It might have been the melancholic tone of a snowy day by the fireplace with my three kids, quite a rarity these days that the older ones have tons of commitments, but while I was at the piano a thought hit me. I was thinking of songs to play and I remembered one that I really like but have not heard in years. I still remembered when I first was introduced to it by my dad. From all the memories I have of him, all the things we shared and all the things we didn’t, music was never at the top of my list. However today when I thought of that song so many of the songs and genres I learned about from him started cascading. From classical records, new age music, flamenco, ballads, opera and instrumental songs, his style was so varied and he loved his extensive music collection that everyone borrowed from. He challenged me to hear whatever was out of my comfort zone and learned from new musicians. I felt immense gratitude for the love for music he inspired in me and for all the memories we got to share even when it seems that we did not have that much time together between his demanding career, me leaving Venezuela young and he passing ten years after. But those sweet memories prevail in my heart.
The fearless rider
I am not completely sure where do I get the courage to tell the world a complete shocking fact about myself, but I guess when it became a wonderful learning opportunity for me it felt almost selfish to not share the recently acquired knowledge with others even when in the process I make a total fool of myself.
But here I go, world, as unbelievable as it is…I never learned to ride a bike.
I know, it seems like a joke that now at my recently adopted age of 43 I don’t know to do the thing that most kids learn by the time they turn…5? 8?. I never went through that rite of passage, I guess, and it is shameful and it is high up in my bucket list priorities to address.
Now that the fact is out in the open I am going to share why this became relevant during a recent short vacation. While we were spending some time in Madrid, our avid bikers friends suggested we rented electric scooters to move throughout the city. It was a beautiful crisp Autumn day, the kind that surprises you with bright sun rays and a timid cold breeze that only catches us in the shade. It seemed like a perfect plan. The only problem was that learning to ride a bike not only provides us with wonderful visions of leisure strolls through the countryside with a wicker basket hanging from the handle bars full of fresh flowers or a more modern vision of bike rentals in busy cities. Riding a back actually provides us with a very important skill that I am guessing five year-old kids might take for granted: balance.