Starting March 11th 2008, my blog has moved to another web-address and to a permanent web-domain.
For my friends who have been reading this blog, I will send you the new address via-email.
For all the other people who have been reading my blog and whose comments I have been receiving, thank you for being my readers and I am looking forward to keeping you as such on my new and permanent blog! Please contact me at angel.didi@yahoo.com and I will provide the new address.
Thank you all!
Diana
marți, 11 martie 2008
miercuri, 5 martie 2008
The "Let it Be" Love-Generation
There is a song that I used to fancy in my moments of teenage heartache, those times in which you feel that the world is coming to an end because he left you, cheated on you or did anything else even remotely resembling the betrayal of your 16-year-old romantic heart. "I will love again", sung by Lara Fabian.
"I will love again, even if it takes a lifetime to get over you/ Heaven only knows, I will love again/ Though my heart is breaking I will love again/Stronger than before". Yap. Very true song in my case. With the one exception that...it never quite took a lifetime...in the worst cases it took a spring or a summer, or maybe both, but my wounded heart proved ever so strong and always healing.
It is strange to look back at the loves you've had in your life. And by love I don't necessarily mean those passionate, romantic and full-hearted love affairs that you see in the movies, but even the summer-flings, the secret crushes you had on someone, the butterflies that you once felt in your stomach. All that stays with you, one way or another, even if you can't feel it anymore or not even understand it anymore, it's somewhere in you, on a tiny shelf in your heart, where all the unrequited crushes, tears of love, heartaches and "What Ifs" eventually end up residing.
The heart has its own cycle of healing and it is amazing when you realize how strong we really are and how inexhaustible our capacity of loving is. As many heartaches as we may have, as many disappointments and teary goodbyes, as cautious as we may become at some point...the hope of love never leaves us completely. Hope itself is the engine of life. It helps us cruise past our bad times and daydream about the good ones to come. And probably this is what makes life truly worth-living :)
"I will love again, even if it takes a lifetime to get over you/ Heaven only knows, I will love again/ Though my heart is breaking I will love again/Stronger than before". Yap. Very true song in my case. With the one exception that...it never quite took a lifetime...in the worst cases it took a spring or a summer, or maybe both, but my wounded heart proved ever so strong and always healing.
It is strange to look back at the loves you've had in your life. And by love I don't necessarily mean those passionate, romantic and full-hearted love affairs that you see in the movies, but even the summer-flings, the secret crushes you had on someone, the butterflies that you once felt in your stomach. All that stays with you, one way or another, even if you can't feel it anymore or not even understand it anymore, it's somewhere in you, on a tiny shelf in your heart, where all the unrequited crushes, tears of love, heartaches and "What Ifs" eventually end up residing.
The heart has its own cycle of healing and it is amazing when you realize how strong we really are and how inexhaustible our capacity of loving is. As many heartaches as we may have, as many disappointments and teary goodbyes, as cautious as we may become at some point...the hope of love never leaves us completely. Hope itself is the engine of life. It helps us cruise past our bad times and daydream about the good ones to come. And probably this is what makes life truly worth-living :)
marți, 1 ianuarie 2008
Growin' Up
There's a song that Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson sing in duet. It's called "To all the girls I've loved before" and it's dedicated to all the women they had coming in and out of their lives, women who left traces on their way of seeing life, on their character...in the end on their way of being. Those women who indirectly moulded them into the people they are today. It's a beautiful song. It's simple and meaningful and, in a nutshell, it stands for something we should all endorse more often - GRATITUDE.
In order to make your dreams come true, you should never ever forget to be grateful for what you've got. If you keep complaining about all the things that you DON'T have, about people who mistreated you, about lovers who treated you wrong, friends who betrayed you and about your boss who never acknowledged your merits...well, I'm sorry to tell you but you're cruising full speed on the international highway of misery and there's no sign you're going to stop anytime soon.
I was talking to a friend on New Year's and she was telling me that her resolution for 2008 is starting from scratch, with a clean slate, leaving all the bad things behind and focusing only on what the future has in store. That is a wonderful resolution and I know it will work out for her. However, the past is something that we cannot simply wrap in a bag and throw into the waste basket. Maybe things would be simpler if it were. There are people, experiences, disappointments, unrequited love affairs that if we don't settle once and for all, they will eventually come back to haunt us. Even if we think we're fine, one day, without warning, they'll all come rushing back, simply because they were never out of our system in the first place.
I am grateful. I am truly grateful and I said it in my last post of 2007. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed but I know that 2008 will be better. It will be better because I have learned to change myself first. To operate the small changes within me that are needed in order to get where I want. And it is only recently that I realized I had so many ropes invisibly tying me to old experiences, to sorrows and griefs of the past. And that's something that I cannot possibly allow for my wonderful 2008.
Probably if I were a song-writer, I would put my feelings into a song, just like Iglesias and Nelson did. A song called "To all the boys I've loved before", "To all the people I've ever cared about and who let me down", "To all those who were my friends and aren't anymore" or...all of the above. I am a writer, the canvas of my thoughts is the white paper or...the white blog-window these days :), not the piano keys nor the guitar. This is why my first blog in 2008 goes to all the people from my past, people that used to be in my life and aren't anymore. People whom I loved and got betrayed/cheated/lied by etc. People that I wasn't thinking about anymore but they were somehow still present in my heart. I somehow never brought myself to the point of fully letting them go. Now I do. THANK YOU ALL, but I'm letting you go now.
Before I left for the New Year's Party, as I was dressing up in my red 2008 dress :), I caught sight of a picture that my mother likes very much and that lies on the phone-table in my house. It was taken on New Year's Eve 2004-2005. Exactly 3 years ago. I looked at that picture and was somewhat mesmerized by what I saw...I was so innocent back then. I was so young (not that I'm old now, but I was 20 back then), so naive (incredibly naive, if I look back at it), I had the most uninspired crushes on guys that I wouldn't even bother to go on a date with now...but everything was real. It was honest, it was sincere. That was me...then. Even if some of the things I liked, disliked or wanted back then are no longer valid for the 2008-Diana, they were still things I believed in with all my heart. And that is why they deserve my respect.
Digging even deeper into my memories, I now realize that there were people who disappointed me simply because I had my hopes way too up, impossible for them to reach them. I was always too...different. Not better or worse. Simply different.
You might laugh, but I've always been a kind of a "grown-up-kid", ever since I was 4 or 5. I grew up among adults and got the hang of their activities long before my time. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved dolls and I loved to play, but I also adored books, I devoured the news on tv (fortunately for me, there were no "5 o'clock news" back then, so there was no danger), I liked music, I wanted to know what was going on. And I vividly remember being 6 years old and telling my grandmother that this childhood is kinda' boring. That I want to grow up, become a famous journalist and get married with a beautiful-intelligent-handsome man. Yeap...I said it. I remember every word. And I meant it. I just couldn't wait.
I've always rushed into growing up, but not like most kids that become rebel teenagers and just want to revolt against something they don't know, just for the sake of it. I was almost always (too) serious for my age. I refused to go to kindergarten because it was "absolutely boring and stupid"(quote from 4-year-old Diana) and the first 4 grades were utterly useless and lacking any type of challenge, as I had learned to read and write when I was 5 and I remember being unpleasantly surprised by some of my colleagues that could hardly spell words in the 4th grade. Middle school was even worse, as I started writing for magazines when I was 12 and continued up to highschool. And no...it's not such a smart move being DIFFERENT, when you're in your pre-teens. I could never fit in among my school-colleagues and that made me feel bad sometimes, but now I realize I was simply being too mature for my age. It wasn't their fault, it was mine. They were being childish, that's what a 11 year old is supposed to be. However, I wasn't the typical 11 years old so I couldn't fully understand it. At that point, I felt disappointed and misunderstood. Now I simply understand I was too much of a handful for them to handle...they were 10 year olds, for God's sake :). However, that feeling of not fitting in kinda stayed with me for (too) much time and I only recently caught track of it.
Everything changed in highschool and that was the first time I bonded with people, the first time I truly made friends, some of those friendships still last and I know they will last a lifetime. And that's simply because I got among people who were just like me. We were all right for each other. We were 15 year old kids interested in theater, opera, music and reading. We were the first in line for concerts and plays, we could talk forever about books, we had different ways of having fun. And yes...we had some GREAT GREAT parties, probably the best I ever had. But we were all alike. We were all more mature and that's what contributed to my feeling of fitting in.
However, college wasn't like that at all. For me, college was a bit like going back to middle-school all over again. My colleagues were great people, but very different and some of them did not absolutely show their age. Some of them, I'm sorry to say it, still behave like 14-year-olds and if that works for them...it's great, but I felt somewhat estranged there. I've met some nice people that I am still good friends with (I even celebrated New Year's with some of them), but it was definitely a different experience. And now, looking back at my "professional trajectory", if I may pompously call it this way...I understand why I was always a rather solitary person. I was always TOO serious for my age. I always enjoyed the company of older guys rather than fuzzy teenagers, I always thought people my age were utterly immature and childish. And maybe they were. Anyway...I just started thinking about all this when I realized that I'm turning 24. 24!!! I'm all grown-up now. There's no more thin line between adolescence and maturity...I'm a full-blown adult. And you know what? I love it! :)))
Now I can simply waive to the 6-year old Diana who wanted to grow up, have the big career and get married. Hey, you there! I'm here...I'm 24, I can have it now. It may sound surprising, but I'm not nostalgic about anything. Not about middle-school(God forbid :) ), not about highschool (although it was amazing, but 4 years was enough), certainly not about college. This is where I belong now. Adulthood. I've always sought that, I've always felt more comfortable like that. And now...yes, I'm an adult, now I can turn all my dreams into a reality, NOW I fit in. And I forgive all the people who disappointed me, who -knowingly or unknowingly- hurt me, people whom I didn't understand and who didn't understand me. And I'm grateful for their presence in my life. I know they left traces on me, some stronger, some almost unnoticeable, but they were part of my past. And one cannot look into the future without reconciling with one's past.
When I was in Belfast, I took a picture of a quote written on the wall of an Irish Pub. I loved it...it was so true. It said: "A nation that keeps an eye on the past is wise. A nation that keeps two eyes on the past is blind". And it works for people just as well. You don't have to forget, just...let it go, detach yourself from it.
I know what I want now. And I know that the faults of the past were mine as well...I was expecting too much out of people who were not ready. Just because I was ready to start my journey through life a looong time ago, it doesn't mean that everybody was. Farewell 2007 and all the years before. You were good years, I loved you all...but 2008 is my present and everything after it is my future. Cause I am 24 and I abso-fuckin-lutely LOVE IT ! :)
In order to make your dreams come true, you should never ever forget to be grateful for what you've got. If you keep complaining about all the things that you DON'T have, about people who mistreated you, about lovers who treated you wrong, friends who betrayed you and about your boss who never acknowledged your merits...well, I'm sorry to tell you but you're cruising full speed on the international highway of misery and there's no sign you're going to stop anytime soon.
I was talking to a friend on New Year's and she was telling me that her resolution for 2008 is starting from scratch, with a clean slate, leaving all the bad things behind and focusing only on what the future has in store. That is a wonderful resolution and I know it will work out for her. However, the past is something that we cannot simply wrap in a bag and throw into the waste basket. Maybe things would be simpler if it were. There are people, experiences, disappointments, unrequited love affairs that if we don't settle once and for all, they will eventually come back to haunt us. Even if we think we're fine, one day, without warning, they'll all come rushing back, simply because they were never out of our system in the first place.
I am grateful. I am truly grateful and I said it in my last post of 2007. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed but I know that 2008 will be better. It will be better because I have learned to change myself first. To operate the small changes within me that are needed in order to get where I want. And it is only recently that I realized I had so many ropes invisibly tying me to old experiences, to sorrows and griefs of the past. And that's something that I cannot possibly allow for my wonderful 2008.
Probably if I were a song-writer, I would put my feelings into a song, just like Iglesias and Nelson did. A song called "To all the boys I've loved before", "To all the people I've ever cared about and who let me down", "To all those who were my friends and aren't anymore" or...all of the above. I am a writer, the canvas of my thoughts is the white paper or...the white blog-window these days :), not the piano keys nor the guitar. This is why my first blog in 2008 goes to all the people from my past, people that used to be in my life and aren't anymore. People whom I loved and got betrayed/cheated/lied by etc. People that I wasn't thinking about anymore but they were somehow still present in my heart. I somehow never brought myself to the point of fully letting them go. Now I do. THANK YOU ALL, but I'm letting you go now.
Before I left for the New Year's Party, as I was dressing up in my red 2008 dress :), I caught sight of a picture that my mother likes very much and that lies on the phone-table in my house. It was taken on New Year's Eve 2004-2005. Exactly 3 years ago. I looked at that picture and was somewhat mesmerized by what I saw...I was so innocent back then. I was so young (not that I'm old now, but I was 20 back then), so naive (incredibly naive, if I look back at it), I had the most uninspired crushes on guys that I wouldn't even bother to go on a date with now...but everything was real. It was honest, it was sincere. That was me...then. Even if some of the things I liked, disliked or wanted back then are no longer valid for the 2008-Diana, they were still things I believed in with all my heart. And that is why they deserve my respect.
Digging even deeper into my memories, I now realize that there were people who disappointed me simply because I had my hopes way too up, impossible for them to reach them. I was always too...different. Not better or worse. Simply different.
You might laugh, but I've always been a kind of a "grown-up-kid", ever since I was 4 or 5. I grew up among adults and got the hang of their activities long before my time. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved dolls and I loved to play, but I also adored books, I devoured the news on tv (fortunately for me, there were no "5 o'clock news" back then, so there was no danger), I liked music, I wanted to know what was going on. And I vividly remember being 6 years old and telling my grandmother that this childhood is kinda' boring. That I want to grow up, become a famous journalist and get married with a beautiful-intelligent-handsome man. Yeap...I said it. I remember every word. And I meant it. I just couldn't wait.
I've always rushed into growing up, but not like most kids that become rebel teenagers and just want to revolt against something they don't know, just for the sake of it. I was almost always (too) serious for my age. I refused to go to kindergarten because it was "absolutely boring and stupid"(quote from 4-year-old Diana) and the first 4 grades were utterly useless and lacking any type of challenge, as I had learned to read and write when I was 5 and I remember being unpleasantly surprised by some of my colleagues that could hardly spell words in the 4th grade. Middle school was even worse, as I started writing for magazines when I was 12 and continued up to highschool. And no...it's not such a smart move being DIFFERENT, when you're in your pre-teens. I could never fit in among my school-colleagues and that made me feel bad sometimes, but now I realize I was simply being too mature for my age. It wasn't their fault, it was mine. They were being childish, that's what a 11 year old is supposed to be. However, I wasn't the typical 11 years old so I couldn't fully understand it. At that point, I felt disappointed and misunderstood. Now I simply understand I was too much of a handful for them to handle...they were 10 year olds, for God's sake :). However, that feeling of not fitting in kinda stayed with me for (too) much time and I only recently caught track of it.
Everything changed in highschool and that was the first time I bonded with people, the first time I truly made friends, some of those friendships still last and I know they will last a lifetime. And that's simply because I got among people who were just like me. We were all right for each other. We were 15 year old kids interested in theater, opera, music and reading. We were the first in line for concerts and plays, we could talk forever about books, we had different ways of having fun. And yes...we had some GREAT GREAT parties, probably the best I ever had. But we were all alike. We were all more mature and that's what contributed to my feeling of fitting in.
However, college wasn't like that at all. For me, college was a bit like going back to middle-school all over again. My colleagues were great people, but very different and some of them did not absolutely show their age. Some of them, I'm sorry to say it, still behave like 14-year-olds and if that works for them...it's great, but I felt somewhat estranged there. I've met some nice people that I am still good friends with (I even celebrated New Year's with some of them), but it was definitely a different experience. And now, looking back at my "professional trajectory", if I may pompously call it this way...I understand why I was always a rather solitary person. I was always TOO serious for my age. I always enjoyed the company of older guys rather than fuzzy teenagers, I always thought people my age were utterly immature and childish. And maybe they were. Anyway...I just started thinking about all this when I realized that I'm turning 24. 24!!! I'm all grown-up now. There's no more thin line between adolescence and maturity...I'm a full-blown adult. And you know what? I love it! :)))
Now I can simply waive to the 6-year old Diana who wanted to grow up, have the big career and get married. Hey, you there! I'm here...I'm 24, I can have it now. It may sound surprising, but I'm not nostalgic about anything. Not about middle-school(God forbid :) ), not about highschool (although it was amazing, but 4 years was enough), certainly not about college. This is where I belong now. Adulthood. I've always sought that, I've always felt more comfortable like that. And now...yes, I'm an adult, now I can turn all my dreams into a reality, NOW I fit in. And I forgive all the people who disappointed me, who -knowingly or unknowingly- hurt me, people whom I didn't understand and who didn't understand me. And I'm grateful for their presence in my life. I know they left traces on me, some stronger, some almost unnoticeable, but they were part of my past. And one cannot look into the future without reconciling with one's past.
When I was in Belfast, I took a picture of a quote written on the wall of an Irish Pub. I loved it...it was so true. It said: "A nation that keeps an eye on the past is wise. A nation that keeps two eyes on the past is blind". And it works for people just as well. You don't have to forget, just...let it go, detach yourself from it.
I know what I want now. And I know that the faults of the past were mine as well...I was expecting too much out of people who were not ready. Just because I was ready to start my journey through life a looong time ago, it doesn't mean that everybody was. Farewell 2007 and all the years before. You were good years, I loved you all...but 2008 is my present and everything after it is my future. Cause I am 24 and I abso-fuckin-lutely LOVE IT ! :)
miercuri, 19 decembrie 2007
Defying Gravity...
For the past 5 months, my life has totally and irrevocably changed. I passed the point of no return. I changed myself, I changed everything. And I'm grateful to God for allowing me to do so. Last year, around this date, I had just received the confirmation of acceptance to this Master's Programme. One year later, NOW, I'm living my dream. THANK YOU! Thank you for all I've learned and for all I am about to learn. I've had my chance and I'm grateful for it...I won't lose it and I'll make the VERY BEST of it. That's my promise.
I was thinking the other day about what I learned in these past 5 months. About the so many ways in which I've grown and changed.
In these past months:
* I learned not only that I can live in a student campus, share everything and have less than 20 minutes of privacy per day, but that I actually enjoy it. It's like having a biiig family, with lots of brothers and sisters, something that I -as an only child- never had. Now I truly understand what "student-life" means, what having a party every day of the week means, what talking about everything and nothing until 4 o'clock in the morning means(Gwen Stefani's song is so appropriate for my nights there :) ), but also about hard work and solidarity. About balancing fun and studying.
* I learned that I can truly be independent. Actually, I feel like I've coined a totally Diana-meaning of the word "independent". Last week I was talking with my friends in an English Pub and the topic of traveling came about. One of my friends was telling me about wanting to visit more places when we'll be in Switzerland and I just embraced the idea. She said something that took me by surprise and made me realize something that I hadn't before. She was like "I love to travel, but I just cannot picture myself being as independent as you, although I want to". It surprised me to hear it and it gave me food for thought. I know that I'm independent, it's just that I've always viewed it as something normal, even more since I'm living abroad and I can travel anywhere I like within hours. For my colleagues and for the other people I know, though, it's something completely special. The fact that I can travel alone, go spend weekends in another country or in another city and just enjoy visiting, without having a boyfriend or anybody to come with me and "protect" me...this is something hard for them to understand. For me it feels natural, and now that I realized it, I'm actually quite proud of it. It's not that I wouldn't enjoy seeing the world with a person that I love, it's just that the two are completely different things. I will have my time of exploring the world with my loved one. At the moment I'm exploring it with the most important person in my life - myself. And that's the best character-building experience one could possibly have.
* In the past 5 months, I've visited on my own HOLLAND (all major cities, didn't miss one. I feel like Holland is almost like a second home to me now), BELGIUM (Brussels and Bruges), LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY (Koln and Bonn), ENGLAND (London, Warwick, Stratford, Dover, Windsor, Bath, Oxford, York), SCOTLAND (Edinburgh), IRELAND (Dublin), NORTHERN IRELAND (Belfast). I've lived between airplanes, airports and suitcases. Moreover, I had mornings in which I had been studying all night and was too tired to wake up so, due to oversleeping, I now am able to dress myself from head to toe, put on make-up and actually look quite ravisihing (yap, I'm modest) in 5 minutes. It's like in the army, only with Moschino instead of uniform and Jimmy Choo instead of military-boots :))
*I realized that I can truly take care of myself. And do it the right way. I can do my cooking, my laundry-washing, my cleaning. Everything. Including the grocery-store-shopping (imagine huge bags of mineral water, bread, fruits, meat and all types of groceries transported by lil' ol' me on FOOT, on the cobblestone streets of Leiden, without having a car or anybody to lend a hand. By the time I got to London I was already used to it, so it didn't seem weird at all :) ).
*I totally changed my style. My way of dressing has known a total transformation. Although I fancy the same type of feminine and girlie clothes, I'm much more aware of what suits me and what doesn't, of what I feel comfortable and uncomfortable in, of what flatters me more, of what I want to convey through my way of dressing. I'm much more stylish and confident now, and even more DARING. I've created a style of my own and it's not the average-taken-from-Vogue type, it's something tailored to my own personality and creativity.
I know exactly what I want in terms of fashion. If before I used to beat it around the bush when it came to deciding between two items, now it only takes 30 seconds. I know exactly what is for me and what's not. Moreover, I've grown more and more convinced that quality matters more than anything. If before I could have been swept away by a nice trendy-design and just think "Oh, it's not great, but it's fashionable", now I'm totally selective. I prefer buying one Chanel that I would look absolutely gorgeous and impeccable in now and 10 years from now, than 20 high-street brands that will last for less than one season and then will end up at the bottom of my closet. No, I'm not being snobbish, I swear. It's just that I realized it's a way of pampering myself. I've fallen in love with cashmere and silk, I absolutely adore them. And yes...I prefer fewer and better!
* I CAN FLIRT! Yes. That part of my brain responsible for flirting, the one that I thought was either numb or inexistent, it's there alright. I just needed to loosen up a bit more, to know exactly what I'm looking for, to be less rigid and less tense about it. I was always a lousy flirter...well...not anymore :). Although I'm as selective as I ever was and probably my Prince Charming will have to be somewhere pretty close to perfect...I discovered that flirting is quite an enjoyable pass-time.
*I can move my butt around - pardon my French - and I'm no longer glued to the seat of my car, like I was in Bucharest. At home, I would have barely moved from the car to the places that I needed to go to, even if the distances were small. I was so comfortable with the idea of being a couch potato. Well here...I walk a lot and I love it. In Leiden I used to walk 7 km a day (no exaggeration), here I walk less than that but definitely 2-3 km. And it's great.
*I hate junk food. If in Romania it would have tempted me, now it's a total no-no. You wouldn't see me entering a McDonalds or BurgerKing in a billion years! I'm a totally Sushi-girl, I love Thai food and Chinese! (Yummy). Nevertheless, when I'm going home for Christmas, I will go back to my first and only love - SARMALE! (D E L I C I O U S)
*I can take care of myself through one of the lousiest-most-dreadful colds known to mankind. At home, I would have had my mother to pamper me and cook me hot chicken soup, for my body and soul. Here...I only have two strips of antibiotics, paracetamol and...an iron will. And it's more than enough. Yo, viruses...bring it on!
*Margaritas aren't that bad. In Romania I would've never drank. Anything. Ever. Probably the largest amount of alcohol for me would have been 2 glasses of champagne for New Year's. As a one-time event, that is. Don't get me wrong, I still don't drink a lot and I don't like the idea of drinking as a sport. Nevertheless, I've discovered that social drinking is moderate and agreeable sometimes. If before I would have been like "NO! NO Alcohol!", now I'm more like "I'll just have a Strawberry Margarita and that's all for the night". For my friends whom are used to downing glass after glass, my attitude is somewhere between completely odd and unacceptable, but I laid down the rules quite carefully: I drink socially, but not more than a glass or two(tops). I enjoy my sober presence much more than my drunken presence (whom I fortunately not know and hope to never do). But it's a change from my old "hate-the-alcohol-concept". P.S. Cointreau is great.
*I realized what my true calling is. I've realized what I really want. I've realized that in order to get where you want, you simply have to...open your eyes and dream. Daydream! It's the first step towards getting where you belong.
*I'm juggling with two master-programmes at the same time. My master here and the one I still have to finish in Romania. I've worked in parallel on my papers and on my dissertation for my other Masters. Sometimes it feels like a handful. But most of the times it feels like "Girl Power" :)
*I've learned that hard work goes a long way. My professors here appreciated me because of my passion and dedication. You know how incredible it is to have people that you're looking up to in admiration coming to you and saying "Your work is exceptional" (and I quote). It's one of the greatest feelings of achievement one can experience. It's indescribable.
*I've learned that fighting for one's beliefs implies being "uncomfortable" and even taking the risk of being resented and hated. Like my friend Cynnetta says it, I "made the NATO guy cry". And I did it alright. I had a NATO official (that has probably experienced more IR and diplomacy than I ever did) ripping his hair off and almost wanting to slap me. In my book, that's a sign that I'm on the right track. I asked a question that he probably still resents me for...I know that for him I'm still that "f***in Romanian who couldn't keep her mouth shut". However, I was right...that is why he resented and attacked me. And the victory tasted even sweeter as he was forced to admit that I was right. It was something that I truly believed in. In justice. This is why I simply don't care whom I "bother" with my inquisitive mind...As far as I'm concerned, he could have me on his black list. I'm going to speak my mind any time, anywhere, with ANYONE. Full stop.
* I gained so many new friends that I will always treasure and keep in touch with. People from whom I learned a lot. From all over the world. Aside from my American colleagues, I now have people that are dear to me from Canada, Montenegro, Holland, Croatia, Austria, Nigeria, Ecuador...
*I did away with all my "toxic friendships". Yes, I've had quite a few of those. What is a toxic friendship? In my case for example, it's the friendship with a person who's constantly negative and instead of rejoicing and feeling happy for your accomplishments is rather on the other end of the stick and endorses a "What's so great in that"-attitude. If it were just a staple of character or a friendly advice when you're sidetracking, I would totally accept it, but when it's obviously out of spite and envy, I'd much rather press "delete" and just keep the good memories I've had with that person. I've banned from my life all the people who used to harm me and I finally managed to do it because I was detached enough to understand the mere harm they were doing. I just said "No More". No more alleged-friend-who-lies-to-me, no more You-re-never-good-enough kind of friend, no more Oh-you-re-like-my-sister-but-I-can-totally-stab-you-in-the-back kind of friend. No more pretending. Thank you, it's been good. Moving on!
*I've learned that a person can break your heart into infinitesimally small pieces, but it cannot break YOU, until YOU allow him to. This year, I've fallen in and out of love 2 times and I've learned a huge lesson - sometimes you get hurt by people that you would least expect. I had the biggest disappointment of my life and nonetheless, every day of my life I will be grateful for it, although at its moment it felt absolutely crushing. It was one of the priceless lessons that life has given me and I'm saying it with all my heart, I never felt it more true than I feel it now.
When you recover after a broken heart, somewhere deep inside you feel the need of being "saved". I did too. I needed the prince in shining armor to come and rescue me, teach me to believe in love again, to show me that not all men are total jerks that lead double lives and lie in your face. Well...I got my prince alright, he was the knight on the white horse in anybody's book. He was my prince...until he proved to be my worst nightmare. I wish these were just "ways of saying". They're not. Nobody deserves to go through that, NOBODY, not even one's worst enemies, believe me.
Nevertheless, not only I don't spite him, but I'm grateful for his presence in my life. Although he put me through hell and I never want to see or hear of him ever again, I've never felt stronger than I felt after that dreadful period passed. Before it happened, I never thought I could live through something like that. I always thought it would just crush me, that I will never bounce back. Well...I did. And I'm stronger than I ever was. And maybe I needed that nightmare in order to awake to a beautiful reality and realize that I don't NEED a savior. That I don't NEED someone to come and sweep me away and teach me to believe in love. I WANT love, yes, but there's a difference between NEEDING and WANTING. In the past, I had needed someone to save me...and it was all wrong. I needed the prince, to come and chase away the image of the villain, of the one who had broken my heart. Only the "prince" proved to be an even greater villain. Now I've come to realize that I'm the only one to "save" myself, to make peace with the past, to let go. This is why now I can truly love again. Sometimes you offer affection to people who don't deserve it nor know how to handle it. It's not your fault...the greatest thing in this world is about GIVING so you should never feel sorry. What goes around comes back around.
*I fell in love with the musicals and theatrical life of London. Actually, I kinda fell in love with London itself. It's so...ME, I felt like home there. And thanks to my experience abroad, I came to know artists and music that I hadn't known before. Now I listen to TRAVIS (just listen to "Why does it always rain" and "Love will come through"), MANIC STREET PREACHERS ("If you tolerate this(your children will be next)" - social manifesto), LOREENA MCKENNIT ("Santiago" and the entire album Nights in Alhambra), MICHAEL BUBLE (Frank Sinatra meets Dean Martin and Jazz) and...of course...my lifetime-love KATIE MELUA (the most amazing artist, versatile, sensitive...when listening to her songs I sometimes feel she's depicting MY LIFE).
*There are a few small things that started growing on me in a way I would have never pictured it before. Small things that you barely notice, yet which start to add up and change you more than you think. The Haagen-Daasz vanilla-and-cookies ice cream in the middle of the winter season (unconceivable for me before), the Dutch "FlowerBomb" perfume by Viktor&Rolf (that you can only find in Holland) for me...whom never fancied anything but Chanel Mademoiselle (that I still love!), eating Nachos and Tex-Mex food (God...that's so NOT good for one's figure, but it's delicious), speaking loud (like Americans do...oops).
*I fulfilled some dreams and had some great experiences such as:
-Seeing a live football game (Queens Park Rangers vs. Hull City) in London. It was great! (Gooo QPR! )
-Going to the Christmas Concert at the Royal Albert Hall (one of the most beautiful musical experiences I've ever had)
-Seeing the world on my own (you know Dido's song "Hunter"? The chorus goes like this "Wanna be a hunter again/Wanna see the world alone again/Take a chance on life again..."...that's how I felt)
-Dressing-up for my first Halloween-ever as "Female Harry Potter" (not Hermione, thank you very much, but FEMALE HARRY POTTER...:))) It was a blast)
-"Living" in the library for one week...:)), while working on my IR paper. Did you know you can actually live on chips and Dr.Pepper? (do NOT try that at home! :) )
-Hearing Milan Milutinovic's trial in the Hague (the former president of Serbia, tried for War Crimes) - world-shattering experience.
-Being at the ICC, ICJ, ICTY, NATO and EU Parliament. Being a member of the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs. I'm thankful for these amazing opportunities!
*
Ending this looong posting, I can just say that I've found my "Hymn". Before I got here, my theme-song was "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson. Well..I've broken away. I've spread my wings...I can fly now. And I needed a new song. Without even looking for one, I found this song that I love. It's from the soundtrack of a musical called WICKED. I love it...it's so deep and symbolic. If some of you are a bit disconcerted about the new-attitude Diana, the one that emerges from the words of this blog, just listen to this song. You'll understand...
DEFYING GRAVITY
Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap
It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...
I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But 'till I try, I'll never know
Too long I've been afraid of losing love,
I guess I've lost...
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner fly
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...
So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky
As someone told me lately -
Ev'ryone deserves the chance to fly
And if I'm flying solo
At least I'm flying free
To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me -
Tell them how I
Am defying gravity!
I'm flying high
Defying gravity!
And soon I'll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1_3q01qx7o
I was thinking the other day about what I learned in these past 5 months. About the so many ways in which I've grown and changed.
In these past months:
* I learned not only that I can live in a student campus, share everything and have less than 20 minutes of privacy per day, but that I actually enjoy it. It's like having a biiig family, with lots of brothers and sisters, something that I -as an only child- never had. Now I truly understand what "student-life" means, what having a party every day of the week means, what talking about everything and nothing until 4 o'clock in the morning means(Gwen Stefani's song is so appropriate for my nights there :) ), but also about hard work and solidarity. About balancing fun and studying.
* I learned that I can truly be independent. Actually, I feel like I've coined a totally Diana-meaning of the word "independent". Last week I was talking with my friends in an English Pub and the topic of traveling came about. One of my friends was telling me about wanting to visit more places when we'll be in Switzerland and I just embraced the idea. She said something that took me by surprise and made me realize something that I hadn't before. She was like "I love to travel, but I just cannot picture myself being as independent as you, although I want to". It surprised me to hear it and it gave me food for thought. I know that I'm independent, it's just that I've always viewed it as something normal, even more since I'm living abroad and I can travel anywhere I like within hours. For my colleagues and for the other people I know, though, it's something completely special. The fact that I can travel alone, go spend weekends in another country or in another city and just enjoy visiting, without having a boyfriend or anybody to come with me and "protect" me...this is something hard for them to understand. For me it feels natural, and now that I realized it, I'm actually quite proud of it. It's not that I wouldn't enjoy seeing the world with a person that I love, it's just that the two are completely different things. I will have my time of exploring the world with my loved one. At the moment I'm exploring it with the most important person in my life - myself. And that's the best character-building experience one could possibly have.
* In the past 5 months, I've visited on my own HOLLAND (all major cities, didn't miss one. I feel like Holland is almost like a second home to me now), BELGIUM (Brussels and Bruges), LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY (Koln and Bonn), ENGLAND (London, Warwick, Stratford, Dover, Windsor, Bath, Oxford, York), SCOTLAND (Edinburgh), IRELAND (Dublin), NORTHERN IRELAND (Belfast). I've lived between airplanes, airports and suitcases. Moreover, I had mornings in which I had been studying all night and was too tired to wake up so, due to oversleeping, I now am able to dress myself from head to toe, put on make-up and actually look quite ravisihing (yap, I'm modest) in 5 minutes. It's like in the army, only with Moschino instead of uniform and Jimmy Choo instead of military-boots :))
*I realized that I can truly take care of myself. And do it the right way. I can do my cooking, my laundry-washing, my cleaning. Everything. Including the grocery-store-shopping (imagine huge bags of mineral water, bread, fruits, meat and all types of groceries transported by lil' ol' me on FOOT, on the cobblestone streets of Leiden, without having a car or anybody to lend a hand. By the time I got to London I was already used to it, so it didn't seem weird at all :) ).
*I totally changed my style. My way of dressing has known a total transformation. Although I fancy the same type of feminine and girlie clothes, I'm much more aware of what suits me and what doesn't, of what I feel comfortable and uncomfortable in, of what flatters me more, of what I want to convey through my way of dressing. I'm much more stylish and confident now, and even more DARING. I've created a style of my own and it's not the average-taken-from-Vogue type, it's something tailored to my own personality and creativity.
I know exactly what I want in terms of fashion. If before I used to beat it around the bush when it came to deciding between two items, now it only takes 30 seconds. I know exactly what is for me and what's not. Moreover, I've grown more and more convinced that quality matters more than anything. If before I could have been swept away by a nice trendy-design and just think "Oh, it's not great, but it's fashionable", now I'm totally selective. I prefer buying one Chanel that I would look absolutely gorgeous and impeccable in now and 10 years from now, than 20 high-street brands that will last for less than one season and then will end up at the bottom of my closet. No, I'm not being snobbish, I swear. It's just that I realized it's a way of pampering myself. I've fallen in love with cashmere and silk, I absolutely adore them. And yes...I prefer fewer and better!
* I CAN FLIRT! Yes. That part of my brain responsible for flirting, the one that I thought was either numb or inexistent, it's there alright. I just needed to loosen up a bit more, to know exactly what I'm looking for, to be less rigid and less tense about it. I was always a lousy flirter...well...not anymore :). Although I'm as selective as I ever was and probably my Prince Charming will have to be somewhere pretty close to perfect...I discovered that flirting is quite an enjoyable pass-time.
*I can move my butt around - pardon my French - and I'm no longer glued to the seat of my car, like I was in Bucharest. At home, I would have barely moved from the car to the places that I needed to go to, even if the distances were small. I was so comfortable with the idea of being a couch potato. Well here...I walk a lot and I love it. In Leiden I used to walk 7 km a day (no exaggeration), here I walk less than that but definitely 2-3 km. And it's great.
*I hate junk food. If in Romania it would have tempted me, now it's a total no-no. You wouldn't see me entering a McDonalds or BurgerKing in a billion years! I'm a totally Sushi-girl, I love Thai food and Chinese! (Yummy). Nevertheless, when I'm going home for Christmas, I will go back to my first and only love - SARMALE! (D E L I C I O U S)
*I can take care of myself through one of the lousiest-most-dreadful colds known to mankind. At home, I would have had my mother to pamper me and cook me hot chicken soup, for my body and soul. Here...I only have two strips of antibiotics, paracetamol and...an iron will. And it's more than enough. Yo, viruses...bring it on!
*Margaritas aren't that bad. In Romania I would've never drank. Anything. Ever. Probably the largest amount of alcohol for me would have been 2 glasses of champagne for New Year's. As a one-time event, that is. Don't get me wrong, I still don't drink a lot and I don't like the idea of drinking as a sport. Nevertheless, I've discovered that social drinking is moderate and agreeable sometimes. If before I would have been like "NO! NO Alcohol!", now I'm more like "I'll just have a Strawberry Margarita and that's all for the night". For my friends whom are used to downing glass after glass, my attitude is somewhere between completely odd and unacceptable, but I laid down the rules quite carefully: I drink socially, but not more than a glass or two(tops). I enjoy my sober presence much more than my drunken presence (whom I fortunately not know and hope to never do). But it's a change from my old "hate-the-alcohol-concept". P.S. Cointreau is great.
*I realized what my true calling is. I've realized what I really want. I've realized that in order to get where you want, you simply have to...open your eyes and dream. Daydream! It's the first step towards getting where you belong.
*I'm juggling with two master-programmes at the same time. My master here and the one I still have to finish in Romania. I've worked in parallel on my papers and on my dissertation for my other Masters. Sometimes it feels like a handful. But most of the times it feels like "Girl Power" :)
*I've learned that hard work goes a long way. My professors here appreciated me because of my passion and dedication. You know how incredible it is to have people that you're looking up to in admiration coming to you and saying "Your work is exceptional" (and I quote). It's one of the greatest feelings of achievement one can experience. It's indescribable.
*I've learned that fighting for one's beliefs implies being "uncomfortable" and even taking the risk of being resented and hated. Like my friend Cynnetta says it, I "made the NATO guy cry". And I did it alright. I had a NATO official (that has probably experienced more IR and diplomacy than I ever did) ripping his hair off and almost wanting to slap me. In my book, that's a sign that I'm on the right track. I asked a question that he probably still resents me for...I know that for him I'm still that "f***in Romanian who couldn't keep her mouth shut". However, I was right...that is why he resented and attacked me. And the victory tasted even sweeter as he was forced to admit that I was right. It was something that I truly believed in. In justice. This is why I simply don't care whom I "bother" with my inquisitive mind...As far as I'm concerned, he could have me on his black list. I'm going to speak my mind any time, anywhere, with ANYONE. Full stop.
* I gained so many new friends that I will always treasure and keep in touch with. People from whom I learned a lot. From all over the world. Aside from my American colleagues, I now have people that are dear to me from Canada, Montenegro, Holland, Croatia, Austria, Nigeria, Ecuador...
*I did away with all my "toxic friendships". Yes, I've had quite a few of those. What is a toxic friendship? In my case for example, it's the friendship with a person who's constantly negative and instead of rejoicing and feeling happy for your accomplishments is rather on the other end of the stick and endorses a "What's so great in that"-attitude. If it were just a staple of character or a friendly advice when you're sidetracking, I would totally accept it, but when it's obviously out of spite and envy, I'd much rather press "delete" and just keep the good memories I've had with that person. I've banned from my life all the people who used to harm me and I finally managed to do it because I was detached enough to understand the mere harm they were doing. I just said "No More". No more alleged-friend-who-lies-to-me, no more You-re-never-good-enough kind of friend, no more Oh-you-re-like-my-sister-but-I-can-totally-stab-you-in-the-back kind of friend. No more pretending. Thank you, it's been good. Moving on!
*I've learned that a person can break your heart into infinitesimally small pieces, but it cannot break YOU, until YOU allow him to. This year, I've fallen in and out of love 2 times and I've learned a huge lesson - sometimes you get hurt by people that you would least expect. I had the biggest disappointment of my life and nonetheless, every day of my life I will be grateful for it, although at its moment it felt absolutely crushing. It was one of the priceless lessons that life has given me and I'm saying it with all my heart, I never felt it more true than I feel it now.
When you recover after a broken heart, somewhere deep inside you feel the need of being "saved". I did too. I needed the prince in shining armor to come and rescue me, teach me to believe in love again, to show me that not all men are total jerks that lead double lives and lie in your face. Well...I got my prince alright, he was the knight on the white horse in anybody's book. He was my prince...until he proved to be my worst nightmare. I wish these were just "ways of saying". They're not. Nobody deserves to go through that, NOBODY, not even one's worst enemies, believe me.
Nevertheless, not only I don't spite him, but I'm grateful for his presence in my life. Although he put me through hell and I never want to see or hear of him ever again, I've never felt stronger than I felt after that dreadful period passed. Before it happened, I never thought I could live through something like that. I always thought it would just crush me, that I will never bounce back. Well...I did. And I'm stronger than I ever was. And maybe I needed that nightmare in order to awake to a beautiful reality and realize that I don't NEED a savior. That I don't NEED someone to come and sweep me away and teach me to believe in love. I WANT love, yes, but there's a difference between NEEDING and WANTING. In the past, I had needed someone to save me...and it was all wrong. I needed the prince, to come and chase away the image of the villain, of the one who had broken my heart. Only the "prince" proved to be an even greater villain. Now I've come to realize that I'm the only one to "save" myself, to make peace with the past, to let go. This is why now I can truly love again. Sometimes you offer affection to people who don't deserve it nor know how to handle it. It's not your fault...the greatest thing in this world is about GIVING so you should never feel sorry. What goes around comes back around.
*I fell in love with the musicals and theatrical life of London. Actually, I kinda fell in love with London itself. It's so...ME, I felt like home there. And thanks to my experience abroad, I came to know artists and music that I hadn't known before. Now I listen to TRAVIS (just listen to "Why does it always rain" and "Love will come through"), MANIC STREET PREACHERS ("If you tolerate this(your children will be next)" - social manifesto), LOREENA MCKENNIT ("Santiago" and the entire album Nights in Alhambra), MICHAEL BUBLE (Frank Sinatra meets Dean Martin and Jazz) and...of course...my lifetime-love KATIE MELUA (the most amazing artist, versatile, sensitive...when listening to her songs I sometimes feel she's depicting MY LIFE).
*There are a few small things that started growing on me in a way I would have never pictured it before. Small things that you barely notice, yet which start to add up and change you more than you think. The Haagen-Daasz vanilla-and-cookies ice cream in the middle of the winter season (unconceivable for me before), the Dutch "FlowerBomb" perfume by Viktor&Rolf (that you can only find in Holland) for me...whom never fancied anything but Chanel Mademoiselle (that I still love!), eating Nachos and Tex-Mex food (God...that's so NOT good for one's figure, but it's delicious), speaking loud (like Americans do...oops).
*I fulfilled some dreams and had some great experiences such as:
-Seeing a live football game (Queens Park Rangers vs. Hull City) in London. It was great! (Gooo QPR! )
-Going to the Christmas Concert at the Royal Albert Hall (one of the most beautiful musical experiences I've ever had)
-Seeing the world on my own (you know Dido's song "Hunter"? The chorus goes like this "Wanna be a hunter again/Wanna see the world alone again/Take a chance on life again..."...that's how I felt)
-Dressing-up for my first Halloween-ever as "Female Harry Potter" (not Hermione, thank you very much, but FEMALE HARRY POTTER...:))) It was a blast)
-"Living" in the library for one week...:)), while working on my IR paper. Did you know you can actually live on chips and Dr.Pepper? (do NOT try that at home! :) )
-Hearing Milan Milutinovic's trial in the Hague (the former president of Serbia, tried for War Crimes) - world-shattering experience.
-Being at the ICC, ICJ, ICTY, NATO and EU Parliament. Being a member of the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs. I'm thankful for these amazing opportunities!
*
Ending this looong posting, I can just say that I've found my "Hymn". Before I got here, my theme-song was "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson. Well..I've broken away. I've spread my wings...I can fly now. And I needed a new song. Without even looking for one, I found this song that I love. It's from the soundtrack of a musical called WICKED. I love it...it's so deep and symbolic. If some of you are a bit disconcerted about the new-attitude Diana, the one that emerges from the words of this blog, just listen to this song. You'll understand...
DEFYING GRAVITY
Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap
It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...
I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But 'till I try, I'll never know
Too long I've been afraid of losing love,
I guess I've lost...
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner fly
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down...
So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky
As someone told me lately -
Ev'ryone deserves the chance to fly
And if I'm flying solo
At least I'm flying free
To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me -
Tell them how I
Am defying gravity!
I'm flying high
Defying gravity!
And soon I'll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1_3q01qx7o
marți, 18 decembrie 2007
My dreams are awake...to the sound of music
I confess...I fall in love easily when it comes to music. I always discover new artists and new songs that I like and let myself be carried away by them. I think music is the most wonderful expression of our feelings, it's the gift made by God to rejoice in when we're happy and find soothing of the soul in when we're sad.
Lately, I've fallen in love with so many songs that when I turn my iPod on the choice is overwhelmingly hard. Since I live in London I've been going to so many musicals that it's now hard to imagine my life without them. Musicals are a WAY OF LIFE. Indeed...it's all about the joy of singing, about expressing everything from loathing to love through songs...about feeling your soul vibrate along with the stories presented to you on stage. And this is something I had never experienced before.
Here are some of the musicals I've seen in London:
AVENUE Q - quite an original musical, with singing, dancing and...tadadam...puppeteer-work. I've never been into Muppets and Sesame Street so I was quite biased at first, thinking that it will be just one more boring show for kids. Well NO. It was one of the greatest and funniest shows I've ever watched. It's incredible how those actors could sing and maneuver the puppets...it looked like true magic. GREAT, GREAT SHOW.
My favorite song from this musical (although most of the songs are funny and cheerful, this is the only sad one and I liked it because it's amazingly true and deep).
There's a fine, fine line (sang by the character Kate-Monster)
There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb.
There's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of time.
There's a fine, fine line between a fairy tale and a lie;
And there's a fine, fine line between "You're wonderful" and "Goodbye."
I guess if someone doesn't love you back it isn't such a crime,
But there's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of your time.
And I don't have the time to waste on you anymore.
I don't think that you even know what you're looking for.
For my own sanity, I've got to close the door
And walk away...
Oh...
There's a fine, fine line between together and...not
And there's a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.
You gotta go after the things you want while you're still in your prime...
Cause there's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of time...
WICKED
The untold story of the witches of Oz. Based on "The Wizard of Oz", it recreates the untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West. An incredible musical! Just like Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels, which are thought to be children's books but there are so deep and meaningful...WICKED is not a play for kids. Not in the least. It's something that you have to watch and hear with the heart and the mind, not only with the eyes and ears. The characters are incredibly real, real people...with ups and downs, with happiness and sorrow...the narrative is so true and so well-anchored in everyday life, although it's about princes and princesses. It's about the perceptions that make up our lives, about fitting in and sticking out of the crowd, about being accepted or not, about following a dream and being crushed to pieces by people. It's an amazing experience, indeed.
Two of my favorite songs are "I'm not that girl" (about finding love and knowing that it's not for you...)and "No good deed"(an incredible song...so deep, so symbolic, about the way our actions are seen by people, about the way the balance between the good and the bad is tipped by...again, perceptions).
"I'm not that girl..." (sang by character Elphaba)
Hands touch, eyes meet
Sudden silence, sudden heat
Hearts leap in a giddy whirl
He could be "THAT" boy
But I'm not "THAT" girl...
Don't dream too far
Don't lose sight of who you are
Don't remember that rush of joy
He could be "THAT" boy
I'm not "THAT" girl...
Ev'ry so often we long to steal
To the land of what-might-have-been
But that doesn't soften the ache we feel
When reality sets back in
Blithe smile, lithe limb
She who's winsome, she wins him
Gold hair with a gentle curl
That's the girl he chose
And Heaven knows
I'm not that girl...
Don't wish, don't start
Wishing only wounds the heart
I wasn't born for the rose and the pearl
There's a girl I know
He loves her so
I'm not that girl.
NO GOOD DEED (Sang by character Elphaba)
No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented
No good deed goes unpunished
That's my new creed...
My road of good intentions
Led where such roads always lead
No good deed
Goes unpunished!
Nessa!
Doctor Dillamond!
Fiyero!
Fiyero!!
One question haunts and hurts
Too much, too much to mention:
Was I really seeking good
Or just seeking attention?
Is that all good deeds are
When looked at with an ice-cold eye?
If that's all good deeds are
Maybe that's the reason why
No good deed goes unpunished
All helpful urges should be circumvented
No good deed goes unpunished
Sure, I meant well -
Well, look at what well-meant did:
All right, enough - so be it
So be it, then:
Let all Oz be agreed
I'm wicked through and through
Since I can not succeed
Fiyero, saving you
I promise no good deed
Will I attempt to do again
Ever again
No good deed
Will I do again!
LES MISERABLES
Comments are useless. It's the timeless story of Victor Hugo, made into a musical. The longest running musical in the world. Beautiful songs, superb acting, a setting that vividly recreates the French Revolution. GREAT! Also very deep in terms of the ideas conveyed by the plot. It goes beyond Hugo's work and extrapolates the social class differences after the French Revolution. It SO reminded me of the world we live in now...of the people who are now personalities and persons to look up to...people who have no depth, only a superficial and attractive outside.
MARY POPPINS
An exceptional musical. From all points of view. All these wonderful actors flawlessly singing and dancing for 3 hours, LIVE! Amazing special effects, with Mary Poppins floating over the public attached to almost invisible strings, Bert singing and DANCING on the ceiling (no joke!). I would even dare to say that some of the special effects were better than those from the actual movie. No flaws, no flat-singing, no wrong step. PERFECT.
My favorite songs are "Feed the birds"(classic one) and "Anything can happen if you , let it". In that theater hall I couldn't help not thinking of my childhood...of how much I adored Mary Poppins-the movie. Of how I had dreams of seeing all the wonderful places in which Jane and Michael were going with Mary Poppins. Well...guess what? I'm in London now and watching the Mary Poppins musical. Those of you who say it's not true that "anything can happen if you let it..."...I dare you! Bring it on! :)
Also, I've had a moving experience at St.Paul's Cathedral, because I had always pictured that place related to the old lady in Mary Poppins, selling packs of crumbs for birds. There was no lady there...however there were a lot of pigeons and even in the church, there was one poor pigeon who had a hurt leg and was living inside St.Paul's. He would sit on the bench with you, while you were praying, looking at you with his gentle eyes. It really touched me. If divine signs exists, and I know they do...this was definitely one of them.
Anything can happen if you let it
Anything can happen if you let it
Sometimes things are difficult but you can bet it
Doesn't have to be so
Changes can be made
You can move a mountain if you use a larger spade
Anything can happen, it's a marvel
You can be a butterfly
Or just stay larval
Stretch your mind beyond fantastic
Dreams are made of strong elastic
Take some sound advice and don't forget it
Anything can happen if you let it
Will soon seem certain
Thought at first it may sound clownish
See the world more upside-downish
Turn it on its head then pirouette it
If you reach for the stars
All you get are the stars
But we've found a whole new spin
If you reach for the heavens
You get the stars thrown in
Anything can happen if you let it
Life is out there waiting so go and get it
Grab it by the collar, seize it by the scruff
Once you've started living life you just can't get enough
Anything can happen, it's official
You can choose the super or the superficial
Sally forth the way we're steering
Obstacles start disappearing
Go and chase your dreams you won't regret it
Anything can happen
(Anything can happen)
Anything can happen
Anything can happen
If you let it!
JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TEHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Based on the biblical story of Joseph, who is Abraham's favorite son and whom is sold as a slave by his envious brothers. However, the story is only the background and the pretext for superb music, composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Special effects, jokes, dancing, music...and a beautiful idea...of pursuing one's dream, no matter what.
My favorite song: "Close every door to me" (sang by Joseph, in prison)
Close every door to me...
Close every door to me,
Hide all the world from me
Bar all the windows
And shut out the light
Do what you want with me,
Hate me and laugh at me
Darken my daytime
And torture my night
If my life were important I
Would ask will I live or die
But I know the answers lie
Far from this world...
Close every door to me,
Keep those I love from me
Children of Israel
Are never alone!
For I know I shall find
My own peace of mind
For I have been promised
A land of my own
Close every door to me,
Hide all the world from me
Bar all the windows
And shut out the light
Just give me a number
Instead of my name
Forget all about me
And let me decay
I do not matter,
I'm only one person
Destroy me completely
Then throw me away...
If my life were important I
Would ask will I live or die
But I know the answers lie
Far from this world
Close every door to me,
Keep those I love from me
Children of Israel
Are never alone
For we know we shall find
Our own peace of mind
For we have been promised
A land of our own
MAMMA MIA
Based on the songs of ABBA (a group that I always loved and always will). The show is amazing! I wasn't expecting that much when I went, but it's totally worth its fame. Actually, they are presently turning it into a Hollywood movie, starring Meryl Streep. The story is hilarious, the songs are INCREDIBLY fitted into the plot, one would swear they were written for "MAMMA MIA-the musical". Basically, Sophie is the main character. She's lived with her mother for her entire life and never knew her father. Now she's getting married and her biggest dream is having her father give her away at her wedding. She secretly reads her mother's diary and she figures out that 3 men can be her possible dads. So...she sends all three of them invitations to her wedding, hoping that she will find out who her real dad is. The situations deriving from it are hilarious and in the end...somebody else will end up tying the knot. Wonderful musical, great songs, GREAT dancing and...most of all...FUNNNY!!!!
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
The classic story of the most famous musical ever written. One of the finest pieces of work ever composed. That says it all!
And plays:
THE MOUSETRAP - The longest running PLAY in the world, based on Agatha Christie's police story. Great suspense, twists and turns of the plot...a totally unexpected ending. GREAT!
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
At the National Theatre, a very modern adaptation of Shakespeare's work, starring ZOE WANAMAKER (for Harry Potter fans, among whom I don't include myself, she is one of the teachers at Hogwarts). Exquisite actress and very nice play. I'm not too fond of Shakespeare's comedies, I like the dramas more, but it was nice.
Moreover, on Saturday I've been to the Royal Albert Hall, at the WHITE CHRISTMAS CONCERT. One of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had. Christmas carols, people singing along with the choir and the soloists (incredible singers, all of them). GREAT!
While living here, I've also gotten to know and love singers such as Michael Buble (he is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Think Jazz + Dean Martin + Frank Sinatra...and you got Michael Buble), Travis (search on YouTube "Why does it always rain on me", "Sing", "Love will come through" or any other of their songs), Manic Street Preachers (Welsh group, their songs are profoundly social, they sing about the world and about people, as they really are. My favorite song is "If you tolerate this, then your children will be next". Look it up on YouTube, it's worthwhile), Loreena McKennitt(Irish and amazing).
Everything revolves around music here, for me... My title (taken from The Sound of Music) reflects that...cause my dreams are really awake to the sound of music.
Lately, I've fallen in love with so many songs that when I turn my iPod on the choice is overwhelmingly hard. Since I live in London I've been going to so many musicals that it's now hard to imagine my life without them. Musicals are a WAY OF LIFE. Indeed...it's all about the joy of singing, about expressing everything from loathing to love through songs...about feeling your soul vibrate along with the stories presented to you on stage. And this is something I had never experienced before.
Here are some of the musicals I've seen in London:
AVENUE Q - quite an original musical, with singing, dancing and...tadadam...puppeteer-work. I've never been into Muppets and Sesame Street so I was quite biased at first, thinking that it will be just one more boring show for kids. Well NO. It was one of the greatest and funniest shows I've ever watched. It's incredible how those actors could sing and maneuver the puppets...it looked like true magic. GREAT, GREAT SHOW.
My favorite song from this musical (although most of the songs are funny and cheerful, this is the only sad one and I liked it because it's amazingly true and deep).
There's a fine, fine line (sang by the character Kate-Monster)
There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb.
There's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of time.
There's a fine, fine line between a fairy tale and a lie;
And there's a fine, fine line between "You're wonderful" and "Goodbye."
I guess if someone doesn't love you back it isn't such a crime,
But there's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of your time.
And I don't have the time to waste on you anymore.
I don't think that you even know what you're looking for.
For my own sanity, I've got to close the door
And walk away...
Oh...
There's a fine, fine line between together and...not
And there's a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.
You gotta go after the things you want while you're still in your prime...
Cause there's a fine, fine line between love
...and a waste of time...
WICKED
The untold story of the witches of Oz. Based on "The Wizard of Oz", it recreates the untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West. An incredible musical! Just like Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels, which are thought to be children's books but there are so deep and meaningful...WICKED is not a play for kids. Not in the least. It's something that you have to watch and hear with the heart and the mind, not only with the eyes and ears. The characters are incredibly real, real people...with ups and downs, with happiness and sorrow...the narrative is so true and so well-anchored in everyday life, although it's about princes and princesses. It's about the perceptions that make up our lives, about fitting in and sticking out of the crowd, about being accepted or not, about following a dream and being crushed to pieces by people. It's an amazing experience, indeed.
Two of my favorite songs are "I'm not that girl" (about finding love and knowing that it's not for you...)and "No good deed"(an incredible song...so deep, so symbolic, about the way our actions are seen by people, about the way the balance between the good and the bad is tipped by...again, perceptions).
"I'm not that girl..." (sang by character Elphaba)
Hands touch, eyes meet
Sudden silence, sudden heat
Hearts leap in a giddy whirl
He could be "THAT" boy
But I'm not "THAT" girl...
Don't dream too far
Don't lose sight of who you are
Don't remember that rush of joy
He could be "THAT" boy
I'm not "THAT" girl...
Ev'ry so often we long to steal
To the land of what-might-have-been
But that doesn't soften the ache we feel
When reality sets back in
Blithe smile, lithe limb
She who's winsome, she wins him
Gold hair with a gentle curl
That's the girl he chose
And Heaven knows
I'm not that girl...
Don't wish, don't start
Wishing only wounds the heart
I wasn't born for the rose and the pearl
There's a girl I know
He loves her so
I'm not that girl.
NO GOOD DEED (Sang by character Elphaba)
No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented
No good deed goes unpunished
That's my new creed...
My road of good intentions
Led where such roads always lead
No good deed
Goes unpunished!
Nessa!
Doctor Dillamond!
Fiyero!
Fiyero!!
One question haunts and hurts
Too much, too much to mention:
Was I really seeking good
Or just seeking attention?
Is that all good deeds are
When looked at with an ice-cold eye?
If that's all good deeds are
Maybe that's the reason why
No good deed goes unpunished
All helpful urges should be circumvented
No good deed goes unpunished
Sure, I meant well -
Well, look at what well-meant did:
All right, enough - so be it
So be it, then:
Let all Oz be agreed
I'm wicked through and through
Since I can not succeed
Fiyero, saving you
I promise no good deed
Will I attempt to do again
Ever again
No good deed
Will I do again!
LES MISERABLES
Comments are useless. It's the timeless story of Victor Hugo, made into a musical. The longest running musical in the world. Beautiful songs, superb acting, a setting that vividly recreates the French Revolution. GREAT! Also very deep in terms of the ideas conveyed by the plot. It goes beyond Hugo's work and extrapolates the social class differences after the French Revolution. It SO reminded me of the world we live in now...of the people who are now personalities and persons to look up to...people who have no depth, only a superficial and attractive outside.
MARY POPPINS
An exceptional musical. From all points of view. All these wonderful actors flawlessly singing and dancing for 3 hours, LIVE! Amazing special effects, with Mary Poppins floating over the public attached to almost invisible strings, Bert singing and DANCING on the ceiling (no joke!). I would even dare to say that some of the special effects were better than those from the actual movie. No flaws, no flat-singing, no wrong step. PERFECT.
My favorite songs are "Feed the birds"(classic one) and "Anything can happen if you , let it". In that theater hall I couldn't help not thinking of my childhood...of how much I adored Mary Poppins-the movie. Of how I had dreams of seeing all the wonderful places in which Jane and Michael were going with Mary Poppins. Well...guess what? I'm in London now and watching the Mary Poppins musical. Those of you who say it's not true that "anything can happen if you let it..."...I dare you! Bring it on! :)
Also, I've had a moving experience at St.Paul's Cathedral, because I had always pictured that place related to the old lady in Mary Poppins, selling packs of crumbs for birds. There was no lady there...however there were a lot of pigeons and even in the church, there was one poor pigeon who had a hurt leg and was living inside St.Paul's. He would sit on the bench with you, while you were praying, looking at you with his gentle eyes. It really touched me. If divine signs exists, and I know they do...this was definitely one of them.
Anything can happen if you let it
Anything can happen if you let it
Sometimes things are difficult but you can bet it
Doesn't have to be so
Changes can be made
You can move a mountain if you use a larger spade
Anything can happen, it's a marvel
You can be a butterfly
Or just stay larval
Stretch your mind beyond fantastic
Dreams are made of strong elastic
Take some sound advice and don't forget it
Anything can happen if you let it
Will soon seem certain
Thought at first it may sound clownish
See the world more upside-downish
Turn it on its head then pirouette it
If you reach for the stars
All you get are the stars
But we've found a whole new spin
If you reach for the heavens
You get the stars thrown in
Anything can happen if you let it
Life is out there waiting so go and get it
Grab it by the collar, seize it by the scruff
Once you've started living life you just can't get enough
Anything can happen, it's official
You can choose the super or the superficial
Sally forth the way we're steering
Obstacles start disappearing
Go and chase your dreams you won't regret it
Anything can happen
(Anything can happen)
Anything can happen
Anything can happen
If you let it!
JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TEHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Based on the biblical story of Joseph, who is Abraham's favorite son and whom is sold as a slave by his envious brothers. However, the story is only the background and the pretext for superb music, composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Special effects, jokes, dancing, music...and a beautiful idea...of pursuing one's dream, no matter what.
My favorite song: "Close every door to me" (sang by Joseph, in prison)
Close every door to me...
Close every door to me,
Hide all the world from me
Bar all the windows
And shut out the light
Do what you want with me,
Hate me and laugh at me
Darken my daytime
And torture my night
If my life were important I
Would ask will I live or die
But I know the answers lie
Far from this world...
Close every door to me,
Keep those I love from me
Children of Israel
Are never alone!
For I know I shall find
My own peace of mind
For I have been promised
A land of my own
Close every door to me,
Hide all the world from me
Bar all the windows
And shut out the light
Just give me a number
Instead of my name
Forget all about me
And let me decay
I do not matter,
I'm only one person
Destroy me completely
Then throw me away...
If my life were important I
Would ask will I live or die
But I know the answers lie
Far from this world
Close every door to me,
Keep those I love from me
Children of Israel
Are never alone
For we know we shall find
Our own peace of mind
For we have been promised
A land of our own
MAMMA MIA
Based on the songs of ABBA (a group that I always loved and always will). The show is amazing! I wasn't expecting that much when I went, but it's totally worth its fame. Actually, they are presently turning it into a Hollywood movie, starring Meryl Streep. The story is hilarious, the songs are INCREDIBLY fitted into the plot, one would swear they were written for "MAMMA MIA-the musical". Basically, Sophie is the main character. She's lived with her mother for her entire life and never knew her father. Now she's getting married and her biggest dream is having her father give her away at her wedding. She secretly reads her mother's diary and she figures out that 3 men can be her possible dads. So...she sends all three of them invitations to her wedding, hoping that she will find out who her real dad is. The situations deriving from it are hilarious and in the end...somebody else will end up tying the knot. Wonderful musical, great songs, GREAT dancing and...most of all...FUNNNY!!!!
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
The classic story of the most famous musical ever written. One of the finest pieces of work ever composed. That says it all!
And plays:
THE MOUSETRAP - The longest running PLAY in the world, based on Agatha Christie's police story. Great suspense, twists and turns of the plot...a totally unexpected ending. GREAT!
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
At the National Theatre, a very modern adaptation of Shakespeare's work, starring ZOE WANAMAKER (for Harry Potter fans, among whom I don't include myself, she is one of the teachers at Hogwarts). Exquisite actress and very nice play. I'm not too fond of Shakespeare's comedies, I like the dramas more, but it was nice.
Moreover, on Saturday I've been to the Royal Albert Hall, at the WHITE CHRISTMAS CONCERT. One of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had. Christmas carols, people singing along with the choir and the soloists (incredible singers, all of them). GREAT!
While living here, I've also gotten to know and love singers such as Michael Buble (he is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Think Jazz + Dean Martin + Frank Sinatra...and you got Michael Buble), Travis (search on YouTube "Why does it always rain on me", "Sing", "Love will come through" or any other of their songs), Manic Street Preachers (Welsh group, their songs are profoundly social, they sing about the world and about people, as they really are. My favorite song is "If you tolerate this, then your children will be next". Look it up on YouTube, it's worthwhile), Loreena McKennitt(Irish and amazing).
Everything revolves around music here, for me... My title (taken from The Sound of Music) reflects that...cause my dreams are really awake to the sound of music.
miercuri, 14 noiembrie 2007
Let there be peace...
Last week we had at Regent's College an interesting and deeply moving event with bereaved families from the Palestinian and Israeli side. Two speakers - one from the Israeli side, Robi Damelin and one from the Palestinian one - Ali Abu Awwad.
Were I to summarize the meeting with Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad in just one sentence, I would say that it was probably the most remarkable lesson on peace and philosophy of life that I ever experienced. Even before attending the event, I was expecting it to be a moving moment that would leave room for thought, but I can say it was even more striking than I had imagined it to be. It’s not every day that one gets to sit face to face with people for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict is not merely a page in a history book, but an intrinsic part of their existence, people whose lives will never be the same because of that very war that most of us analyze and write papers on in a detached way.
The Israeli speaker, Robi Damelin, lost her son David in the conflict. It was a touching moment to hear her read aloud the letter that she had sent to the family of the sniper who killed her son; even though it probably wasn’t the first time she was reading it in front of an audience, I could sense her voice trembling at times, as if it were just about to break into tears. It takes not only a tremendous courage but also an immense empathy to be able to forgive the person who has deprived you from the thing that meant the most in your life. Sitting in that room and listening to her reading the letter, I couldn’t help not wondering if, in her place, I would have been strong enough to do that, to ask for reconciliation with the person that I would probably have been humanly entitled to despise. I still don’t know the answer to that question and I hope with all my heart to never be forced to find it.
As a person who is an outsider to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, hearing about Israeli children who have never met nor talked to a Palestinian in their lives definitely comes as a shock. After reading about the conflict, hearing about it on the news and even writing papers on it, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that these two peoples are each fighting an “invisible” and “abstract” enemy. Just like Robi Damelin convincingly expressed it “For most of the Israeli and the Palestinians there is no face on the other side”.
This is the true narrative that nobody can see, the one that is taking place on a daily basis, beyond the closed curtains of the negotiations and intents of peace agreements. Listening to Robi talking about the way Israeli and Palestinian children never even get to meet each other, I could truly understand why this conflict is still ongoing. Even if peace was signed at international level, it would still take a significant amount of time until people would get to understand and accept each other, simply because at the human level they don’t have any idea what the other side is all about.
Most of the bad things in the history of mankind have come from our fear of the unknown, leading us into destroying others for fear of not being destroyed ourselves. So I cannot help but wonder, how can anyone preach about reconciliation and peace in the Middle East when these two peoples that have co-existed there for more than half a century now still don’t have a minimum knowledge of each other at the individual level?
When in college, I remember reading extensively about the Holocaust and what the Jewish people had to go through. I visited museums of the Holocaust throughout the world and I even have friends whose relatives have lived those dark times. Nevertheless, there was no other moment I could figure out with so much clarity the whole psychology of the Jewish people than the moment I listened to Rubi Damelin talking about her childhood. If at the beginning I was surprised to see how much empathy she was showing for the people on the other side although her son had been killed by one of them, after hearing her speak about her childhood in Germany, I completely understood.
She is one living proof of the fact that a little bit of empathy can go a long way, it can bring lifelong enemies together and make them try to understand each other for maybe the first time. And I also understood the “psychology of fear” that the Jewish people still have entrenched in them, a fear that Robi Damelin experienced herself and therefore can recognize in the people from the other side.
To Palestinians, Hebrew is the despised “language of the occupier”, just like German was the despised language for the Jewish people in the Second World War. One who has experienced a drama can understand another drama. And this is what makes Robi Damelin such an extraordinarily courageous person. However, what can now seem as an admirable and outstanding way of thinking to those from the outside probably took an immense amount of effort from her part. Getting over the death of your own flesh and blood and being able to understand the pain of the people that you deem guilty for his death…that cannot possibly happen overnight. Nevertheless, I truly admire her for reaching the point in which she can identify herself with someone else’s pain, instead of judging it. It takes not only audacity, but also an enormous generosity and will of helping others and ending this painful war.
Even if I am lucky enough to have never experienced anything similar, I could truly relate to her story merely by understanding her philosophy of life. When something as awful as losing a loved one happens, especially in the given circumstances, the first feeling than one experiences is utter anger. Then comes sorrow and eventually, after an endlessly long amount of time, comes the feeling of letting go, but not in terms of forgetting nor renouncing justice, but simply no longer feeling a victim. For most people who have ever lived dramas, letting go of the feeling of being a victim is probably the hardest thing to do, above all because anger and victimhood go together. As long as you carry anger inside of you, you remain stuck in the state of victimhood.
Having this as an anchor point, it is easier to understand from the broader perspective of IR that the peace in the Middle East is not just a question of a cease-fire or of an international truce. People have to make peace with their own feelings and sorrows and to understand the dramas on the other side in order to live together in a peaceful way. Just like the Jewish people carry inside them the same fear they experienced in the times of Holocaust, the Palestinians have the inborn fear of Israel and of all it stands for, because most of them come from refugee-families, just like Ali Abu Awwad.
Their outlook on the people from the other side is influenced by their personal dramas, by their feeling of homelessness and confusion and of not belonging anywhere, of feeling uprooted from their very birth. It’s their personal dramas that add up to the point in which hatred is born. That is why, in my opinion, more people like Robi Damelin and Ali Abud Awwad are necessary in order to make the change happen, people who can go to all the effort of understanding one another and not viewing each other as enemies but merely as people united in a mutual cause – attaining peace.
If Robi Damelin is definitely a courageous and generous woman, Ali Abu Awwad is a just as daring human being, since he was capable of letting go of his past in Intifada, of his bitter childhood in which his mother was repeatedly arrested for being a political leader and even of the death of his brother in the hands of the Israeli. Robi showed tremendous courage in turning her personal tragedy into an engine for helping other people and preventing other similar dramas, while Ali showed just as much courage in turning from a jailed militant who used to fancy violence as a way of solving things into a warden of peace and a fighter for reconciliation.
Beyond the personal tragedies which brought them together, it is that inner strength and capacity of changing themselves and reassessing their fears and their feelings that makes Robi and Ali get along and fight together for their cause. They might come from different sides of the conflict, but they are both of one kind – they are people who chose to be fighters instead of victims and chose, as Robi put it “to sit around a table and talk instead of seating by a grave and cry…”.
Each of them could have turned his personal tragedy into a reason for hating the people on the other side even more; instead of that, they decided to identify themselves with the misfortunes of the people who harmed them and to look beyond what meets the eye. To look for the internal reasons that make people react in a certain way. Just like Robi, instead of pointing to the other side and saying that the enemy comes from there and has to be destroyed, Ali chose to look for peace, to make sure that nobody would go through what him and his family have gone through.
Extrapolating from their two personal tragedies into general IR and leaving aside the guilt and hatred that nourish the conflict from both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, the conflict between the two peoples has one more decisive partaker – the rest of the world. Just like Ali pointed out, as much as other states would try to help the two sides solve the clash, the division of the world into a “Pro Palestinian” and “Pro Israeli” one is not only not going to lead to a positive outcome but will fuel the conflict even more.
On an international level, all states have a more-or-less straightforward position in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but their approach is mainly directed onto the idea of having a “positive” character and a “negative” one respectively; their mere narrative is built in such a way that a solution would have to lead to a win-lose rather than to a win-win situation. The pro-Palestinian embark from the start on the foundation that the Israeli are at guilt and they have to be defeated, while the pro-Israeli start on the premise that Palestinians carry the guilt and that they are the ones who must surrender their fight. In a divided world, peace is unattainable and utterly impossible, as each side awaits the other side’s defeat. This is why Ali’s words are indeed wise, as they have that wisdom that only sorrow and the experience of pain can give one: “Peace is something to work for, not to wait for…”.
After listening to both Rubi and Ali, I share their opinion that peace has to come from both sides and crystallize into a mutual agreement that would provide each of the two peoples with the dignity of ending a chapter and starting a new one, of peace and reconciliation. This is why the agreement should be seen as a compromise, not as the action of the strong imposing on the weak. In fact, nothing should be forced on any of the sides, as any imposition would just defeat its rightful purpose of installing peace.
The best way of expressing the difference between attaining peace and imposing it is by making use of the example of Hebron, where the Israeli reached the point in which they had to put bars on people’s houses, so that they wouldn’t throw stones at the occupiers. In the absence of true peace and will of both peoples, this is what an international agreement with equal; it would be merely the band aid trying to protect a not yet healed wound. It would be the formal and fully-diplomatic way of preventing people from throwing stones, but not the way to do away with the inner tensions that drew those people into stoning their occupiers. No peace can be attained if the solutions only aim at the consequences and not at the causes of people’s actions.
Overall, after hearing Rubi and Ali talking about their projects, about the one-day of hunger strike weekly and after watching “Encounter Point” again on YouTube, I just sat and thought about everything that was said. If one had asked my opinion on the peace perspectives in the Middle East just a couple of months ago, I confess that I would have been skeptical. But after meeting both Rubi and Ali, I truly think that there is a way. It’s just a question of choice and a question of people fighting for the same goal. Just like Robi said in the trailer of “Encounter Point” - “You have only two ways – to seek revenge, hate and continue the same cycle or to try to do something about it”. To that, I would just add what A.J. Muste, the famous pacifist leader used to say - “There is no way to peace, as peace itself is the way”.
P.S. If you are interested in the process for peace in the Middle East, watch the 7-minute trailer of Encounter Point, in which you will also see the two people that I have written about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiZ7vlRf8aI
Were I to summarize the meeting with Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad in just one sentence, I would say that it was probably the most remarkable lesson on peace and philosophy of life that I ever experienced. Even before attending the event, I was expecting it to be a moving moment that would leave room for thought, but I can say it was even more striking than I had imagined it to be. It’s not every day that one gets to sit face to face with people for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict is not merely a page in a history book, but an intrinsic part of their existence, people whose lives will never be the same because of that very war that most of us analyze and write papers on in a detached way.
The Israeli speaker, Robi Damelin, lost her son David in the conflict. It was a touching moment to hear her read aloud the letter that she had sent to the family of the sniper who killed her son; even though it probably wasn’t the first time she was reading it in front of an audience, I could sense her voice trembling at times, as if it were just about to break into tears. It takes not only a tremendous courage but also an immense empathy to be able to forgive the person who has deprived you from the thing that meant the most in your life. Sitting in that room and listening to her reading the letter, I couldn’t help not wondering if, in her place, I would have been strong enough to do that, to ask for reconciliation with the person that I would probably have been humanly entitled to despise. I still don’t know the answer to that question and I hope with all my heart to never be forced to find it.
As a person who is an outsider to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, hearing about Israeli children who have never met nor talked to a Palestinian in their lives definitely comes as a shock. After reading about the conflict, hearing about it on the news and even writing papers on it, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that these two peoples are each fighting an “invisible” and “abstract” enemy. Just like Robi Damelin convincingly expressed it “For most of the Israeli and the Palestinians there is no face on the other side”.
This is the true narrative that nobody can see, the one that is taking place on a daily basis, beyond the closed curtains of the negotiations and intents of peace agreements. Listening to Robi talking about the way Israeli and Palestinian children never even get to meet each other, I could truly understand why this conflict is still ongoing. Even if peace was signed at international level, it would still take a significant amount of time until people would get to understand and accept each other, simply because at the human level they don’t have any idea what the other side is all about.
Most of the bad things in the history of mankind have come from our fear of the unknown, leading us into destroying others for fear of not being destroyed ourselves. So I cannot help but wonder, how can anyone preach about reconciliation and peace in the Middle East when these two peoples that have co-existed there for more than half a century now still don’t have a minimum knowledge of each other at the individual level?
When in college, I remember reading extensively about the Holocaust and what the Jewish people had to go through. I visited museums of the Holocaust throughout the world and I even have friends whose relatives have lived those dark times. Nevertheless, there was no other moment I could figure out with so much clarity the whole psychology of the Jewish people than the moment I listened to Rubi Damelin talking about her childhood. If at the beginning I was surprised to see how much empathy she was showing for the people on the other side although her son had been killed by one of them, after hearing her speak about her childhood in Germany, I completely understood.
She is one living proof of the fact that a little bit of empathy can go a long way, it can bring lifelong enemies together and make them try to understand each other for maybe the first time. And I also understood the “psychology of fear” that the Jewish people still have entrenched in them, a fear that Robi Damelin experienced herself and therefore can recognize in the people from the other side.
To Palestinians, Hebrew is the despised “language of the occupier”, just like German was the despised language for the Jewish people in the Second World War. One who has experienced a drama can understand another drama. And this is what makes Robi Damelin such an extraordinarily courageous person. However, what can now seem as an admirable and outstanding way of thinking to those from the outside probably took an immense amount of effort from her part. Getting over the death of your own flesh and blood and being able to understand the pain of the people that you deem guilty for his death…that cannot possibly happen overnight. Nevertheless, I truly admire her for reaching the point in which she can identify herself with someone else’s pain, instead of judging it. It takes not only audacity, but also an enormous generosity and will of helping others and ending this painful war.
Even if I am lucky enough to have never experienced anything similar, I could truly relate to her story merely by understanding her philosophy of life. When something as awful as losing a loved one happens, especially in the given circumstances, the first feeling than one experiences is utter anger. Then comes sorrow and eventually, after an endlessly long amount of time, comes the feeling of letting go, but not in terms of forgetting nor renouncing justice, but simply no longer feeling a victim. For most people who have ever lived dramas, letting go of the feeling of being a victim is probably the hardest thing to do, above all because anger and victimhood go together. As long as you carry anger inside of you, you remain stuck in the state of victimhood.
Having this as an anchor point, it is easier to understand from the broader perspective of IR that the peace in the Middle East is not just a question of a cease-fire or of an international truce. People have to make peace with their own feelings and sorrows and to understand the dramas on the other side in order to live together in a peaceful way. Just like the Jewish people carry inside them the same fear they experienced in the times of Holocaust, the Palestinians have the inborn fear of Israel and of all it stands for, because most of them come from refugee-families, just like Ali Abu Awwad.
Their outlook on the people from the other side is influenced by their personal dramas, by their feeling of homelessness and confusion and of not belonging anywhere, of feeling uprooted from their very birth. It’s their personal dramas that add up to the point in which hatred is born. That is why, in my opinion, more people like Robi Damelin and Ali Abud Awwad are necessary in order to make the change happen, people who can go to all the effort of understanding one another and not viewing each other as enemies but merely as people united in a mutual cause – attaining peace.
If Robi Damelin is definitely a courageous and generous woman, Ali Abu Awwad is a just as daring human being, since he was capable of letting go of his past in Intifada, of his bitter childhood in which his mother was repeatedly arrested for being a political leader and even of the death of his brother in the hands of the Israeli. Robi showed tremendous courage in turning her personal tragedy into an engine for helping other people and preventing other similar dramas, while Ali showed just as much courage in turning from a jailed militant who used to fancy violence as a way of solving things into a warden of peace and a fighter for reconciliation.
Beyond the personal tragedies which brought them together, it is that inner strength and capacity of changing themselves and reassessing their fears and their feelings that makes Robi and Ali get along and fight together for their cause. They might come from different sides of the conflict, but they are both of one kind – they are people who chose to be fighters instead of victims and chose, as Robi put it “to sit around a table and talk instead of seating by a grave and cry…”.
Each of them could have turned his personal tragedy into a reason for hating the people on the other side even more; instead of that, they decided to identify themselves with the misfortunes of the people who harmed them and to look beyond what meets the eye. To look for the internal reasons that make people react in a certain way. Just like Robi, instead of pointing to the other side and saying that the enemy comes from there and has to be destroyed, Ali chose to look for peace, to make sure that nobody would go through what him and his family have gone through.
Extrapolating from their two personal tragedies into general IR and leaving aside the guilt and hatred that nourish the conflict from both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, the conflict between the two peoples has one more decisive partaker – the rest of the world. Just like Ali pointed out, as much as other states would try to help the two sides solve the clash, the division of the world into a “Pro Palestinian” and “Pro Israeli” one is not only not going to lead to a positive outcome but will fuel the conflict even more.
On an international level, all states have a more-or-less straightforward position in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but their approach is mainly directed onto the idea of having a “positive” character and a “negative” one respectively; their mere narrative is built in such a way that a solution would have to lead to a win-lose rather than to a win-win situation. The pro-Palestinian embark from the start on the foundation that the Israeli are at guilt and they have to be defeated, while the pro-Israeli start on the premise that Palestinians carry the guilt and that they are the ones who must surrender their fight. In a divided world, peace is unattainable and utterly impossible, as each side awaits the other side’s defeat. This is why Ali’s words are indeed wise, as they have that wisdom that only sorrow and the experience of pain can give one: “Peace is something to work for, not to wait for…”.
After listening to both Rubi and Ali, I share their opinion that peace has to come from both sides and crystallize into a mutual agreement that would provide each of the two peoples with the dignity of ending a chapter and starting a new one, of peace and reconciliation. This is why the agreement should be seen as a compromise, not as the action of the strong imposing on the weak. In fact, nothing should be forced on any of the sides, as any imposition would just defeat its rightful purpose of installing peace.
The best way of expressing the difference between attaining peace and imposing it is by making use of the example of Hebron, where the Israeli reached the point in which they had to put bars on people’s houses, so that they wouldn’t throw stones at the occupiers. In the absence of true peace and will of both peoples, this is what an international agreement with equal; it would be merely the band aid trying to protect a not yet healed wound. It would be the formal and fully-diplomatic way of preventing people from throwing stones, but not the way to do away with the inner tensions that drew those people into stoning their occupiers. No peace can be attained if the solutions only aim at the consequences and not at the causes of people’s actions.
Overall, after hearing Rubi and Ali talking about their projects, about the one-day of hunger strike weekly and after watching “Encounter Point” again on YouTube, I just sat and thought about everything that was said. If one had asked my opinion on the peace perspectives in the Middle East just a couple of months ago, I confess that I would have been skeptical. But after meeting both Rubi and Ali, I truly think that there is a way. It’s just a question of choice and a question of people fighting for the same goal. Just like Robi said in the trailer of “Encounter Point” - “You have only two ways – to seek revenge, hate and continue the same cycle or to try to do something about it”. To that, I would just add what A.J. Muste, the famous pacifist leader used to say - “There is no way to peace, as peace itself is the way”.
P.S. If you are interested in the process for peace in the Middle East, watch the 7-minute trailer of Encounter Point, in which you will also see the two people that I have written about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiZ7vlRf8aI
sâmbătă, 10 noiembrie 2007
A girl's inborn right to curls...
Sometimes you need to go around the world and back to find your true self and understand what you're all about. To reassess your feelings and motivations in life, to realize what you want from the others and from yourself, to reconsider your expectations or, quite the contrary, to set them even higher up.
And also, sometimes you can find simple answers to over-complicated questions such as "What am I looking for?", "What do I really want?". You can find them simply floating around you and waiting for you to bring them into your conscientious thought, you can find them while you're reading books or listening to other people speaking...and sometimes you can even find them looking into the mirror and trying to realize what the person looking back at you is really all about.
For as long as I can remember, I've "disapproved" of my curls. I know it's a stiff and formal term, but I don't want to use the word "hate". Cause it wasn't really that bad (although in bad hair days I've used the H word quite a few times...). I always wanted my hair to be straight, probably reminiscing from the Barbie dolls that I used to play with when I was little and who all had shiny straight hair. Probably from the cover of the magazines that I read as a teenager that all claimed straight hair as the no.1 sex-appeal-feature for the opposite sex.
And probably from my own feeling of over-complicating things... I'm not going to lie...I'm no picnic for a guy. I'm actually quite a handful. I'm opinionated, stubborn, I dream big dreams, I know what I want and how to get it...I can be quite a shaky ground for a guy. And probably this is one of the reasons that drove me into considering that my curly hair was over-complicating things even more. There is an episode "Sex and the city"(possibly my favorite episode) in which Mr.Big, the love of Carrie's life, decides to leave her and marry the spiritless and boring Natascha.
Sitting with her friends, Carrie remembers the movie "The way we were" with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, in which Hubbell(Robert Redford) leaves Katie(Barbra Streisand) because she's complicated and she has wild curly hair...and marries a "simpler" girl, dull and straight-haired. Following that thought, in the end of the episode, Carrie asks Mr.Big who has just gotten married to Natascha ,,Why wasn't I the one? Just so that I know". And he just answers "I don't know...it all got so complicated". Which makes Carrie thing again about Hubbell and Katie and to realize that she's "Katie". That the world is made of two types of women - "Katies" and "Simple girls".
That episode is probably my favorite. It has so much truth in it and so much sadness at the same time. When Carrie looks at Mr.Big driving away in his limousine, with his newly-wedded wife, she just concludes that "Maybe some women are just not meant to be tamed.Maybe they need to run free until they meet someone just as wild to run with...".
Every time I watch that episode, I feel "Katie" too. I'm the complicated Katie, with wild curly hair, the one who's a handful for a man, who makes things incredibly complicated...The one to which men prefer "simpler" girls, with straight hair... Everything in life is about curls. Curls imply mistery, ambiguity, surprise, unknown. On the other hand, straight hair is easy to figure out, it's straightforward, it's "comfortable". And what do men want the most? Something easy, comfortable and cosy...
I've had my times when I wanted to be "comfortable", to be a "simple" girl, to be the one that "Mr.Big" would drive away in a limousine with and fade away into the sunset. As career-driven as I've always been, as stubborn and well-spoken...when it came to love, deep inside I've unconsciously wanted to fit the profile of the "simple girl", the one "Mr.Big" and "Hubbell" end up with...Not the one that watches them bitterly driving away. And I haven't succeeded in doing that. I never did.
And you know what? That's perfectly fine. Probably for the first time in my life...that's just fine. Because for the first time I've realized that I don't and cannot possibly be a "simple girl". That no matter how straight I can get my hair to be, deep inside I'll still be a "Katie". I'll still be the complicated, want-it-all Katie. And I'll still be searching for that man who would chose me instead of the simple straight-haired girl...For that man who would chose the hard way out, not the easy way. The one who would have enough courage and manhood to "tame" Katie. To discover what "Katie" is all about, what incredibly loving soul lies underneath her complicated image.
There are people who haven't even known the "wild curly haired" Diana. I've been doing my hair straight for as far as I can remember or, if not straight, just slightly wavy...just hinting at curliness but not admitting it for fear of complication. I even laugh at remembering that a couple of years ago I accidentally ran into one of my ex-boyfriends on the street and it was one of the almost unique days in which I had my hair curled as it naturally is. While we talked, he kept staring at me in a way that I had probably never seen him stare before, not even when we were a couple. In the end, he just almost-whispered something like "I don't know how to put it but you kinda look...radiant. You look...hm...great...".
Any girl knows that there's nothing as reassuring as a compliment from one of your ex-es. It's the best type of ego-boost you could ever find. However, while I was walking away (yes, I must admit, with my ego substantially tickled) it just struck me. In all the months that we dated, he had never seen me with my hair loose. All that time, he had dated the "simple girl". And...incredibly enough...he seemed to like "Katie" better. In the relationship with him, I had always tried to "keep it simple", not to complicate things, not to implicate too much of the real me. Looking back now, I realize that the poor guy never dated ME. He didn't know anything about me, about my dreams, about my way of seeing life. He had dated the girl that I was trying to be at that time, at only 19 years old. He dated the "Simple girl wannabe", the one who thought that love comes at a price. At the price of changing yourself and moulding yourself into a person worth-loving. That 19-year-old girl just couldn't understand that a "Katie" could never become a "simple girl". For as much as she would try to.
At that point, I didn't have the full revelation. I couldn't drive myself into believing that someone would just love me for...me. Not because I ever lacked self-esteem nor self-confidence, but simply because...I always kept my eyes wide open and saw what was going on around me. I saw what boys my age were choosing. I saw the kind of girl that they wanted for themselves. And when you're 19, you don't always think about the philosophy of life and about being loved for who you are. There are lonely days in which you just want to feel loved. Full stop. There are days in which you realize that you're too much of a handful for people to handle. That you're intimidating guys and driving them away. And then you try to change yourself, you try to "fake it"...whether it's about your dreams, your irony, your stubbornness or just your curls.
Now, however...I found myself looking in the mirror and missing "Katie". Being here for all these months really made me realize that "Katies" are hard to find. That the world is full of "simple girls" and that the wheel does turn. That deep inside "simple girls" would just die to be "Katies". It's been a week since I'm sporting my curls. I don't know how nor when I started being the "Wild curly haired" Diana again. I just know that I did. And I also know that I'm never going back to the "simple girl wannabe". Never. It may sound silly, but I feel free...I feel that, for the first time in my life possibly, I really WANT to be 100% true to myself. I don't want to fake anything. I don't want to fake straight hair, I don't want to fake impressions, I don't want to fake relationships.
And the fact is...I truly am a "Katie". I want it all. I want to get my big career and revolution the world...or at least a part of it :). I want LOVE. "Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other-love", not lame and spiritless love. I want that love that can move mountains, not that love that is too "comfortably numb" to move even an inch. And you know what? I deserve it. I CAN handle it, I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'm not afraid of what the man in my life will think of me nor of whether he will want a "simpler" girl. If he wants the simpler girl, than he is definitely not "my man". And if he's not...I will just continue to run free. Until I meet someone just as wild to run with.
And also, sometimes you can find simple answers to over-complicated questions such as "What am I looking for?", "What do I really want?". You can find them simply floating around you and waiting for you to bring them into your conscientious thought, you can find them while you're reading books or listening to other people speaking...and sometimes you can even find them looking into the mirror and trying to realize what the person looking back at you is really all about.
For as long as I can remember, I've "disapproved" of my curls. I know it's a stiff and formal term, but I don't want to use the word "hate". Cause it wasn't really that bad (although in bad hair days I've used the H word quite a few times...). I always wanted my hair to be straight, probably reminiscing from the Barbie dolls that I used to play with when I was little and who all had shiny straight hair. Probably from the cover of the magazines that I read as a teenager that all claimed straight hair as the no.1 sex-appeal-feature for the opposite sex.
And probably from my own feeling of over-complicating things... I'm not going to lie...I'm no picnic for a guy. I'm actually quite a handful. I'm opinionated, stubborn, I dream big dreams, I know what I want and how to get it...I can be quite a shaky ground for a guy. And probably this is one of the reasons that drove me into considering that my curly hair was over-complicating things even more. There is an episode "Sex and the city"(possibly my favorite episode) in which Mr.Big, the love of Carrie's life, decides to leave her and marry the spiritless and boring Natascha.
Sitting with her friends, Carrie remembers the movie "The way we were" with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, in which Hubbell(Robert Redford) leaves Katie(Barbra Streisand) because she's complicated and she has wild curly hair...and marries a "simpler" girl, dull and straight-haired. Following that thought, in the end of the episode, Carrie asks Mr.Big who has just gotten married to Natascha ,,Why wasn't I the one? Just so that I know". And he just answers "I don't know...it all got so complicated". Which makes Carrie thing again about Hubbell and Katie and to realize that she's "Katie". That the world is made of two types of women - "Katies" and "Simple girls".
That episode is probably my favorite. It has so much truth in it and so much sadness at the same time. When Carrie looks at Mr.Big driving away in his limousine, with his newly-wedded wife, she just concludes that "Maybe some women are just not meant to be tamed.Maybe they need to run free until they meet someone just as wild to run with...".
Every time I watch that episode, I feel "Katie" too. I'm the complicated Katie, with wild curly hair, the one who's a handful for a man, who makes things incredibly complicated...The one to which men prefer "simpler" girls, with straight hair... Everything in life is about curls. Curls imply mistery, ambiguity, surprise, unknown. On the other hand, straight hair is easy to figure out, it's straightforward, it's "comfortable". And what do men want the most? Something easy, comfortable and cosy...
I've had my times when I wanted to be "comfortable", to be a "simple" girl, to be the one that "Mr.Big" would drive away in a limousine with and fade away into the sunset. As career-driven as I've always been, as stubborn and well-spoken...when it came to love, deep inside I've unconsciously wanted to fit the profile of the "simple girl", the one "Mr.Big" and "Hubbell" end up with...Not the one that watches them bitterly driving away. And I haven't succeeded in doing that. I never did.
And you know what? That's perfectly fine. Probably for the first time in my life...that's just fine. Because for the first time I've realized that I don't and cannot possibly be a "simple girl". That no matter how straight I can get my hair to be, deep inside I'll still be a "Katie". I'll still be the complicated, want-it-all Katie. And I'll still be searching for that man who would chose me instead of the simple straight-haired girl...For that man who would chose the hard way out, not the easy way. The one who would have enough courage and manhood to "tame" Katie. To discover what "Katie" is all about, what incredibly loving soul lies underneath her complicated image.
There are people who haven't even known the "wild curly haired" Diana. I've been doing my hair straight for as far as I can remember or, if not straight, just slightly wavy...just hinting at curliness but not admitting it for fear of complication. I even laugh at remembering that a couple of years ago I accidentally ran into one of my ex-boyfriends on the street and it was one of the almost unique days in which I had my hair curled as it naturally is. While we talked, he kept staring at me in a way that I had probably never seen him stare before, not even when we were a couple. In the end, he just almost-whispered something like "I don't know how to put it but you kinda look...radiant. You look...hm...great...".
Any girl knows that there's nothing as reassuring as a compliment from one of your ex-es. It's the best type of ego-boost you could ever find. However, while I was walking away (yes, I must admit, with my ego substantially tickled) it just struck me. In all the months that we dated, he had never seen me with my hair loose. All that time, he had dated the "simple girl". And...incredibly enough...he seemed to like "Katie" better. In the relationship with him, I had always tried to "keep it simple", not to complicate things, not to implicate too much of the real me. Looking back now, I realize that the poor guy never dated ME. He didn't know anything about me, about my dreams, about my way of seeing life. He had dated the girl that I was trying to be at that time, at only 19 years old. He dated the "Simple girl wannabe", the one who thought that love comes at a price. At the price of changing yourself and moulding yourself into a person worth-loving. That 19-year-old girl just couldn't understand that a "Katie" could never become a "simple girl". For as much as she would try to.
At that point, I didn't have the full revelation. I couldn't drive myself into believing that someone would just love me for...me. Not because I ever lacked self-esteem nor self-confidence, but simply because...I always kept my eyes wide open and saw what was going on around me. I saw what boys my age were choosing. I saw the kind of girl that they wanted for themselves. And when you're 19, you don't always think about the philosophy of life and about being loved for who you are. There are lonely days in which you just want to feel loved. Full stop. There are days in which you realize that you're too much of a handful for people to handle. That you're intimidating guys and driving them away. And then you try to change yourself, you try to "fake it"...whether it's about your dreams, your irony, your stubbornness or just your curls.
Now, however...I found myself looking in the mirror and missing "Katie". Being here for all these months really made me realize that "Katies" are hard to find. That the world is full of "simple girls" and that the wheel does turn. That deep inside "simple girls" would just die to be "Katies". It's been a week since I'm sporting my curls. I don't know how nor when I started being the "Wild curly haired" Diana again. I just know that I did. And I also know that I'm never going back to the "simple girl wannabe". Never. It may sound silly, but I feel free...I feel that, for the first time in my life possibly, I really WANT to be 100% true to myself. I don't want to fake anything. I don't want to fake straight hair, I don't want to fake impressions, I don't want to fake relationships.
And the fact is...I truly am a "Katie". I want it all. I want to get my big career and revolution the world...or at least a part of it :). I want LOVE. "Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other-love", not lame and spiritless love. I want that love that can move mountains, not that love that is too "comfortably numb" to move even an inch. And you know what? I deserve it. I CAN handle it, I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'm not afraid of what the man in my life will think of me nor of whether he will want a "simpler" girl. If he wants the simpler girl, than he is definitely not "my man". And if he's not...I will just continue to run free. Until I meet someone just as wild to run with.
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