Remote villages of the world: Ineleț

When you hear someone say that they are looking for peace, you often wonder what does that mean. Should peace be a feeling of love, happiness or freedom? Could it be all of these in the same time? Until you get to a place which lacks the trepidation that you are used to in the urban jungle, you don’t understand what is the matter with this state of peace that we all seek, whether we recognize it or not. If someone would ask me what I’m looking for the most right now, I wouldn’t answer money, time, love, fun or other petty things that we humans have placed on a pedestal when they are actually a small part of what what gives true value to a person’s life.

Watch a short movie with footage from this marvelous place in Romania

I look for peace and I find it every now and then. Ms. Maria from Ineleț made me think about it when I asked her why doesn’t she like the city:

– I stayed in the city for two months and I didn’t like it. I am free here, I have freedom.

Where should this place be where people feel freer than in the city? And why did the serenity in the eyes of the people in this village left me wondering?

Ineleț is a piece of heaven situated in the Caraş-Severin county and you have to climb the stairs in order to get to this remote place in Romania. Literally. The access to the village is partly on a path through the forest and at some point you end up with a giant rock in front of you and the stairs that lead you beyond. Beyond your comfort zone and far from what you think is natural to call daily life.

There are 35 other families living here. When I say family I mean even one person. Mrs. Nicușor greeted me, before meeting most of the locals. Sitting very chill on a bench he fondly engages in talking with me. He was born and he never left the place. Like many others locals. I look at his face carved with wrinkles from the life well lived and I see serenity. A quiet, peaceful and contented man. Do you have any idea how rare it is today to see a man content and at peace exactly as he is and exactly with what he has?

I take a deep breath and take a mental picture of this place. It’s like I don’t want to leave. I arrive at the meeting with the locals and I meet 3 ladies. I picked flowers from the meadow for them because I thought they missed the gesture of someone giving them a flower. The whole meadow is theirs…God, they could gather bucket loads of flowers and I come to them with 3 small bouquets! I did not expect my small gesture to bring them so much joy.

The two sisters left in the village, one of them being Ms. Maria, whose daughter also married in Ineleț , have the same serenity on their faces. Their eyes smile, even if life is hard. Here the horse is the most important animal with which man helps himself, without a horse they would be lost. It’s an area where the cherry tree is king.

Ms. Maria’s son-in-law takes care of some bees and brought some jars of cherry honey for sale. The mother-in-law of Ms. Maria’s daughter is 92 years old. I didn’t manage to take pictures of her however even now I remember her face oozing with freedom. People who live in the village and do not have frequent contact with our confused world (by TikTok) have a peace on their faces. You can read it, you can feel it.

What are these people losing by sitting here in isolation? Not much. The news that this village is isolated brought many curious visitors. And, as a fellow hiker joked, with these visits we kind of ruined their isolation. A paradox, isn’t it? To become famous for living in the wilderness where not even the cuckoo comes to sing, and because of that you suddenly become popular. People even risk going up the stairs placed on the rocks to see the wonder of the day with their own eyes: is it really possible to sit in utter isolation and be fine without the comfort of the urban jungle? How is it possible to live without posting everything you do on IG story? But is it really possible?

Jokes aside, I confess that I have a great admiration for the mental strength of those who remained here. They could leave, but they don’t. I think the city would make them sick: from a corner of the heaven with so much peace to go to the noise and pollution of the cities…

Once upon a time there were children here. The school is closed and non-functional because there is not a single child left in the village. There was once an educator who commuted to work here, coming in on Mondays and leaving on Fridays. Only a person with a genuine desire to work with children would make such an effort.

People live here from agriculture and what the volunteers bring to them. There are people from Sibiu, Bucharest, Craiova who bought land in the area. There is a family from Bucharest that moved here and has children. It seems that the Internet reached this remote place after all and an IT guy can also work remotely. Life is hard here, but it’s good. The chubby orange cat at the entrance of the village is the living proof that the Ineleț air is good. He is the cat of the IT guy from Bucharest. He is very gentle and quiet feline. I don’t know if there’s another cat as privileged as him . Garfield from Romania doesn’t sit on the couch watching Netflix, he likes the wooden bench and the mountain as his screen.

I bought a jar of cherry honey of curiosity and because I am a big honey lover. When I opened the jar, I was hit by a special smell. I have never come across a honey with such a smell. It’s like there’s a field of flowers in my nostrils and the cold mountain wind blows over them. The taste is unique. I’m so sorry that I didn’t take more home…. I was thinking of a possible future scenario: it might happen that we will be the ones who will carry natural foods from the top of Ineleț, and we will be the ones who can’t wait to have such goodies. Once upon a time, the village world ran after the city and the more evolved lifestyle. I feel that in these times more and more of us will start running to the village again, to find what is truly necessary for a good life: peace, natural products, clean air, a small community, the connection with nature and animals.

The villagers have the nearest town about two hours away and make a trip each time they need oil, sugar, flour or medicine. They rarely go on the stairs anymore, there is a bypass route. Ms. Maria told me that when she was young she used to climb those stairs with her children in her back. What a brave woman! Now her knees are swollen and she can’t do it anymore. I look deeply into her eyes and see that, if her legs could hold her, she would climb the stairs at least one more time, in the honour of her youth memories. You know when you look into someone’s eyes and see that person has life in them? These people have such energy, they have vigor despite their age and difficulties.

The scenery is dreamlike and I’m already feeling melancholy because I’m about to leave. When you hit this patch of land where you can hear your soul breathing, you don’t want to go back to the noise, horns, ambulances, career pursuing, discounts, malls, promotions, targets, profits and other things that we we call them “city life”. There is also a spring in the village and the water is very good. There the 92-year-old woman was waiting for me with flowers. I see her from a distance as she quickly breaks a large branch with white flowers and with the most beautiful smile she offers me a small branch. I hugged her with great affection, thinking about the beauty of a soul that still knows how to turn any place into a corner of heaven. It’s quiet here…it’s the home of tranquility which blossoms with cherry flowers.

Improving your parenting skills

Parenting is the only job you care about on your death bed.

I think that this statement sums up the essence from this very interesting podcast about honing your parenting skills.

Dr. Becky Kennedy in conversation with Andrew Huberman is managing to pinpoint on the basic things that a parent should focus on. Your job as a parent should be about sturdyness and setting boundaries. We need to validate the feelings of our children while we set them healthy boundaries for them because they need them . As Becky says “my only job is to keep you safe, not happy with me, as a parent”.

In today’s world of fast gratification adults’ tolerance to their children’s tantrums are at an all time low. You can experience moments when you feel like you are a bad parent. It is vital to separate your identity from your behaviour ( in such dire circumstances Becky suggests a funny mantra to repeat in your mind : “I’m a good parent having a bad time”).

It is very beneficial to say to a child “I hear you” or “I understand you” while maintaining the boundary. Most of the times parents lack sturdyness and confidence in their ability to say no. The child picks up on it and forces the breaking of the rules. In these moments the adult needs to show firmness backed up by a genuine desire to understand and validate the child. Children need to learn how to tolerate frustration. They need to be told no once in a while. They need a leader .

Adults have to understand that controlling your child deprives them of the valuable experience of learning. The neural pathways for this process are obstructed when the parent always intervenes, overcontrolling the child. I only control what I don’t trust, when I bribe the child to do something. When I use this method I basically tell the child that I do not trust them so they end up thinking that they’re bad. This form of education explains the rise in mental issues. After a screaming or bribing event kids have two options: self-blame or self-doubt. The parents is responsible to initiate the repair and follow through in gaining the trust of the child again. Yelling, offending or manipulating a child will leave severe marks on their mental well being.

Becky also mentions a very overlooked aspect in the parenting field: prioritizing your partner before your kids. Meeting your non-carer needs as an adult is of paramount importance. Children need their parents to have a good relationship. Do not make the mistake of focusing on your child only and leaving your partner on the side.

I have made a nice review of this long podcast yet I strongly advise you to watch the original long interview in order to reap the whole benefits from watching an expert delve into the topic of good parenting.

Bill Gates: How to avoid a climate disaster

Gasoline is cheaper than the cheapest wine. Worldwide, 15 billion liters of petrol are used every day, making it cheaper than a soft drink. It seems unbelievable, but it’s true. The fast-paced consumerist pace of today’s world has brought with it a wide range of issues, climate change being the most delicate and controversial at the same time. We will have more drought and more violent storms because of it.

A SHORT REVIEW

Bill Gates‘ book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. The solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, is filled with a lot of data and information that shows how much we have polluted the planet since we advanced technologically. The irony is that people in rich and above-average areas of the planet are largely responsible for climate problems, but those in sub-Saharan Africa and other poor areas suffer the consequences through no fault of their own. 600 million people in Africa don’t even have access to electricity and there are farmer families struggling to live on $4 a day. A flood or a drought can destroy them financially. A farmer in Switzerland will not have the same problem.

51 billion tons of greenhouse gases are added to our atmosphere each year. The key to producing clean energy is to make it as cheap as energy from fossil fuels. The latter is so cheap that it is difficult to give it up.

There are 5 big “culprits” for releasing the enormous volume of greenhouse gases:

– 31% of these gases are due to the production process (cement, steel, plastic)

– 27% is due to the connection to electricity

– 19% is due to agricultural activities

– 16% are due to travel activities

– 7% are caused by cold/hot air maintenance procedures in homes

Considering how much electricity we consume, it becomes very clear that we need the lowest possible production costs for it. Currently, fossil fuels provide two-thirds of all energy generated worldwide. It is a challenge to find alternatives.

It may seem shocking to read that the cleanest source of energy that can be obtained without emitting carbon can come from nuclear energy. The evil, blamed, feared hero. Statistics show that coal pollution kills more people in a single year than all nuclear accidents combined. But the statistics have little relevance in the face of the Chernobyl incident that still remains in the collective memory as a witness to the evil brought about by nuclear energy. Bill Gates explains in his book the processes of nuclear fission and fusion and how energy could be produced. Nuclear fusion seems to be the most ideal alternative, but it takes a lot of energy to start the fusion reaction. There is an ITER project in France that in the late 2030s aims to generate plasma and additional energy for the first time.

LONG BOOK REVIEW

In agriculture, humanity benefited enormously from two great advances: wheat with a larger grain and a shorter stem developed by the agronomist Norman Borlaug (he received the Nobel prize for this in 1970) – all the wheat that grows in the world comes from the plants he developed and the synthetic fertilizer produced by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. It is necessary that we think about alternatives for meat and succeed in reducing the carbon footprint of agricultural activities. Maintaining forests must become a priority, as one tree can absorb 4 tons of carbon dioxide in 40 years. We have lost more than 1.3 million square kilometers of forest from 1990 to the present, and this has had and is having a major impact on climate change.

We can follow as an example Denmark, a country that produces half of its electricity needs from the wind from the coast, being the largest exporter of wind turbines in the world. The UK is another country that is the biggest user of such turbines, also using offshore wind.

Green energy alternatives cost more. Erecting green buildings involves much higher costs, which explains why we have very few such buildings worldwide (the Bullit Center in Seattle is among the few greenest buildings in the world). Switching from gas boilers to heat pumps is another solution proposed by Gates, along with higher taxes on goods that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Electric cars, veggie burgers and opting for a green tariff program at your electricity supplier are other alternatives we can adopt to slow down the rapid pace of climate change.

Bill Gates’ book is full of reports, data and statistics that put the cold numbers on the table. The reality is that these numbers give us the portrait of a rapidly warming planet. The impact of this phenomenon is felt by each of us, making these scary numbers a big wake-up call for everyone. We have to change something.

Bill Bryson: A walk in the woods

It will take you almost 5 months and around 5 million steps to walk this trail from end to end. The Appalachian Trail in USA was completed on 14^th of august 1937 and it got no press attention at that time. It is the biggest volunteer-run undertaking on the planet and it is amongst the longest trails in the world.

THE SHORT REVIEW OF THIS BOOK

The first person that hiked this trail from end to end in a single summer with no tent and only using a roadmap was Earl V. Shaffer in 1948. It took him 123 days, so he walked an average of 17 miles/day (27.35/day).

This book written by Bill Bryson called A walk in the woods.Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a hilarious travel memoir. I admit that this can be the book that will either make you admire the hiking hobby or completely fear it. It is about the ultimate fail of two friends who really wanted to do this trail. They succeed and fail miserably in the same time. It is very easy to sit, read and laugh with the book in my hand, but I admit that maybe if I were them, I could have been the one suffering and giving up. Only the danger of being murdered in these forests ( we are in USA, so crime is as normal as getting bubble gum from a shop) can be enough to scare anyone away.

The Appalachian trail goes from Georgia to Maine and it is covering 2.100 miles/ 3379.62 km. You think that hiking it in 123 days was awesome… let me tell you that in 1980 there was another man War Leonard who managed to break the world record and hike this in 60 days and 16 hours.

Bill wanted to do this hike alone but as the days went by he realized he wanted someone to come with him. Stephen Katz, a friend he hasn’t spoken with in 20 years rises to the challenge after Bill has sent requests to multiple individuals. Fat, out of shape and craving for doughnuts, this man proves to be a tough companion. They give up repeatedly and the hiking journey becomes more of a hilarious fail and a delicious humorous literary cake that is a pleasure for the eyes to read.

Stories about mountains, animals, plants, murders and fails that happened along the Appalachian Trail are the spice of the book. Every 20 minutes spent walking on this trail is more than the average american will walk in a week.

Amazing history facts told by Bill will spark your imagination. In Centralia, a deserted town, there was a big fire that lasted for decades because of the huge coal deposits under it. There is enough coal under Centralia to burn for 1000 years. When the mining industry in Pennsylvania began people were stoked about discovering anthracite (a material which is very hard to lit yet impossible to put out) and because of a human error in Leligh a fire was started and it burned itself out for 80 years. The town became deserted, like a no man’s land.

The maps you will find for this trail are useless and pretty much confusing. Some of the shelters along the road are infested with rats. Stephen and Bill even went on a killing spree in one of the shelters where rats were everywhere.

I enjoyed a lot the part about the Smoky Mountains and the extreme variety of plants one can find in here. This spot in the USA has 130 native species of trees while the entire Europe has only 85. To have so much variety on a single mountain is amazing. This mountain also has 25 varieties of salamander, more than anywhere else on Earth. 101 miles (163 km) of the Appalachian Trail are also in the Shenandoah National Park, a place where the you have the highest density of black bears in the world.

If you want to do this hike prepare for strong winds in some areas. In Mount Washington there was a world record when it comes to speed recorded on 12^th of April, 1934, showing a staggering speed of 231 miles/hour (371.75 km/h).

The book ends in a hilarious way : the two guys give up and ask for help. So this is not the typical “This is Sparta, I will conquer this mountain” kind of a story. Nevertheless I think that one can learn a lot from the hiking experience of two highly unexperienced men. This book is also about the way a hike can transform you spiritually and make you ponder about life. It is also about friendship and about testing your own limits. You never know how strong you can be until being strong is your only option.

The audio version of this article:

THE LONG REVIEW OF THIS BOOK, AN IN DEPTH ANALYSIS:

Tips for your oral health

Did you know that your body has the capacity to repair small cavities that develop inside your mouth? I always thought that I have to go to the dentist to get each cavity drilled and filled , but after watching this Huberman Lab podcast I was blown way to find out that in the case of small cavities that have not reached to the dentine we can have our body fix them for us.

My short presentation

The podcast starts with some information about tooth anatomy and an oral health quiz. I used to think that the best moment to brush your teeth is in the morning so that everyone would benefit from your breath not smelling of that of a dinosaur. But it seems that the best time to brush your teeth if you can only do it once is in the night because at night your saliva has the opportunity to work its magic and if you have eaten and there are debris for 8 hours in your mouth that will not be very good.

Our saliva has a vital role. The cavity can be repaired by the chemistry of our own saliva as our teeth are in constant remineralization or demineralization process. This is why mouth breathers have more cavities as the mouth is dry and the saliva can’t work for their benefit.During the night the saliva production is reduced so the bacteria has more chances. This is why brushing your teeth before you sleep is vital.

Cavities are not caused by sugar, but by bacteria that feeds on sugar so there is no specific food that causes cavities therefore the bacteria is the one responsible for producing the acid that demineralizes our teeth.

Periodontal diseases are correlated with Alzheimer’s as the bacteria that causes gum recessionn can cross into the bloodstream. Gums are like gatekeepers and they prevent any intruder we might have in the mouth to enter in our blood. It is important to keep your mouth as alcaline as possible and to avoid tobacco, alcohol, sugar and citrus fruits.

Fluoride is a hot topic in dental heath. This element can help repair the bonds created during remineralization but it can be disruptive for thyroid and brain health and if you drink tap water you will be exposed to more fluoride. Xylitol on the other hand is much more beneficial. When bacteria eats if, it can’t produce the acid. Xylitol also kills the streptococus mutans, the bacteria responsible for cavity formation and it reduces the inflamation of the gums while it helps our mouth microbiome. So try to chew xylitol gums after a meal and maybe use a toothpaste with it too. Avoid alcohol moutwashes as they destroy your good microbiome.

Cheap things that you can use to improve your oral health are high salt solutions that you can rinse your mouth with, baking soda which is low on the abrasive scale and low fermented foods. A water floss is better than doing the flossing old school while tongue scraping should happen with another toothbrush instead of a scraper.

What you need to retain is that the mouth and gut are connected. So your oral health is more that meets the eye and it is a small link in your overall chain of health.

Do not believe the avatar

I am pretty sure that a lot of people think of the wonderful blue creatures that we have seen in the famous movie once the title of the article popped up. As mesmerizing as it might sound , the word avatar is not something I would personally strive to be. I can’t help but wonder at what it means at a deeper level.

When I enter on a social media platform all I see is avatars. People with modified pictures posting snippets of their lives. The reality is that even those snippets are not real. They are curated, maybe even manufactured through trial and error. We are presented, just like in a museum, la pièce de résistance. If you make the fatal mistake to spend a long time scrolling through the curated avatars you get depressed. It seems like everyone is happy and has their stuff together. People post pictures from vacations, uploading their best profile, putting their sunglasses on and just pretending to be cool.

Unfortunately this is not real life. And a lot of precious time gets lost while people try to pretend they have a nice life on social media instead of actually creating it. We are getting lonelier than ever while our avatars are having fun.

I just had a coffee the other day and I decided to make a little experiment: to sit at my table and just enjoy the coffee. Looking around, admiring the place. Just sitting. No phone. No screen watching. I noticed how some people sitting near me got uncomfortable. Some even stared: there must be something wrong with her, she just looks around and drinks a coffee. Almost everyone was on their phone. I think of the walking dead zombies who move just enough to get their kick. And this is what technology is being used for today. The phone becomes the other extension of ourselves when we feel awckward. It is the familiar friend that everyone has. If I hold it in my hand I can escape my boredom, my solitude, and look like I am doing fine. There is nothing important that I really do on my phone while scrolling incessantly but at least this brick of plastic gives me the chance to look normal. Otherwise I would be fidgeting like crazy.

There is an element of addiction. The notification center and the multiple apps are always ready to show us something. There is also a false feeling of missing out. It can feel like you are being left behind and forgotten unless you post what you do in your daily life. People give likes and thumbs up not because they have thought about it, but as a way of making sure that they are not forgotten. The sad thing is that with so many hearts and likes and comments there is no one to feed our cat if we leave the country for a couple of days. People no longer have meaningful conversations. Emoticons and in-app communication have become a normality.

I must admit that this reality is scary for me if I look at the cases of people who got so depressed looking at the deceitful happy life of the avatars that they decided that their life is no longer worth living. I believe that the culture of the avatar will erode our humanity and turn us into creatures who forget what real life is all about. It is more important to be connected in the present with what is happening now rather than going down the rabbit hole of the avatar show.

It is dangerous to go into the avatar museums and lose real time curating false displays of real life. What is portrayed as beautiful and magnificent should in fact be very scary…

Creative bodypainting: my nature

“It’s in his/her nature” is one expression that you might have encountered pretty often. I thought about what does it mean to accept my own nature when I started to paint myself for this project. In the springtime the magnolia tree is blooming and I must say that I always look in awe at its beauty. I felt inspired to do a bodypainting after multiple escapes in nature.

My nature is something deeply embedded in me. It is like a sort of gem which is so profoundly hidden in the undergrounds of my soul that I can be oblivious to its presence. I think that the closest that we ever get to our nature is when we know who we are and what we want. When we are children we know this. But society and parents and schools teach us otherwise: be more like this, do that in order to get the other, what you want does not make sense therefore follow me etc. A whole array of reasons why what you are must be molded and re-shaped are introduced to you.

Video

When you become an adult the gems that you have deep inside are lurking in the shadows. They are screaming to come out to light, to be gleaming and to honor you. My nature is what I am meant to be since my birth, a divine purpose of my existence, a primordial method of doing the things my way. What do I like? Who do I want to be? What do I want to do?

In relationships we can lose ourselves quite easily. Focused on pleasing the other or to change him/her, we lose ourselves. At one point you realize that you wasted so much energy trying to be something that you are not. This is one of the reasons why some people all of a sudden decide to go separate ways or to change course in a career: their nature is calling them. You can’t pretend for years to be someone if your inner self is crying out for freedom, creativity, humour etc. Our nature is something that calls for our truest version of ourselves. We can’t trade this for anything else, not even for a relationship or for financial benefits. Between the other and ourselves we will always choose us. It is not selfish, it is necessary. Choosing your authentic self brings you closer to your nature.

When I accept my nature I accept myself full heartedly. Even if I might look weird or unacceptable in the eyes of the others. Losing myself in order to please the world is a price too high to pay. It is actually not worth it.

Life is a journey and we can have the honour to tackle it together with someone. But only if that aligns with who we are at our core. Because when you least expect it….your nature will call you. And like a helpless sailor on the sea, this siren song will always lure you in, towards your hidden diamond: your truest self. You can’t escape from it. It will call you.

Peter Wohlleben: The hidden life of trees

The tension of forest hikers increases in coniferous forests and decreases in oak ones. I’m wondering why? Well, endangered forests are unstable and do not constitute a suitable living environment for humans due to the olfactory alarm messages of trees threatened by dehydration. Yes. When you walk through the forest or climb a mountain and come across trees, you probably have no idea that the tall beautiful giants communicate with each other.

My review of this book

The audio version of this article

The romanian version of this article

Peter Wohlleben‘s book – The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from a Secret World is fascinating.

I think that this kind of curiosity about the elements that surround the paths we walk on is very useful and helps us appreciate nature even more.

Peter was born in 1964 and was employed at the forest administration in Hümmel (Germany) after studying forestry. After many years he resigned and decided to manage a forest in Eifel.

The communication language of trees is of olfactory nature. When an animal feeds from the tree, the latter will emit poisonous substances and signals at a distance to his “brothers” to notify them of the danger.

Why does mountain air or forest air feel so good? The air in young spruce forests is almost free of bacteria thanks to the phytoncides secreted by the needles, thus the trees disinfect the environment in which they live. That’s why we long to escape the urban jungle for some fresh air. Our nose does not lie to us.

In a handful of forest land dwell more beings than people on earth. Hyphae, networks of fungi, are a kind of internet of the forest. Trees communicate through the chemicals they transmit through these intermediaries. Trees help each other. Mother-trees, before they fall, transmit through their roots the last reserves to the children, thus helping them to change their growth rate. What’s interesting is that man-planted forests have a different supporting network, in the sense that it seems that through human intervention, those trees lose some of their ability to communicate underground. In the virgin forests you can observe, as a specialist, those networks of old “friendships” between the trees. For example, when a tree is struck by lightning, others within a radius of 15 meters also die, because in the underground they were connected to the “victim” and thus they also received a fatal shock. And for a tree a hole in the bark is, therefore, almost as unpleasant as a wound in the skin for us. Fascinating, isn’t it? We often pass by these giants thinking they don’t feel anything. Well, we were wrong.

How long can a tree live? Much more than you, that’s for sure. Although if I think about the trees in Romania… I don’t know if they will have such a long life. The appetite for furniture is great… The irony of fate is that we, these ephemeral creatures, strangle the life through massive deforestation of those who may outlive us by thousands of years in longevity. Research of secular spruce trees in the Swedish province of Dalarna with the C14 radiocarbon method showed an age of….hold on…9550 years. And now don’t you feel angry because of the ignorants who dream of cutting wood for a table on which to put their cheap pint of beer? To cut down trees in ignorance is to lose that fundamental respect for life and lack the vision for the good of future generations.

The beech tree begins to reproduce from the age of 80-150 years, and by the age of 400 it can produce at least 60 times fruits and 1.8 million seeds. Of these only one will become a mature tree. To produce 1 kg of wood, a beech tree uses 180 liters of water. The trunk of a mature beech tree needs for growth an amount of sugar and cellulose equal to the harvest of a wheat field of 10,000 m². You see, this kind of details shows how difficult and long-lasting it is for a tree to mature. To see a forest and know the life story of a tree is something that should be taught in schools and families. A respect for nature is acquired through knowledge and education.

We also have street children when it comes to trees. It is about the less fortunate, about the trees planted in the cities. Poor them! The acid in the dog’s urine attacks the bark and can cause the roots to die. So you don’t do any good when you let your friend “quench” the tree’s thirst, on the contrary. The salt thrown on the streets in the winter is another enemy, and the night lighting is terrible for them. In the United States at one time, 9% of oak tree deaths in an american city were due to nighttime lighting. Trees need sleep too. I looked with different eyes after finishing this book at the roadside trees. No support network, no soil full of hyphae, no natural conditions…. I felt sad…

We are at the beginning of spring. The highest pressure is measured in the trees now, before sprouting. Then the water enters the trunk with such a force, that it can be heard with a stethoscope placed on the bark. I’d call it the symphony of life, and I think that without an appreciation of the leafy giants we may soon be left quietly, with a stethoscope on…nothing. Furniture gives us neither oxygen, nor symphony.

I think we need more books like this one to show people how much we need nature, much more than it needs us.

The path to your soul

As I walked on the forest path I was thinking about the human soul. The more I thought about it the more similarities I could feel that it has with the trails that we often step on in the woods.

Maybe plants and tiny emergent sprouts of grass can feel pain. We can’t ask them and find out the truth. But with the soul…I think I speak for many people when I say that having someone step callously inside of it can feel extremely hurtful.

Have you noticed that the places where no one steps on are filled with wild flowers and vegetation? The more beaten a path is the more bleak and sterile it becomes. You can rarely see a flower or some grass. The soil has hardened and almost no one feels bad for walking there. On the contrary, in the “virgin” places, some of us can experience a sense of guilt for stepping on those beautiful flowers while others might feel victorious for conquering that piece of land. It all depends on the appreciation and respect one carries for the place they are stepping on. The irony of it all is that the more beaten a path is the more love it requires and demands, something that an ignorant observer might ignore, thinking that as long as it looks so dull and bleak it is not worth investing into it anymore…

If we extrapolate the whole matter to the human soul, we would come to some interesting conclusions. We, unlike the forest, have the option to choose who will come inside our garden and where will that person be allowed to walk. If we allow too many people inside our heart, too fast, without knowing their character, we risk damage. We no longer have the energy to restore our beaten path and redeem our lost lush spiritual bliss. Just like a beaten up trail, we are bleak, void, hollow. The intruders took all of our energy, stepped on all that we have planted. Some people, in a delusional desperate attempt to restore their inner bloom, allow another person after another person, just in the hopes that someone will help. Unfortunately that proves to be even more damaging. You have to enclose the space, to put a fence and allow the inner healing to happen. Our inner garden is no different than a forest path. The more we allow strangers to step on it, the more cynical, void of beautiful emotions we become. We become hardened and nothing moves us anymore. We can lose hope in love, friendship, human kindness just because of a handful of grim people on whom we did a very poor evaluation.

Is there any hope for a devastated soul? Yes. It is called boundaries. A remedy which needs solitude and introspection. A forest will always regenerate if someone will enclose it and allow no access. Nature demands its rights and vegetation will soon begin to grow on top of that soil which seemed to promise nothing. We humans have a limited amount of energy. We have to nurture it and give it carefully to a group of selected people. A soul garden has to be always protected by its gardener: us. This requires inner love and the knowledge that what we have inside is well worth the wait and the requirements that we put a non-negociable on when we meet new people. The danger of being too loosey-goosey with our standards is like allowing deforestation for a forest: the damage takes a long time to repair and the lesson will leave a bitter taste when it could have been a lot easier if we would have put a fence around it.

What you love…you protect. This is the mantra that every human being should repeat to oneself everyday while protecting the path to their soul.

What you eat can make you sick

If you are a man and you are obese you have doubled your chances of having an autistic child. The same goes for women. If as a man you are also diabetic and obese then the risk of you having an autistic child quadruples. These statistics are fresh and are brought to you by Chris Palmer, an expert on mental health. The ideas you will read about in my article are distilled thoughts that I had after listening to an interview of Chris Palmer with Steven Bartlett in the Diary of a CEO Podcast.

Do you know that in USA the rates of autism have quadrupled in the last 20 years? The suicide rates for teenagers have also skyrocketed. The real epidemic is mental health issues.

The food that we are eating is one of the main factors identified as a major contributor to the state of our mental health. The high cortisol levels due to stress are also responsible for depression and other mental conditions. The stress that our cells go through because of our inability to process the toxic fast food is really detrimental for our overall health. Studies have shown that people who eat high processed food have a higher chance for developing mental health disorders. If you are curious please do some digging and read about the mitochondrial theory of autism, which was formulated in 1985.

Chris talks about several patients with mental disorders who got better and got off the medication by following a certain nutritional protocol. The ketogenic diet helped one woman with schizophrenia to give up her medications and have a normal life after decades of suffering.

The most amazing idea that I have found in this interview is connected to the science of metabolic health and to the idea that some of the mental illnesses are in fact metabolic disorders affecting the brain. Obesity, pre-diabetes and diabetes are all metabolic conditions and as they all skyrocketed we can see a correlation with the rise in mental issues.

Here is the link to the original interview, I highly recommend you to watch it.

Les Précieuses ridicules by Molière

Yesterday on the 27^th of march was the World Theatre Day. I thought of how often people go now to see a play. In the instant gratification culture, where everything is at the touch of a button, the attention necessary for waiting the plot to unfold is of paramount importance. The apps that give instant everything are impeding our patience for the slow pace of action.

It has been a new play for me. Written by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) , The Absurd Précieuses ( original title Les Précieuses ridicules) is a one-act satire with the main focus on two ladies who are over the top when it comes to acting smart and witty when the reality is that they are bathing in a sea of ignorance and stupidity.

Magdelon and Cathos are the précieuses, two young women who came from the province into the wonderful town of Paris. They are eager to become known in the good world, with influence.

Gorgibus is the father of Magdelon and uncle of Cathos and he is pretty fed up of how expensive it has become to support the two ladies.

They need large amounts of cucumbers in order to prevent wrinkles to appear on their faces, expensive extracts of lily’s milk and all kind of neverheard concoctions that these ladies use to beautify themselves. He wants to see them married and he decides they should marry a pair of elegant eligible young men, La Grange and Du Croisy, but the two précieuses ridicule the guys and refuse their courtship. What is the reason , you might ask yourself ? As you can tell Magdelon and Cathos are two annoying pricks and anyone wanting to marry them should be taken immediately to sign the papers as that would be pure luck.

The ladies dream of a love story inspired from the books. With drama. With feelings of love which are not immediately revealed by the man. Marriage looks to them as a deal made in the market, it feels too mundane and offensive. How did the two guys dare to propose marriage to them? They want drama. They want a man who knows how to play with words. Gorgibus is dumbfounded and he can’t understand the logic behind this thinking. There is no logic of course as these ladies have no idea about how real world works and how healthy love looks like. They live in a dream fairytale and pretend to be witty and all-knowing when in fact they lack culture and intelligence.

The two young suitors who got rejected and ridiculed are determined to get revenge on the pretentious ladies. Here the play starts to become delicious.

Magdelon and Cathos receive a perfumed letter in which they are respectfully asked if they allow the presence of the “Marquis” de Mascarille. Smitten by the perfumed letter and posh words, they accept. Lured by the social status of the Marquis they are already fantasizing of how popular they will become once the influential circles hear of this visit.

The Marquis is a pompous man covered in red feathers and brought to the place on a chair by two slaves.

He is the kind of guy that needs constant admiration. He wants to be worshipped and he loves the attention. The ladies are hooked. They ask him all sorts of questions and he is more than happy to fool them with sweet words. He recites poems, theater plays and tells about amazing adventured which, for a smart ear, never happened. The Marquis reminds me of the real life narcissist person. The one that knows how to play with your mind by only saying the right words. The reality of his lies are clear for a sane mind. But for those who want the drama or who have lived in a fantasy world where everything is believed before it is verified, this Marquis is perfect. I thought of the fact that it takes a certain type of woman to attract such a suitor and it definetely takes a certain type of man to be willing to put this effort to impress a précieuse. The charade would end very fast if the woman would have the confidence to truly test the man and not believe the sweet words and if the man would test the woman for other things than pretty looks and sweet laughters.

The world we live in now is filled with précieuses who prefer to use more filters and more lipsticks rather than reading a page from a book. The world we live in now is filled with Mascarilles who pretend to be strong men when in fact they are filled with insecurities and doubts. The show of displaying love is a charade. The real suitors who are direct and straightforward and drama-free are cast aside, as they bluntness does not feed the need for drama.

The pompous show of the narcissistic Mascarille conquers the heart of the précieuses.

Now it is the perfect time to introduce the next suitor , a friend of Mascarille. The “Vicomte” de Jodelet. A very slow moving human being, with a somptuous appearance. Master of words, he also begins to tell fantasy stories of how he worked in the army and how brave he was. All of the stories are pure fiction, yet the ladies believe every single word. Their need to be nicely lied and lured into a fantasy world of love, lust and drama, has been fulfilled. Already smitten, both of them drop their handkerchiefs and the two suitors are ready to propose.

Oh but now real life happens. All of a sudden La Grange and Du Croisy appear.

They are out of breath and they start saying how they have looked for the other two guys incessantly. The Marquis and the Vicomte are their valets. Yes my dear. Two poor valets. The précieuses almost have a heart attack. They got fooled. The real suitors ask the two frauds to remove piece by piece all of the clothes they have stolen from their wardrobe. In the end even the intimate pieces get removed as the two naked fools are asked to put a bag to cover their naked body. This is a disaster for the young ladies. Everyone in Paris will find out about this. They got ridiculed and fooled and smitten by two poor valets! La Grange and Du Croisy laugh in satisfaction, telling them that they are more than welcome to keep the valets as they do not need them anymore.

Gorgibus enters the scene and he is devastated.

This prank ended the future of the girls. Now the only solution is to send these two ignorant ladies to the monastery as no sane man would ever want such lunatics as wives.

It was a delicious play and the plot is not very different from what happens in the real world in some places. I would say that courtship can be a charade for the ignorant and a funny attempt for the witty. Love is not about sweet words, love is about action and commitment.

Folk music for mountain climbing

With such a title, “Gala of Mountain Songs “ , it is quite clear that you will be able to attract mountain lovers to the event.

I recorder my romanian version for this article that you can listen to here

Here is the english version:

The concert was beautiful, there were things that touched my soul and I confess that every time when I see a man in full exercise of his talent, I can’t help but marvel at how skillful humans are at so many things.

The headliners were Emeric Imre and Tituș Constantin. In addition to the two, local artists performed. I entered the hall at 8 pm and left at 11 pm and a bit. The local artists lingered a bit and Tituș told them : “sigh, I thought we settled on performing  just 5 songs per artist”. Eh, what can you do, just about any man would like to prolong his moment as a movie star when he is on stage. Come on, would you say that if all the spotlights were on you and if you could see the sparkles in the eyes of those who were staring in amazement at your fingers moving like a river on the guitar and at your voice that makes the sun dance that you wouldn’t want just a tad bit more of the attention cake?

Tituș Constantin says that the mountain always shows us the divine dimensions, and his mountain songs are songs about the spiritual heights of each of us.  Tituș remembers the Secuilor Cabin, and starts with the opening song “For the sake of the mountains”.

“We are all in high spirits
In the cottage with songs and flowers
And in all I do I put my love
For the sake of the mountains”

From Felicia Pop’s interpretation, I really liked “Ofranda“, with lyrics by George Stanca.

“Pick the dew from my forehead
With your thumbs
And we will love each other among the mountain flowers
Only the mountain will listen to us”

How can you not feel how your soul trembles at the thought of a moment of love in your favorite place, the mountain, where “we bathe in eternal snow” ?

Now don’t you giggle like an eternally valiant and green hillbilly because I know that there are still traces of romance in each of us. Except that for some of us the romantic soul is covered by a very heavy snow of painful past experiences. To deny this is like trying to cover your heart with a bandana and then pretend it doesn’t exist, as if you’re hiding in a hide and seek game. Cuckoo! Who is here? Is it my heart?

A song about the inner mountain in each of us, a song about the spiritual heights, which was gifted to him because all the songs are already written up there in the sky with God, and the artists only receive them on Earth through divine inspiration is the song “My Mountain“.
Tituș started from the idea that God is on the top of a mountain and all of the paths that we go through in life lead us there, “my mountain, my mountain, a stone step to God“. This seems to be a verse squeezed right from the heart while ambling through the brains of the mountains. This verse made me quite pensive, with things to think about for home.

Tituș Constantin’s latest mountain song is about beautiful memories acquired in the mountains, at the cabins, which were written just like in the movies, “Just like in a fairytale” is a song where “the sky paints with lights on the cabin”. This lyric made me think of the numerous times when I stood with my head thrown back, looking toward the stars, bathing my eyes in the vast cosmos…

” The Ravine “, ” Stranger’s ballad ” and “Angel’s song ” continue, and at “The two of us and a blue mountain” the hall is already buzzing with joy. Tituș knows how to involve the audience, to bring it along with him on the mountain of his lyrics.

The artist’s moment ends with “The Moon in Waterfalls“, his most famous song.

“Let the stars stand near my heavy forehead
To hear how the
Moon falls
In the falls”

The third artist is Daniel Avram accompanied by Dan Avram, he performs a series of songs with lyrics by George Bacovia and  Dumitru Mălin. I liked him,  but not as much as I liked Tituș. There’s something unique  about an original composition, knowing that the lyrics belong to the person singing to you, something that I can’t explain that gives me a different feeling. It’s like there’s more emotion behind what you hear, beyond the unspoken words.


The last to enter the stage is Emeric Imre, who came from Cluj. During the first song, Tituș also accompanies him with a harmonica. His songs are based on lyrics written by Adrian Păunescu, Nichita Stănescu, Ion Minulescu. He also performs some of his own original compositions such as “Gara“, a song composed in the train station in 1994. His guitar riffs are very soothing for the ear. Emeric twirls his fingers on the guitar and you can tell that  he loves it just  like a mountaineer loves the sensation of poking his ice ax into the flesh of the mountain.  My favorite song was “Cântec“, with lyrics by Nichita Stănescu.

Listening to Imre is such a delicious moment, like a juicy honeycomb dripping sweetness on your lips. Everything goes perfectly: the voice, the guitar, the emotion: like a perfect sunrise that caresses your eyes the first thing in the morning. Listening to mountain songs from the source feels like that nice, hot cup of tea that someone gives to you just when you’re shivering. It touches your soul and you never forget it.

How to be a better parent?

You don’t have to have children to find this book useful. It would really be a good idea to read it before you have children.

My review of this book!

• There are three important ideas that stuck in my mind after reading this book:

1. As a parent you are responsible for your own behavior and reconciliation will not happen if you try to blame someone else.

2. It’s not good that the school favors left-hemisphere learning activities when young children are right-hemisphere beings!

3. Stories have a crucial role in the development of the child’s process of self-understanding.

The book begins with useful information about the different types of memory: explicit and implicit. Implicit memory is an early type of nonverbal memory and it is where events of which we are not aware can be recorded. The baby can store the memory of a traumatic moment in the body, and years later a certain trigger can trigger those memories without the adult being aware of it.

I found the details about our cerebral hemispheres very interesting. The left hemisphere has a linear, logical perspective based on language and good-versus-evil thinking, while the right hemisphere processes information non-linearly and holistically, being under the sway of intense and spontaneous emotions and a recorder for mental models of the self. Children are right hemisphere beings and despite this fact the school focuses on left hemisphere activities. It is deeply wrong. This detail is vital because if you as an adult are not in touch with your emotions and do not allow yourself to work with your right hemisphere at the wheel then you will not be able to understand your child.

When our children tell us what they think and feel, it is important to respect their experience, whether or not it is similar to our own. Parents would do better to listen and understand their children’s experience, instead of telling them that what they think and feel is not valid (Daniel Siegel)

A very interesting and revealing exercise was this: write three words that describe the relationship with your own child – is it similar to what you would use to describe the relationship with your own parent?

In order to get along with your child, you need to have an aligned, integrative, conjugated communication with him. That is, to have the ability to have a mutual exchange of signals, to be present in the interactions with him. You need as a parent to understand that a preschooler cannot put his feelings into words because one part of his brain – the corpus callosum – is not developed enough! Many times the adult is tempted to think that the child’s emotional outbursts are a sign of bad will, but if you knew that their brains are actually not developed enough for more, would you still be so severe? It’s like being angry at a one-month-old baby for not wanting to stand up. It is ideal to choose the higher path, when we consciously determine how to respond to the child’s behavior, to the detriment of the lower path, where we have impulsive reactions to the children’s actions.

Secure attachment is another vital element in parenting. This type of attachment is crucial, especially in the ruptures and repairs that inevitably happen in any relationship. When you have the confidence that you are loved and respected you can put aside the element of shame and take a step towards reconciliation.

Studies have shown that a parent whose trauma or loss has not been processed will most likely engage in the same type of behavior that will frighten their children and create disorganized attachment in them (Daniel Siegel)

The first years of life will be decisive. Children need “dyadic adjustment”, i.e. a genuine connection with the caregivers, an emotional presence synchronized with their needs. It is not enough to just be physically present. The child senses when your mind is elsewhere and this will affect the connection between you.

Learn to tell stories to your child. He can understand a lot about himself and others from the stories. You can also keep a diary for yourself as a parent in which you write down your difficult moments so that you can observe yourself objectively. Many times you will notice that the reactions to your child have more to do with your own childhood and trauma than with what you think the child did wrong.

Last but not least, you need to learn to be emotionally intelligent, to show flexibility, and to continuously work on resolving your own traumas that you had in your relationship with your parents. This will be the most beautiful gift you will give your child: a healed, conscious, authentic and present adult.

Parenthood gives us the opportunity to re-educate ourselves by understanding our early experiences (Daniel Siegel)

Imagine your dream school!

I do not know how school was for you, but I might try to take a guess, especially if your country of origin is in Eastern Europe. Dull classrooms, very little green space around the concrete giant and a lot of books and stuff that you had to learn to squeeze it willy-nilly in your tiny little mind at that time.

It is 2024 and I am wondering how a dream school would look like. A school where children and teenagers would actually enjoy going. A place where they could be prepared for real life instead of being fed academic fodder.

The moment I have put the word dream and school in a sentence my imagination started to ooze with spectacular ideas. I am thinking of a school build at the clearance of a forest. A building which is prioritizing having a lot of green space around it, where children can relax and exercise. Denmark has been quite innovative in regards to education and this country has forest schools which prove to be excellent even for kids with disorders like autism and ADHD. If they can do it, why couldn’t Europe or other continents do it as well?

I think of a school where a lot of the classes could be held outdoors during the good days when wheather allows it. I believe that any school should have a cantine of its own, a swimming pool and a small botanical garden. There should be fun and exciting labs for chemistry and physics , astronomy and cooking, where experience is hands on the most used tool for learning. Children learn the best from doing things with their hands, from seeing matter unfold in front of their eyes. The quality of their thinking is different than ours. What on Earth made us believe that the biology of a child makes him fit to sit still for hours and ingest all of the information that is served to him? I find it absolutely dreadful and sedentary. Children should be allowed to move and explore while learning. The biggest issue with the current schools is that we have forced the child to adapt to the curriculum and to the school’s obsolete norms. It should be the other way around: the school and the curriculum should adapt to the children’s and society’s current needs. A school is putting the foundations for a future society. We need to constantly innovate the learning process.

A dream school should be a place filled with plants and flowers even indoors. Children needs to breathe clean air and also learn to appreciate and take care of nature. A small little farm near the school would allow the little ones to get used to the animals and learn the circuit of food . If we want more farmers we need to start them early on loving nature and plants.

As for personnel I believe that there is too much bureaucracy on the shoulders of teachers. Filling in the necessary papers will soon be delegated to AI or a different type of personnel. Teachers should prioritize the children, not the papers that they need to do. There should be special rooms in which they could have their meals in silence and to feel like they have a healthy rhythm in which they conduct their activity. It would be a great idea to have relaxation rooms for personnel with professional massage therapists that could provide teachers with a well deserved massage if they feel like they need it. Everything that the children and teachers need in order to be well should be inside the school. A lot of parents needs to go with the child for after school in one place, for swimming pool in another one, for tennis in another one. I think of a dream school as a specially designed project to include all of the auxiliary facilities necessary for children to get a various array of activities done: tennis, swimming,football, martial arts, chess etc. We do not need more textbooks and more extra working materials. We need more experiences and more activities that could stimulate the child’s mind in a different way. If the schools continue the model of keeping the child tied to the book and having to read and make exercises out of it, in the end the child will resent the book and the learning process. This is not the way.

A dream school is the kind of place that any adult would dream of letting their child spend hours at an end. The school could conduct different types of activities to include the parents and a lot of the auxiliary personnel should prioritize the parents in the selection of employees. A dream school is a mini society in itself. It should allow children trips to various local businesses in order to give them a taste of real life. You see, we are currently looking at school as an issolated building where kids get smart. That’s not the case. The schools should be connected with local businesses and have a collaboration with them. We do not teach children about pizza from a textbook. We need to take them to a pizzeria and help them watch the real process, the real challenges. Only then they can be prepared for the real life.

A dream school focuses on experiences and diversity. It is a dynamic place where children are being taught by following a simplified curriculum. Complex science, math, biology, chemistry, should be taught later and only to those who show a preference and a skill for it. We need more focus on arts and creative endeavours where children use their hands. There is a very pernicious mentality circulating among adults that is biased towards turning all children into doctors, engineers, teachers, programmers. The brain of the child is a right emisphere kind of a place. It is not made to function so much on the logical side that we have build our schools around.

The success of a society or lack thereof is a mirror of the quality of the educational process to prepare the individual to function in a future society. This is why school should be build to be constantly one steap ahead to the future and continuosly changing.

I believe that one day, many decades from now, someone will look at the idea of a dream school and realize that it needs to be made into reality.

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What’s the difference between a child and a laptop?

I must admit that this was an interesting reading for me because the author has managed to make quantum physics a very juicy topic. I have a strong belief that if all teachers of exact sciences would possess this fun, quirky manner of explaining complicated things in a simple way, all children would absolutely adore physics. The author is Cristian Presură and the book’s title is : What is the difference between a child and a laptop? A personal journey through religion, physics and neuroscience ( original title: Care e diferența dintre un copil și un laptop?O călătorie personală prin religie, fizică și neuroștiințe)

My review

A quote about the incredible tiny thing that makes us think called brain really touched my heart:

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. There are nearly a hundred billion neurons in the brain, each containing thousands of billions of atoms. This is why the number of atoms in the human brain is greater than the number of all the stars in the observable universe which, in turn, is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth

The book starts from a rather fun ( or not so fun for the author) experience. The author gave an interview and, as usual, some people took some snippets out of it and somehow the remark “a child is no different than a laptop” was attributed to the writer. Of course this is not what he said, but taking things out of context in order to create something that will attract reactions can be a norm in today’s media.

This is the book in which everything is cleared up and explained. I like the personal touch of the author on the topic of qualia. Pain humbles us. Pain shows us that we are alive. Atoms do not feel pain yet we are a mass made out of atoms and we all know how a broken heart feels.

We are taken on a journey through science, quantum fields, neuroscience, religion and spirituality. In the end I have remained in awe thinking about the vastness of this universe and how tiny we are in the big scheme of things.

I admit that , contrary to my own beliefs, the part where the author explains some heavy physics is my favourite. Who would have thought?

Another quote that I really loved from this book is about our universe :

We often forget that we are beings living our lives on one of the many planets of the universe. Each of us is just one of the billions of people on this planet, which is one of the billions of planets in the galaxy of the observable universe (the one seen in the sky). This, in turn, is a tiny part of an entire universe that we know for sure is at least a million times larger. That is why, very likely, the concepts we develop about the world bear the imprint of the planet we are on, the society we live in and the biological brain, which emerged as a result of natural evolution on this planet. It is then almost obvious that other civilizations, developed on other planets, will have different concepts.

My comfort food: quince stew

We all love a good comfort food. I have tried a quince stew with turkey meat and it was amazing.

This recipe also had white wine and cinnamon in its ingredients and , believe it or not, they go very well with the meat.

I have found out recently about the spiritual benefits of cooking your own meals. Everything is energy and if you think of it this way you begin to think twice before eating out. The people who prepare the food should infuse it with their good energy. But too often I have seen grumpy kitchen employees preparing the dishes.

Sometimes you can have an angry Scrooge as a member of the family. You can taste it in their food. I like cooking and it feels like a sort of therapy. I can do things with my hands and I see a result. It is soothing for my nervous system.

This blog will be filled with different parts of me: painting, bodypainting, art, books, photography, crafts, tattoos and now I can add cooking. God really blessed me with a lot of skills. Thank you!

I vote for daily celebration

I hope that International Women’s Day is not some sort of breaking news for you. If it is you still have time to run as if a grenade is ready to explode and buy some overpriced gift as the merchants rub their hands at the sight of a lost lamb in the midst of the hungry wolves.

I believe that going with the crowd when it comes to celebration is wrong. As usual, when many people decide something and go in one direction, that way is usually the wrong path. Don’t get me wrong, I am a woman and I love the idea of appreciating womanhood. But something in this overinflated show of buying love feels off. I can’t help but wonder how many men will run tomorrow or on the 26th of march to buy a rose for a woman that they love.

I think it feels off even for the men. It is this pressure of having to conform. Everyone does it and if you don’t do it too the basic assumption will be: what a prick! Every woman expects it because of the show that is happening around her. Both sexes fall victims to this objectifying of love.

I vote for daily small celebration instead. Every day when a special woman/man that you love is still in your life it is a great day. The other way around is true as well, let’s not forget about the men! We need to learn to show love in small gestures. A kiss, a hug, a kind word can tell the love that a 1000 roses couldn’t. I think it feels more genuine when it is not forced. We can all agree how awful it feels to receive someone’s loving gesture or gift knowing that it was done out of a sense of duty.

Women should celebrate themselves daily. Put on that lipstick and fancy dress every day. Smile and be joyfull. If you are a man you do not need to wait for this kind of days to show her appreciation. It will cost you extra money and it will not feel authentic. If you feel it in your heart to go with the crowd because it is what you desire then this day was great for you. If you just conformed you are sitting now in a fancy restaurant pretending to enjoy some duck wrapped in cosmic orange peels  just to show the world that …well..you love.

Love is a noble feeling. It does not need the cheapness of conformity. It needs authenticity, simplicity, genuine intention. That’s it. Love is simple. Every single day. Somehow at the end of writing this article a song popped into my head. It feels almost right to end this post with it. Enjoy!

Somehow at the end of writing this article a song popped into my head. It feels almost right to end this post with it. Enjoy!

Climb your inner mountain

I do not read travelling memoirs very often, but this one captivated me and somehow my fingers grasped onto in while I was in a casual stroll inside the library. Do you know when you go there with the thought “ I will only return the old books and not borrow any new ones” and somehow, I do not know how, you end up back home with 2 or 3 books that you can’t wait to read? Well welcome to my world!

This book was written some while ago but the theme is as fresh as a spring snowdrop. Travelling with his best friend, Marius discovers the beautiful world of Kathmandu and the joy of climbing on one of the highest mountains in the world.

I liked it so much because the style of writing is super casual, light, funny, hilarious in some moments. I liked it because Marius writes about something that I always thought about: the futility of posting on social media while you are on a trip. Nobody cares , first of all, and second of all…you are ruining your experience. You must be in the moment. You must disconnect. The only way to travel on the top of the mountain is to climb deep down yourself.

How many people have the courage and the discipline to just go on a trip and not post? Not check their phones? Not being eager to share the news of seing one thing as if you are the first person on the Planet doing it?

I like this style of travelling and maybe reading this kind of stuff would help a lot of explorers to be more dedicated to the experience rather than to the need of sharing it in real time.

Your north star

I really like it when I can see a clear night sky during my nighttime walks. I often wonder how would it be if for a moment all humanity would come to an agreement to shut down the lights and let the city breathe again in utter darkness. I think we could all enjoy the beauty of the shining stars and maybe have a chance to reflect upon our life.

Looking at these massive concrete cages called buildings I find myself asking: how did we people manage to adjust to this sort of contained life? Okay , I am waiting for a rebuttal , saying how we needed to find intelligent housing solutions for an increasing population. I agree. Yet…at any time when I look at these buildings they seem horrendous to me. A source of clutter and shared solitude. A sterile environment where creativity and freedom become strange concepts for us.

Someone who has no place to live or is extremely stressed about their housing situation might argue that I should look at the gratitude aspect. Yes, I believe that we can all agree that having a roof over your head is better than nothing.But what I think that will make a difference is the atmosphere of the place and the people that you are sharing that space with. It is not only about the people you live with, it is also about your neighbourhood, your neighbours, your surroundings.

I often see buildings that have no green space around them. No plants. The stairs at every floor are empty. Some people try to beautify the place and bring in plants. I admire that initiative and it made me dream about buildings that have plants at every floor and well maintained green roofs with places where anyone could just relax. Imagine the impact it would have on the air that we are breathing to fill these cages with green life!

I believe that the human nature that our ancestors had will never wash away from our system. We come from tribes of hunter-gatherers, we yearn for social connection and for a deep bond with nature. We thrive when we feel free and when we have a place to stay which allows us to breathe clean air and the development of a hobby like gardening or making stuff. You can see remnants of this innate nature when you go to a trip into the mountains or at sea. You feel sad when you have to go back to a flat, something feels unnatural about being contained, away from plants, trees, animals. Away from the possibility of making a fire and cooking outdoors. Away from the noise and close to the silence that you could find in a yard : this is how most people would like to live. This is what people need in order to maintain a good mental health and the modern society is blind to this in the name of efficiency.

Have you noticed that the bigger the anxiety the bigger the TV screen will be? Humans have learned to numb their solitude and feelings of anger and frustration in front of a piece of plastic. We become addicted to something that promises to take us out from reality at least for a couple of hours. Indoors. While everything that could potentially save us is outside. Irony? Insanity? Or just the new norm?

If you add this to a bad diet of fast food and ready-to-eat paper bags you have the recipe for depression. How many of us bake our own bread anymore? How many of us drink good water? (the tap water does not count, it is so filled with heavy metals that you would be sick to your stomach, do some research…). How many of us know the ancient laws of feng shui and how to make our home an oasis of peace and love? How many of us become addicted to a life that we don’t even like? Working for money that will buy stuff for a place we don’t really love and getting up every morning thinking that getting more stuff will alleviate the pain of not leading the life that we secretely desire. This is what a lot of people call life.

How many of us make the time to go outside for a simple walk before and after work? How many of us make room for daydreaming and looking at the stars? How many of us intentionally seek moments of silence when one could analyse their life and see where there could be room for change?

All I see in my country is turmoil. People are rushing. They never have time. They lose their temper over small things in traffic and explode with unimaginable rage. Their faces rarely glow with happiness and joy. What are we teaching our children about life when we lead such an existence? I don’t blame them, the system we have build is flawed.

I look at the dark night sky and feel awe and a sort of bliss knowing that we are more than our body and that this Universe is so big. In these tiny moments everything that seemed to worry vanishes. I look at my mere existence as being just a short lesson on this planet and I can’t help but wonder how will Earth and humanity be 1000 years from now when another human being will look in awe at the nighttime sky…..

Creative book photography

I am not a professional photographer, yet I consider myself to be quite creative and resourceful. So I love to read books and make reviews of them and one day I woke up thinking: what if I would try to make my book photographs more creative? I do not have to conform to any rules and I have the freedom to do as I please.

It is liberating to know that you can set you own creative direction without any external pressure. I am convinced that those who do creative book photography for a living might find it challenging as they have to conform to some requirements and standards as in what the market wants and what the client is willing to pay for. In my case , as I do book reading , reviewing and photographing for a hobby, I do not have to comply to such standards.

In my first attempts I was trying to look for props that I could use in my adventurous new challenge. I wanted to make the pictures look as fancy as I could without spending a lot of money on accessories.

Slowly I discovered that less is more.

Scroll left and right just for fun

I also discovered that it is vital to keep a colour balance in the frame, with the focus on the book. It takes a while to get used to thinking in more simple ways yet I admit that it made my brain fizzle with excitement.

We must always allow ourselves to do things beyond our comfort zones and the only limit is in our mind. Our imagination is limitless.

We need a change in education

Does it feel natural to you to sit for hours indoors and do your work? I guess we both know the answer to this question and the usual sigh that follows after. So why do we expect children to be super enthusiastic about going to kindergarten or school when it is against their young nature to be sitting like a statue for more than 4 hours ? I had a feeling that the way we do education in most countries is wrong and I must tell you that I felt oddly satisfied yet sad to find out that the indoor monuments dedicated to the development of our offsprings are in fact hideous and a hindrance for their development. We do not like it when we have to go to a crappy office or sit indoors hours in an end, yet we scold our children if they dare to tell us that school sucks. Well, it kind of does and the reason why is quite simple: the location is wrong.

I began to be interested in forest pedagogy when I have read about Denmark and how they do things differently. They allow children to sit for a full day outdoors while also teaching them basic things like they would normally do inside the school. Breathing the fresh air, interactioning with animals and wild plants, allowing them to get the right sun exposure and a long myriad of other benefits are being the main things that make education in nature so attractive. I have also discovered the fabulous work of Marina Robb. We need more educators like her.

Forest School Training Level 3

Marina even gives courses in order to get a forest pedagogy training as an educator!

Having lessons taught in nature can also help children with ADHD and autism as there were some ongoing studies about the benefits of outdoor schooling for children with behavioural problems and it has been discovered that “ lessons in the forest improved children’s ability to cope with unpredictability in everyday life. Their learning motivation and reading abilities also improved. Furthermore, children with behavioural challenges benefitted from the natural environment”¹

Nowadays we are having more and more children suffer from depression and anxiety, on the verge of suicide, because of the massive increase in screen time. The reality and the beauty of the outside world does not incite the young minds anymore. And there is an illness that I have recently came across called “nature deficit disorder” that made me really ponder about today’s society.

Episode 24: Why is Experiential Learning Needed in Education

Children need to use their hands. They need to explore their environment. They need education in nature!

I see some schools still clinging to the old curriculum and the old way things used to get done, even though it damages the spirit of the children. I do believe that there should be schools outdoors on each corner of this Planet and that having the educational system changed in order to fit the needs of the children instead of the needs of the adults should become a priority. What does it need to happen to this generation of children so severely damaged by screen time and lack of nature and fresh air so we would take attitude?

Now that I am an adult I sometimes sit in wonder of how did I manage to go through school without going crazy ( let’s suppose I am normal today haha) . At the time I conformed as it looked normal. But now I see the educational system with new eyes: it is old fashioned and it does not serve the child, it enslaves him. We have a lot of forests to protect and preserve, why not build sustainable kindergartens and schools within them and help shape a stronger society?

If obedience is the main purpose of why we are taught to conform since young age , against our spirit, then it is a detrimental approach even for the big illuminated minds. Because a society which is formed by a mass of individuals that will have lost their spirit and desire to enjoy life and outdoors is a doomed nation, regardless of the short term profits. Doomed because the rise in mental illness will make the system spend more of the money it does not have. And guess what, rich or poor, we are all stuck on this Planet. It kind of seems like a crazy man’s plan to think of an educational system that cripples the individual long term for short term profit, isn’t it? Perhaps we shall call Planet Earth the Planet of the Insane if we decide to change nothing despite evident confirmation that the educational system is flawed. The latest book of Gabor Maté makes even more sense now as it states the obvious: we are getting worse while the technology is getting better.

1. https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/learning-among-trees-denmark ↩︎

Why I love the nighttime lights

I think I am not alone when I say that there is something magical about a nighttime view over a big city. It is especially surreal if you come from a forest and a deep walk in the nature and suddenly you see the flickers of light. I usually sit still and watch the lights .how they move very slowly. It seems like they are so many and so little. But there is a massive accumulation of life behind those shiny urban stars.

I admit that I do not feel a particular joy about having to come back from nature into the city. But when the night comes and I can see from a high hill the city…I am in awe and bewildered because all of my life challenges seem so trivial and petty. And the image of those lights has something romantic in it. It is actually humbling to realize that I am a tiny speck in the vast swarm of human beings trying to live an extraordinary existence on this planet.

I remember so vividly my childhood years when I lived on the 5^th floor and I was lucky enough to have a balcony. In the hot summer nights I would put a blanket and choose to sit there on my back and stare at the stars. I would hear the trains making that high pitched noise and watch the lights. Maybe then my awe for the cosmos and the humanity has started. I believe that it takes a bit of a dreamer to be able to realize that there is also beauty in chaos although it is unnatural to the human spirit.

Today I was listening to a recording of a fascinating book that is old. From 1906 and written by Elizabeth Towne, this book had a fragment that captured my attention. The human spirit will be beaten up and destroyed if one will sit for too many hours indoors. You would believe that a thinker from 1906 is obsolete and old fashioned but this makes so much sense in 2024. I strongly believe that our innate nature is not meant to sit in cubicles for hours and listen to the maddening honking in traffic only to get in a crowded supermarket to buy not so healthy food. And coming back to the concrete jungle and live an existence between four walls for so many hours from one’s life is soul destroying.

The flickering lights look magical to me because they are far away. I am admiring the spectacle from afar. From the silence of the woods. I understand why wealthy people yearn for solitude and choose remote locations for their houses. As much magic as a light show might evoke, living in the urban landscape is a stress factor. Isn’t it ironic how something that gives you the chills and the pain in heart can be beautiful if you keep a distance?

I try to envision a futuristic society where the town is a hub for commercial purposes only and industrial business and where people would have the opportunity to relocate in nature, to have their children touch the grass with their bare feets early in the morning, where the nicest noise would be the trill of the birds and blowing of the wind. I dream of this more than I dream of growing old in the urban jungle…

Joe Dispenza: Becoming Supernatural

I must confess to you that I have found this book to be quite intriguing for me. First of all I have learned amazing facts about my brain that I had no clue about and second of all it contains a lot of meditations that are new to me.

Joe Dispenza’s book Becoming Supernatural. How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon is a beautiful reading if you are interested in opening your mind to the unknown. The book starts with a great exercise that I have put into practice: writing down on a piece of paper the dreams that you have for your life, visualizing them to the finest detail and associating a series of emotions that you will experience once those dreams come to fruition. Reading that piece of paper everyday conditions your mind to feel a different set of emotions.

I know that for some people it can seem unreal to read about real life stories of miraculous healing through the power of meditations and a reason why I like this book is the fact that most of the affirmations are backed up by science and research.

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There are powerful meditations included in the book and my favourite one is the heart coherence meditation. Do you know that our heart has a brain of its own and that the energy field of our heart can spread meters away? Everything around us is energy and think about the vastity of this Universe and the infinite possibilities in the quantum field. Joe Dispenza shows in his book how powerful our thoughts are and how we create our reality through them. A lot of the times people get addicted to suffering, to anger, to feeling like a victim. If an enemy dies one will find somebody else to hate because their brain is addicted to those chemicals, to that emotional state.

Meditating primes your brain for superior emotions like joy, love, gratitude, bliss, from which you can create a different reality. In fact our brain is a supermachine when it comes to producing powerful chemicals to lift us up. The pineal gland is also an amazing tiny little spot that acts like an antenna for receiving all kind of energetic signals. If you love brain science then the chapter about the pineal gland is right up your alley! There are a lot of meditations in this book: blessing of the energy centers,walking meditations, heart coherence meditation etc.

The Project Coherence blew my mind. The fact that a big crowd of people can gather in a spot and meditate together for the well being of the Planet with scientific proof of those meditations having an effect on a global level was a big wow factor for me. So imagine how much power your thoughts have to make the people around you better or worse, regardless of where they are on the Earth. Yes, we are that powerful!

I must also tell you one detail from this book that made me reconsider what I watch before I sleep and even throughout the day. When we prepare to go to sleep our brain is very susceptible to outside influences because we are tired. Think as if the guardian that stands at the doors of your mind getting really sleepy. So watching a violent TV show or movie, or something that is imbued with subliminal messages to buy or consume some sort of product will get into your subconscious mind instantly. Joe advises us to never watch stuff that makes our mind agitated and filled with negative emotions. Oh my that made me ponder about a series of habits that a lot of people have. And I had to wonder: why does someone feel good after watching violent stuff? Why someone’s brain is eager to watch horror or crime shows? If those people would know that watching this kind of stuff is making their brain worse I think that most of them would ditch their Netflix subscription and start reading a good book. I was more than happy to see that my intuition about violent television being toxic for the brain (and if you ask me television in general with all of the commercials and dopamine giving tv series is just a big NO NO for the brain) was right. Your bedroom should have no TV in there and there should be complete darkness and silence when you go to sleep.

We need more books like this one, where a specialist can show us the true treasures that we have and what to do with them: our brain and our heart.

Here comes the spring

I remember discovering the joy of bodypainting almost 5 years ago. For me painting and drawing on paper were quite normal as I loved art since I was a child. And one day I had the idea of allowing myself a new hobby: facepainting.

https://www.youtube.com/@theaquariuspaintinglady/videos

I find the movement of the brush on my face very soothing. I can easily express what I feel without saying or writing any words. I discovered that I can put into painting my face a diverse avenue to my feelings without looking too sentimental.

I will slowly try to present my various bodypaintings on my blog and express the feelings behind them.

I will start with this one. “Here comes the spring” is a bodypainting about rebirth, about new beginnings. You can see on my shoulders a simple depiction of snowdrops, the famous flowers of the spring. Did you know that these plants contain galanthamine, which is used and marketed to treat Alzheimer’s disease (AD) ? Fascinating, right?

The snowdrop peaks its head from under the cold blanket of snow and easily makes its way to the light. I have used the colours blue and orange and the various abstract scissions between the cold and the warm colours to illustrate the inevitable process of emotional chasm that happens when we go through major changes in our life. We have to forget old parts of us and people from our past in order to blossom like a snowdrop.

Falling in love

I had a very interesting thought in one of my peaceful ambles into the woods. I thought of how we humans fall deeply in love and how this process is similar with our attachment towards a place, like a forest.

We fall in love deeply only after we have seen all of the seasons of the other : angry, broke, tired, sleepy, funny, annoying, cute, inspirational, brave, sexy, boring,scary . You name it, you have experienced it all. And still, after you have seen them at their worst, you know that you love them despite of their flaws and maybe just because of them. As each person has a distinct set of icks that we find tolerable and, after a longer time, maybe adorable.

But we need to have the patience and the desire to give the person the time. I thought of my favourite forest and how I have seen it transformed through the winter. From a bleak place of barren trees it grows into a lush green splendour. If it snows it looks like a fairytale kingdom. In the autumn the show of colors gives me the chills and summer is just a radiant time.

I have fallen in love with the forest because I have experienced it throughout the year. I saw trees moving like angry giants under the gust of the wind. I was able to smell the rain hitting the thirsty soil. I could bathe my eyes in the vibrant green reflection of the newborn leaves. I felt that each time the forest was showing me another side of it precisely at the moment when I thought I have seen it all.

Love is always growing and we humans, ideally, evolve constantly. Me from today will be another person tomorrow. The surest thing is that if we let life touch us we will always change. And during our own process the other looks at us with admiration and falls in love with us all over again….

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Daniel Goleman: Focus

The name of Daniel Goleman might make you think of another masterpiece that he has written connected to emotional intelligence. But today is all about focus. His book “ Focus. The hidden driver of excellence” is a fantastic guide for anyone who wants to understand how to focus better and which are the factors that can impede intentional focus.

Did you know that the masters, the ones that achieve excellence, are using a simple secret to get to the goals that they desire? The secret is dedicated time slots of maximum 4 hours per day for that particular activity. Our brain has a cognitive limit on how much we can absorb so use this information for your personal self in order to get back on track.

A leader of a company is very successful at guiding people depending on the strategy that he picks. Studies have shown that the higher you are on the social ladder the bigger the odds for you to be blind to emotional cues. Your empathy can suffer as you are less connected with those on the bottom. So the more you care about someone, the more attention you pay,says Goleman.

SEL (social emotional learning) is something that the schools in Singapore are making mandatory. This method teaches kids soft skills and how to cope with emotions, leading them to building a vital trait for life and focus: executive control. You see, the issue with focus goes both ways: you have to know where to focus and why and also to be able to stop focusing on what is irrelevant. This requires a very well structured brain and it all starts in childhood (see the study done on the children of Dunedin, New Zealand). Goleman speaks of possible futures for schools, where brain training games and attention training would be a standard part of schooling, helping children that have autism and attention deficit disorders immensely.

In order to focus well you also need moments of daydreaming, of wandering, of letting your mind be free of the pressure of figuring it out. Sounds like a paradox right? But think of a car that would never stop for fuel…that would not go very far for long, right?

If you want a great focus keep your eyes on the positive. Negative focus, based on instilling fear does not work long term. Forget about punishing people, threatening them or humiliating them. It is counterproductive and it will only win you a tyrannical reputation.

The biggest secret to focus is to manage your emotions. Emotional reactivity impairs your capacity to mitigate, assess and solve a situation. Tell me how much mastery have you achieved in controlling your emotions and I might guess how big is your capacity to focus…

Have you ever had problems with focusing? What methods have you tried in order to achieve more clarity and structure in the way you think and act?

Watch a long video review of this book here:

Could hiking change you?

I have started to read a super funny book about the woods and the hiking experience. But something is really affecting my reading experience as english is not my mother language. I remember my University days when I picked for my reading a certain author that promised to make me look very smart after reading his books. I cursed and pealed every layer of my young neurons trying to decipher what the heck was he trying to say. And with a dictionary in my hand and with a pen in another I managed to finish that reading. And I thought to myself “ well, he just wants to look smart by using so many posh words that we mortals have to translate”. Now I am able to understand that through exercise and repetition one can simply develop a higher level of skill when it comes to writing. I’m feelin’ like a Virginia Woolf is growing inside of me with every google translate click.

I am getting a milder version of this experience now, when I am reading the marvel of Bill Bryson – A walk in the woods. I am in awe and admiration for the literary skills of Bill. I mean what the heck , he is hilarious, profound and mysterious, blunt and practical , ambitious and easy going all in one book. I have finished just 100 pages yet I must tell you that the book is written in such a delicious way that you will try to contain the mental saliva going out of your brain. It takes a lot of bollocks to go on such a great long hike on the Appalachian Trail with a stranger basically, a guy he has seen 25 years ago, Stephen, who is just in as bad of a shape as Bill is. I thought these guys will quit, but well well it seems that these are tough cookies.

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I believe that I will have to read this twice, with my new english words already translated on the side so I could fully enjoy the narrative. I think that this reading would not have been so great if I were to read it already translated as I know that some of the spirit of the author gets lost because of the external intervention of the translator. If I can, I prefer to read an author in his native language.

What these two are doing in this hike makes me ponder. Some find hiking in the woods a solitary, scary experience. Some find it to be healing, almost cathartic. The solitude, the danger of wild beasts, the deprivation of modern comfort, all of these can contribute to a change in oneself. I am a strong believer in the power of a rough, raw natural experience to change a person and I am so curious to see how this expedition ends for both of these fluffy doughnut munching adventurers. The book captivated me and I think that my eyes will chew the words rapidly along the pages. Minus those damn posh words hahaha.

Your north star

I really like it when I can see a clear night sky during my nighttime walks. I often wonder how would it be if for a moment all humanity would come to an agreement to shut down the lights and let the city breathe again in utter darkness. I think we could all enjoy the beauty of the shining stars and maybe have a chance to reflect upon our life.

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Looking at these massive concrete cages called buildings I find myself asking: how did we people manage to adjust to this sort of contained life? Okay , I am waiting for a rebuttal , saying how we needed to find intelligent housing solutions for an increasing population. I agree. Yet…at any time when I look at these buildings they seem horrendous to me. A source of clutter and shared solitude. A sterile environment where creativity and freedom become strange concepts for us.

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Someone who has no place to live or is extremely stressed about their housing situation might argue that I should look at the gratitude aspect. Yes, I believe that we can all agree that having a roof over your head is better than nothing.But what I think that will make a difference is the atmosphere of the place and the people that you are sharing that space with. It is not only about the people you live with, it is also about your neighbourhood, your neighbours, your surroundings.

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I often see buildings that have no green space around them. No plants. The stairs at every floor are empty. Some people try to beautify the place and bring in plants. I admire that initiative and it made me dream about buildings that have plants at every floor and well maintained green roofs with places where anyone could just relax. Imagine the impact it would have on the air that we are breathing to fill these cages with green life!

I believe that the human nature that our ancestors had will never wash away from our system. We come from tribes of hunter-gatherers, we yearn for social connection and for a deep bond with nature. We thrive when we feel free and when we have a place to stay which allows us to breathe clean air and the development of a hobby like gardening or making stuff. You can see remnants of this innate nature when you go to a trip into the mountains or at sea. You feel sad when you have to go back to a flat, something feels unnatural about being contained, away from plants, trees, animals. Away from the possibility of making a fire and cooking outdoors. Away from the noise and close to the silence that you could find in a yard : this is how most people would like to live. This is what people need in order to maintain a good mental health and the modern society is blind to this in the name of efficiency.

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Have you noticed that the bigger the anxiety the bigger the TV screen will be? Humans have learned to numb their solitude and feelings of anger and frustration in front of a piece of plastic. We become addicted to something that promises to take us out from reality at least for a couple of hours. Indoors. While everything that could potentially save us is outside. Irony? Insanity? Or just the new norm?

If you add this to a bad diet of fast food and ready-to-eat paper bags you have the recipe for depression. How many of us bake our own bread anymore? How many of us drink good water? (the tap water does not count, it is so filled with heavy metals that you would be sick to your stomach, do some research…). How many of us know the ancient laws of feng shui and how to make our home an oasis of peace and love? How many of us become addicted to a life that we don’t even like? Working for money that will buy stuff for a place we don’t really love and getting up every morning thinking that getting more stuff will alleviate the pain of not leading the life that we secretely desire. This is what a lot of people call life.

How many of us make the time to go outside for a simple walk before and after work? How many of us make room for daydreaming and looking at the stars? How many of us intentionally seek moments of silence when one could analyse their life and see where there could be room for change?

All I see in my country is turmoil. People are rushing. They never have time. They lose their temper over small things in traffic and explode with unimaginable rage. Their faces rarely glow with happiness and joy. What are we teaching our children about life when we lead such an existence? I don’t blame them, the system we have build is flawed.

I look at the dark night sky and feel awe and a sort of bliss knowing that we are more than our body and that this Universe is so big. In these tiny moments everything that seemed to worry vanishes. I look at my mere existence as being just a short lesson on this planet and I can’t help but wonder how will Earth and humanity be 1000 years from now when another human being will look in awe at the nighttime sky…..

HOME IS INSIDE

What does having a home means for you? For a lot of folks a house means safety, nurturing, love, caring, well being. I guess that this is the innate need for certainty and comfort, one of the basic needs of any human, according to Maslow’s pyramid of human needs.

But we all know that a building called home can become a nightmare, a prison. Think of the couples that hate to be with each other. The thought of going back to that place after work terrifies them so they would rather bury themselves in piles of paper work than to go home. Think of those who divorce or those who are living in a rented place that they dislike, but as it was the only thing they could afford they are stuck there. So a home is not just a building for providing shelter. A home is a feeling, a state of mind. You can be at home and feel terrible. So it is not the place per se as much as the company that you have and your own mental state while being there.

I have thought of this theme while working on my latest illustration called “ Home is inside”. I used the snail to depict the idea of a home. The carrots are a metaphor for our old thinking, for the paradigms that keep us stuck in the same mentality. Inside the snail’s shell there are fungi growing, building their own mini ecosystem.

We have a tiny creature that slides on a piece of carrot like it would be a surfer and we can notice that the fungi have windows and a ladder as a way to get there. We use the ladder in order to level up our thinking and to reach a place called home independent of the location, of the surroundings. You see, you can be homeless or live in a terrible place yet if you are well rooted, like a carrot, in yourself, you can feel at ease.

You take your resilience and your inner peace wherever you go so I believe that this is the real HOME that we all need to find and keep. Just like the snail travels all over with a shell this is how we can all be when we are no longer confined by the limitations of our old beliefs. Our inner ecosystem is building his own ladder and let the fungi grow: resilience, peace, confidence, harmony, inner purpose, motivations.

These are all structural parts of the house we can build inside ourselves.

I have used watercolour and my 0.1 mm rotring isograph to work on the piece of art.

A short video with me explaining this drawing

A short video presentation with details from this drawing

The myth of normal by Gabor Maté and David Maté

I feel that there are times in history when certain books are written and they will put an indelible mark in how people perceive a certain theme. The book of Gabor Maté , done in colaboration with his son, David Maté , is one of these books. I must tell you that I felt the compelling need to take so many notes while reading it because I felt that I was like a miner discovering a gold vein. You know what makes this book great? The fact that the author himself admits how his trauma affected his own kids, marriage and life.

The book is about how some of the principles of this society make us sick and why we have so many diseases and issues ranging from autoimune illnesses to rasism, psychedelics, suicide and autism. We need to learn the language of what trauma is and we need to address the elephant in the room.

The book talks about our toxic culture, where consumption and addiction are actually encouraged because it brings profit for certain individuals. Our toxic culture has become a norm and it is making us sick. We are lonelier and more depressed than ever while on a technological level we have advanced so much that we look at our ancestors as being less than us. In fact, ancient wisdom has a lot to teach us in regards to parenting, social bonding and connection.

Gabor states an old truth: within us there has always been an ancient battle between authenticity and attachment. Do we choose to be ourselves and risk to be alienated or do we push down parts of ourselves just to be liked and survive? Imagine a baby trying to adapt and earn the parent’s love. Without even being aware, the baby loses parts of his authentic self in order to survive. Not being liked by your parent is emotional death to a child. I am sorry to be the messenger of an old cliché , but I must tell you that the parenting that you received as a child ( or lack thereof) is responsible for much of your adult issues. The emotional nurturing your father and mother (especially your mother) gave you might have made you or break you as a human being. There is solid scientific research linked to the development of the human brain in connection with the type of caregiving it has received and the effects last a lifetime and maybet the attachment theory sounds familiar to you and why we develop certain styles. Gabor peals the onion of trauma layer by layer and it is soul touching.

There are many valuable informations in the book regarding the effects of stress: it shrinks the lengh of our telomers, shortening our life span. Having a stressful job is worse than having no job at all and contrary to many beliefs there is also such a thing as paternal depression , which is linked to the child’s later developmental issues.

Is there salvation from a culture where children are addicted to screens almost if not more than adults? Is there hope for understanding the fact that bearing a child is more than just a woman’s project, that it should be an entire’s community care? Can we change the way doctors interview their pacients and change medicine in order to integrate the fact that the disease is more than a diagnosis, that it is about the pacient’s life history, trauma, childhood adversity?

There is hope. Here Gabor Maté comes with a new concept: Compassionate inquiry. It invites us to make this weekly exercise where we put ourselves some questions in order to get back to our true self and shed the façade that we have been putting on for years. I invite you to read the book and extract the golden questions for yourself.

There are also four principles that the author recommends for healing, called the 4A: authenticity ( accepting who we are and showing it), autonomy ( assuming responsibility for the situation that we are in and realizing that we have the choice to choose who and how we want to be in life), anger (there is healthy anger that shows that our boundaries have been crossed and it is very good to express it and to learn to say no), acceptance (letting things be as they are, accepting can also mean accepting how difficult it is to accept – I rolled my eyes at this for sure because we all know the turmoil that comes with not accepting things, people, as they are).

At the end of the book there is fascinating information about the benefits of using psychedelics in treating of trauma. Do not go now in the psilocybin pantry as this must be done under a specialist’s supervision. Gabor had an extraordinary ayahuasca experience and I must tell you that I can see why so many people have reaped the benefits of this, maybe in the future this will be integrated in the health system. Who knows, times surely evolve!

My conclusion after reading this book is that we need to question why we do the things we do as we do it. Because we need to stop and look around us and see reality for what it is for the majority of the population on this Planet: traumatic. This book will enter into your soul and lights will turn on in rooms that you kept very dark….

The boy and the heron (2023)

It has been a while since I watched an anime movie. Yesterday I went to the cinema and saw The Boy and the Heron, directed and written by  Hayao Miyazaki. I was touched by a couple of themes which are represented in the movie.

The hero of the story is Mahito, a 12 years old boy who loses his mother in a fire in 1943, at the hospital where she worked.

Of course that I could do the ultimate spoiler alert and tell you everything that is happening in the movie and go into details. I won’t. Because my mind and my soul got stuck on one scene from the entire anime and I can’t forget how it made me feel.

My review

There is the night. I can see the moon. I can see Earth. Everything around me is caressed by the glimmering lights of the moon. The art in the movie made me feel that I am right there, near Mahito, as he watches the little white creatures departing to get born on Earth. They choose to be born there. I thought about reincarnation, if you believe in such things. I thought about my own insignificance, how small I am in comparison with the whole Universe. I felt humbled in my own body watching the scene.

Coming back home I could not stop thinking about what I saw. About the fact that maybe we are souls who choose this journey because it is well worth it, just as Himi, the mother of Mahito, chooses to come on Earth, knowing she will die in the fire, but wanting it anyway because the experience of being Mahito’s mom will be well worth it.

I thought about pain. About how it serves a bigger purpose if we learn our lesson. It is true that I learned the most when I was down on my knees. I did not learn so much from my successes, my failures and heartbreaks were my biggest teachers.

I saw myself a bit in Mahito. The child like ambition to always seek the truth. The desire to grasp the past in the hope that it might change the future. His introspective nature is what I find beautiful. It is always soothing to know that at any moment one can shut down and go within in the search for a lost light.

We all have a Mahito inside of us. Someone who is searching for a meaning in chaos, for hope when everything seems lost. This anime is just a beautiful visual metaphor for life and for the beauty of the ancestry which will never be washed away from our blood.

Alfred Lansing – Endurance. Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage

What does it take to be a great leader?

I have often found myself asking this question: what makes a person a great leader? I believe that a lot of people would think of great politicians or directors and managers of big companies. I think that the way a person reacts under extreme pressure and in extraordinary circumstances can give us a clue as in what they’re made of. When I think of a great leader I think of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, an irish explorer born on 15 February 1874 in Ireland. Alfred Lansing, an american journalist and writer, will tell Shackleton’s story in his book Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959).

“For scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”

It all started in august 1914 in an attempt to cross over Antarctica via South Pole. In january 1915 the ship Endurance is trapped into the ice. The crew has to abandon ship and find a way to survive and get back on land. The book is so well written that by the time you finish it, you will know how it feels to hear ice cracking around you. You will feel the cold, the hunger, the despair.

Shackleton managed to gather 27 men for this expedition. He was honest that the pay will be low and the risk enormous. Yet, a couple of brave men embarked for the trip. The name of the ship was inspired by Shackleton’s family motto: “Fortitudine vincimus” ( Through endurance we conquer).

Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. They got trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea. They had to abandon their ship and give up any possessions that would be an extra weight. They had to go through starvation, thirst, despair, loneliness, cold, desolation and incredible weather conditions. They have found themselves having to eat raw seal and penguin flesh and in the desperate need to get rid of their own sled dogs by shooting them and eating them out of necessity. The kind of conditions that these people had to endure is just beyond any wild imagination. Marooned in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of a cruel winter, the chances of survival seemed slim. Yet, Sir Ernest Shackleton managed to keep the group under control, with a good morale and united. I have found his leadership skills to be admirable and unique. When people are in a desperate survival situation they can be hard to control. Yet, Shackleton did an exquisite job in providing them the leader that the crew desperately needed.

“In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age— no warmth, no life, no movement. Only those who have experienced it can fully appreciate what it means to be without the sun day after day and week after week. Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects altogether, and it has driven some men mad.”

He had an ability to know how to pay attention to the mood of his people and attune his leadership style to match every person. His people were loyal to him and despite minor disagreements they were all following his lead. I believe that the case of Ernest Shackleton illustrates how important it is to have a great leader in any team. When the crew managed to reach Elephant Island it was a short lived joy: the place was not on any normal routes of sailors. It would have been a sure death sentence to remain here for long. So Shackleton made a bold decision: to gather a couple of men with him and head towards South Georgia, 800 miles away, to search for help. Here the leadership skills kicked in again: Shackleton knew what people he should take with him and which people should stay and wait for the rescue. Frank Wild, the second in command, was left on Elephant Island with the other 21 people while Shackleton headed towards South Georgia. Once arrived there the crew had to cross the island on foot. This has never been done! After terrible days of agony though very difficult terrain they have arrived at Stromness Whaling Station. Finally they knew they would be saved. With the help of an improvised ship and amazing will power they have managed to reach their destination!

It would take another 4 months until Shackleton would be able to come back with a proper ship to rescue the remaining crew left on Elephant Island. It would take another 40 years until anyone would attempt to cross the South Georgia Island like Shackleton did.

What this irish captain has achived is amazing. He has put aside the fact that the main objective of the expedition was gone. He prioritized getting his people back alive and safe on land. He did not show any signs of worries. He kept his cool and managed to kill off any insubordinate attempts very early on. He had a tight grasp on his crew yet he was respected and valued. He was not a tyran , his leadership power stood in his ability to read the personality of his crew members and adapt his approach for each and every person. He knew how “ to read the room” and he was excellent at it.

This book shows what an extraordinary capacity to adapt the human spirit has. Thrown into hell any human can find a glimmer of hope if it has the right attitude. The mental war is the most difficult to win and Shackleton knew that the lack of good spirit is more threatening than the lack of food.

“Of all their enemies — the cold, the ice, the sea — he feared none more than demoralization.”

This book will make you realize that the power of great leadership sits in the ability to read people’s emotions and adapting to their temper. There is no room for ego, for power play. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s voyage will continue to inspire generations to come when it will come down to man’s power in extreme conditions to keep his head high and dare to hope for survival.

“No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.”

Stephen Grosz: The examined life

As I was walking around in my forest I was thinking about a recent book that I have read written by Stephen Grosz. It is called The Examined Life. How we lose and find ourselves. It made me think of the human mind and how much of what we pretend we are is a result of our family system.

This guy is a psychoanalyst. He has spent over 50000 hours listening to his patients. Wow. That can be a sure way to get to know more or to go completely crazy.

The opening of the book starts with something that sounds so natural, yet in real life it seems to elude most of us. There cannot be change without loss. Interesting….most of the times when we cling onto something we believe that it will be the end of us to lose it or to fail to obtain it. But what if trees would behave in the same way? They would never lose their leaves, they would never know the feeling of new sprouts coming to life. Imagine a caterpillar not accepting the next stage: we would have no butterflies.

The book is a gathering of stories from several patients. I was impressed by one story in particular: the disclosure of his homosexuality by a certain professor James. Aged 71 he finally decides to allow himself the reality of enjoying sexual pleasure with men. His wife found out and she allowed it. It turns up that he has always felt an attraction towards men, even when he married his wife. But he kept it in a box. It turns out, after several therapy sessions that James had a cold, distant, angry father who never approved of him. In seeking male love he was healing this part of himself rejected by his dad. Fascinating, right?

I wonder how much of our sexuality is actually decided by our childhood wounds. How if one caregiver rejects us we develop a pattern that will allow us as adults to redo the dynamic, subconsciously hoping for a different outcome. I thought of fetishes and how they might play a significant part in that inner healing, as odd as it may sound.

Nature is a fine example of how change means also loss. There is a lot of violence in nature, a struggle of life versus death, of victory over defeat, of rebirth versus decay. When I look at the tree I know that it is there because of a history, because of a multitude of factors that made his seed germinate in the soil. Why is an oak an oak? I might as well ask why is a man gay? The question entails a profound analysis as it is never about things just being as they are through sheer coincidence or randomness.

The human mind is fascinating. There is a case of a little boy with severe destructive behaviour. I thought that his brutal ways will make even Stephen, an experienced specialist, to give up. I was amazed to read that years later the boy turned out to be ok and function well in society.

I could see how behind every crazy behaviour there is always suffering, despair, a hollow dark void that makes the person develop coping mechanism. Sometimes to behave badly is the only way to feel that one is alive because they do not know another way to gain attention from their peers. There is a lot of loneliness in the soul of someone who is on the couch, waiting for the therapist to help him /her see the light again.

The book is about loss, grief, sexuality, lovesickness, despair, closure, parental envy, fantasiei and lies. It shows a myriad of ways that we people use to deceit others but mostly ourselves. Oh…the things a person would do to forget about their own misery and shame!

And then…after a while…it gets quiet. In the forest. In the soul. In the mind. A long walk always starts with the first step. And it is tedious. But the further you go the more you get close to your true self and the less noise you hear. Healing your inner demons will always happen in silence.

The silence embraces my soul

The Marielund forest…I have built some great memories in this danish green corner of life. Situated in the city of Kolding, Denmark, this forest was my little oasis in a stressful time of my life. It is quite close to the city yet once you walk deeper and deeper into it silence begins. It was founded in the early 1850 so this is pretty old. 

 You can find high beech trees, a sump with ash and alder trees . On the east side of the forest you can find also old beech trees from 1860. Imagine what stories they could tell if only they could speak. I often wondered about this while doing my long , silent walks in this forest. The people they have seen, the conversations they have heard, the change in seasons…A tree is the richest yet never heard storykeeper.  

I was privileged to be able to get to know this forest through almost all the seasons. Sometimes it is harder to get a feeling of a place if you only enjoy it for a couple of days or weeks. To have an entire year to explore a forest is remarcable. I have educated my own eye to see new things every day about Marielund.  

I slowly began to get to know the forest. The places where birds liked to gather. The places where not so many people went to hike. This sort of stuff. I experienced great moments of excitement seeing deers and wildlife in their natural habitat. I feel a sort of honour to be able to see that raw moment, of a creature , just living their life as it was supposed to be lived: free in the wild. 

Most of the times I was waking up very early in the morning and starting my routine with a forest bathing. To walk completely alone in a dark forest , waiting for a bit of the stingy danish sun is an exercise I would highly recommend to anyone struggling with anxiety or burnout. The mind gets clear. It is silence. It is dark. You only hear yourself walking and very few noises around. At first it can feel scary. But after a while I got used to it as I knew that nothing could harm me in a forest.  

Autumn was the best to experience here , next to winter. I have picked rosehip buds and made jam out of it. I watched sheeps grazing the grass in the cold morning. I have watched leaves shedding green for orange. The most impressive were the swans. Magnificently elegant, these birds always surprised me with their presence. I wonder if they know how truly free they are, to fly whenever you can wherever you want and call the place you settle at home. Looking at us, people, it seems that we are more captive than a bird inside our concrete walls, enslaved by screens and estranged from one another.

This forest helped me regain balance in moments when I wanted to escape my reality. It has seen me sad, happy, calm, angry, worried, creative, lazy. You name it, I have visited this place while experiencing a whole array of emotions. And every time I felt the warm loving arms of nature embracing my melancholic soul… 

The race to the present moment

Here we are, at the brink of ending 2023. And I see posts of people who say that this was their best year. When it was not. Because I happened to see their reality. I find it funny, sad and definetely up for debate why people continue to lie to themselves so well and post it proudly on social media for a couple of likes. I begin to wonder. What makes accepting a crappy reality so difficult? Is it because it would force us to look deep within and see how we did not rise to a higher standard? Is it because we are complacent and unwilling to change so bathing in illusion feels better , although it is not? Does it hurt less to sit in a lie rather than facing the reality of the necessity to change as a person?

When I happen to scroll back and forth on social media everyone seems to be doing something all the time. There is this feeling of utter discomfort seeing how some seem to be way ahead of you in terms of popularity, likes, audience. But there is also the other side of the spectrum: those who rarely post. Those that , when they post, it is remarkable. In excellence or in mediocrity. In a way I wonder if they are making a better use of their time than those who are consumed by the algorythm , pressed into always creating content and the illusion of happines while doing it.

Have you ever tried to search the social profiles of those who died? All of their pictures are just left there, on an account that serves no other purpose than that of showing how transient life is.

I decided to also make a break from posting content on my painting, bodypainting and doing handmade stuff accounts. It does not feel like I am missing something, although if I were to sell my artworks a long break would have implied some losses. I have always found it tough to create and film and post my content in the same time. It is tedious and somehow it ruins the creative process. I try to imagine Michelangelo trying to finish his work and also capture nice shots for a future reel….

I was listening to Huberman Lab today and there was a talk about how little attention span the human individual has today. One minute we are with the eyes gazing at the screen at work. One minute we look at our phone. The other minute someone calls or we want to check if we got any likes. Oh oopsy another e-mail. To achieve 60 minutes of pure unadulterated focus on one single task sounds like old age history. I pause while I am listening to this. He is right. Technology can be intrusive and can definetely impair the focus. I have been there. It can also create a feeling of always feeling that you are behind. Today if you meet someone and you tell them that you have no Facebook, no Instagram, no Youtube shorts…you look like the odd man out. What is wrong with society now that a virtual presence is more important than the person standing right in front of you, willing to let himself/herself be discovered? It has also happened to me to see that virtual connections are more important for some people than real connections: people hanging on to remaining friends with individuals from the past and that gesture affecting them in real life has no impact on their attitude. They prefer the past rather than the present moment. Not to mention the problems of partners giving likes to sexy strangers, as if those strangers will come and rub your dirty back when you take a shower. I wonder if it is just me or the whole idea of human interaction is upside down and people are going crazy because social media gives you the illusion that there are a ton of people out there with whom you can give it a shot. Over and over again, which makes discarding a partner so much easier. It scares me and it makes me sad. Because a genuine connection requires a clear understand ing of the bullshit of social media and the severe impairment on your brain if you use it so much.

The sheeps grazing the grass have no such issues and menial drama. They just are. They do not try to justify their existence. They do not try to be somehow better than the other sheeps. The only creature constantly trying to justify their existence is the human. There will always be someone better, smarter, cooler, richer, wiser, dumber, sexier than you and me. But the focus should never be on that, although the school system brainwashes us into believing that we are in a constant competition. The idea of mental health must be to just be…to just detach and live a life that makes you feel good, regardless if you post about it. I am prone to believe as days pass by that those who live the fullest lives have no time to post about them.

My slice of bliss

I caught the first snow in the forest. With a bit of fog. Wow. Every time when I see nature shifting from one season to another I just say wow.

I am in awe. It was so beautiful that I wanted to cry and smile in the same time.

Winter and autumn. Fog and silence. Some of the key ingredients for a great forest bathing. What I like about winter in the forest is how everything is reduced to very simple forms. The leaves fall. The bark of the trees becomes even darker in contrast with the white snowflakes. The air is cold and I feel like it catches me by the neck, forcing new life into me. Somehow despite losing its autumn beauty, the forest becomes even more beautiful as it stands naked in the midst of the cold season.

I think of how we humans are very similar with the trees. We have so much going on inside of us that what another sees on the outside is just a tiny fraction. We show the mask that we want to show depending on the season of our soul. I wonder if we truly have the oportunity to know another person to the core. I wonder if we even stand a chance in getting to know ourselves.

I have a constant sensation of feeling truly liberated when I reach a peak point from where I get a vantage perspective over the forest. With the fog…I can barely see anything and yet I love it. The wind is harsh. The air feels thick, like I could cut for myself a slice of mist and carry it with me. It looks like streams of fog are dancing around in front of my eyes, with the sole purpose of making this view an enchanting landscape. Nothingness. Bliss. Silence. Simplicity. I feel that I would want to live frozen in this very moment of bliss, when I feel like where I am is just where I have to be. Outside. Happy. Admiring nature. In awe. I feel sadness when I have to go, even when it is bad weather. There is no such thing for me. The forest feels like a home for my soul, I wish I could cuddle inside Mother Earth and return to something very peaceful and primordial.

The world as we see it can seem a scary place. A complicated stream of endless rumination, struggle, war, deception and illusion. All of this can collapse in my mental space and make room for peace when I am in a forest. Maybe this is why I love my time in there so much: for short moments I feel I have the right to exist just the way I am. For short moments I feel that the world is in fact a very simple shell….

Appreciating the small things

There are days when the joy of having a warm bagel or a cheese pie is everything I need. I woke up today with a deep feeling of peace inside. I’ve heard the rain singing sweet comforting notes at the window. Feeling the urge to just go and sniff the fresh air I pondered about the hard life that men have and how being of a certain gender encompasses so many hardships. Women have it hard as well but I wonder if maybe we need to think more of how difficult the other has it in order to truly appreciate the Planet as it is right now: a more or less functional place where we strive to make everything happen.  

I think of the road building task: tedious, dirty, harsh. It can be raining or cold outside. I see men well over 50 doing this task. I ask myself: can their tired bones and spine keep it going at this pace? Most of them are smoking while trying to yell at one another, in the all consuming job of getting things done. A woman doing the same job would be brutal to watch. Yet these men have created roads, tunnels, buildings since the inception of the industrialized world. We can walk where we walk and go where we go because hoards of men risked and damaged their life by doing such endeavours. I often believe that compassion is not shown enough towards the masculine gender. We assume that every man is tough and that they take it all in with pride. I wonder how many of these hardworking men killed some of their dreams in order to take a bullet for the family or for the woman they want to provide for. Have we ever thought about that? 

I feel a deep sense of appreciation, respect, compassion and melancholy when I watch them at work. The tarmac. Such a simple thing. It is almost everywhere. You step on it the minute you walk out of the door and rush to go to work. I imagine a highly educated person driving in a luxurious car and maybe watching with contempt the workers inhaling the toxic fumes of the tar coating. But the very thing that made his travelling possible is the people he looks at with superiority. I am trying to think of a way how humans could be brought back to the essentials and appreciate this kind of small things that many of us take for granted. 

The life of a man working with his bare hands is not easy. Neither is the life of a man working with his mind. Musk or Bezos versus the anonymous heavy duty workers: who has it the hardest? We can’t compare and the only way to appreciate is through understanding. The only place where a man can have the hope of having a break and a respite is his home. His family. His wife. But too often the man sees himself in the position to sacrifice time for love, time for bonding, time for communication. We need more balance. I think that the rise of AI and robots could very well replace these sort of tedious dirty tasks in order to make room for humans to work something which is meaningful and allows them the dignity of having a choice. Many men and women who do the dirty jobs had no choice. Coming from empoverished backgrounds or lacking a nurturing guiding adult, they did what the had to do: survive.  

But we should always dream about more than just surviving. Our children need to see that life is more than a set of conditioned choices. And stepping each day onto tarmac with a pondering thought about what life is can be a starting point to introspection and the dream of something more.  

Scărița reservation – Belioara

This trip got me visiting a beautiful natural natural reservation in Alba county. The trip included Poșaga de Sus – Șesul Craiului Scărița reservation – Belioara – Poșaga De Sus. There was also an awesome place to climb to called Coșul Boului, but I admit that I was a bit afraid of heights and I only did half of the climbing road until I could see a view of that spot.

I have found it very useful to have informational boards named “Natura în culori” ( Nature in colours) placed along the hiking trail which gave me a glimpse of the natural ecosystem happening in this mountain. Beautiful animals, flowers , rocks, are part of the magic of the place.

In 2020 there was a huge fire which destroyed almost 10 hectars of forest. It doesn’t seem much as the entire reservation includes 130 hectars , but still the sight of those burned trees gave me the shivers. It is quite sad and depressing. I was making jokes about how this burned area could easily become the perfect filming place for a horror movie. I know that nature always regenerates, yet I still find it sad when I see it destroyed by a fire.

The hiking trail is marked with a red dot and it is 9 km long. It takes almost 7 hours to complete, if you also take breaks to enjoy the views.

I admit that I still did not conquer my fear of heights and there was a particular spot which was very Instagramable if I can say, yet I avoided to go there as the terrain was quite abrupt.

The forest during this autumn season is gorgeous. I love how the carpet of fallen leaves gives me such a visual spectacle. I feel like I am doing colour therapy by sinking my eyes into the splendid orange-yellow blanket.

There are small streams of water that can be found along the way and many people filled their bottles with fresh water.

I liked a place where I could see an U shaped form made by the trees. With the mountains on the background the contrast is astounding. I was thinking how beautiful it would be to have a small cabin in this place and enjoy silence, as no one would disturb you in such a remote place.

The highest point in here is Scărița Peak at 1382 m.

When I reached what we would call the epitome of the hiking trip the view was incredible. A strong wind blew through my hair and hit my face. Cold, fresh, rejuvenating. I wanted to stay in there forever. Often I could notice birds , especially crows, flying on top of me. These birds have such a freedom! Somehow when I manage to get to a place with a view over a small village, I get back to the simplicity of life and realize how petty all of my worries are.

Freedom feels like the short inhalation of such a peak moment.

I highly recommend the gastronomic point at the bottom of the trail where I ate a very good goulash and cheese pie. Hearing the cows , listening to the wind, admiring the view while eating a good meal after a rejuvenating hike is like a balm for my soul.

I can understand why the people living in such villages exude an aura of peace, happiness and inocence. It is the simplicity of life and the connection with nature which makes them keep their inner joy alive. 

The cycle of life

In every morning when I wake up and feel an appetite for a forest bathing I hope to catch a good sunrise. When it happens I feel so energized and amazed by how this small ball of light makes life possible on Earth.

Yesterday I felt a lot of sadness. It was a rough day for me. I felt I needed the forest in order to regain clarity and peace today.

God bless the woman who  woke up so early to make doughnuts at a nearby shop. I bought 3, ate them like they were the best I ever had and rapidly headed towards my peaceful place.

While gulping on those fluffy caloric bombs I saw a truck with live poultry driving on the streets. The stench of death. I wonder if we could do this more ethically. In the past tribes used to pay homage and deep respect to the animals they had to sacrifice. Because without that form of life to feed us we would not have evolved.

Today I feel that there is barbarism and cruelty towards other forms of life inferior to us.  We can’t create life in the lab. The miracle of something being born still eludes us. But the odour of death made such a big contrast with what I ate that I felt the need to write about it.

And in the forest I thought today about the cycle of life. About death. About how we cope with this duality which is part of our existence. Now it is fall. And winter will come. The passing of seasons is literally the death of one landscape and the birth of a new one. A tree needs to lose its leaves and regenerate. Sometimes it needs cutting. Death is inevitable in the natural world and it happens. There is acceptance. The gazelle knows when the end is near and the lion grabs it by the neck. We look at that in horror and sadness yet it is the same act of cruelty which brings us fillet mignon on our plate. Maybe it is even worse in the case of humans as we are not as desperate as a lion in a desert for a meal and we have options while the lion has not.

I also thought about grief. How we feel to mourn for the lost parts of our soul. For someone we loved and lost. For someone we never had. For everything that died in our life. Humans do not accept so easily defeat or pain. We fight it. We resist it. We often cling to one season, blind in front of the need of change. Imagine wanting to be in a perpetual winter just because you love it. After a while you would realize that there was a balance in losing winter instead of holding on to it.

Parts of me die. Parts of me get born. The cells in my body continously go through this cycle, making life possible for me for days in a row. At a deeper level I realize I am alive while things inside me die and get born in seconds. Life contains death and death makes life possible. Just like in the forest, where fallen trees become nutrients for those which still stand tall. I wonder if life is not about the duality of death-life, as much as about the acceptance of both as being part of everything that is alive . And maybe through this acceptance we can let things be as they are without feeling the need for reality to be something else than it just is.

A tiny forest in Suhl, Germany

I have arrived in this place with great hopes for a new life. I did not stay long and my hopes were readjusted, yet in my short visit I have fallen in love with the woods nearby. I was accustomed to fear bears but in here I was told that nearly in all forest I will not encounter one. I was relieved to find this and started to explore the place.

Suhl is a quiet place with a lot of green places. Some people come here to just relax and visit Oberschönau, a place where olimpic sports happen every year. The Thuringian forests are beautiful. I loved the vibe of the place.

I was lucky to be in full season of berries. So I was actually the little bear eating all of the delicious treats that the forest had to offer. There will never be a better taste than the one that you get from a freshly picked fruit in the forest. It just is the epitome of greatness. And there is a sort of satisfaction that I can’t explain when you pick it with your own hands.

I had visited the forest when I felt happy, sad, lonely, lost and powerful. I always came back stronger. I was happy to see some horses and deers while roaming around the place. I adored the foggy mornings. At the start I was a bit afraid to go so early in a forest and all alone. I knew no german and no one could come to my rescue in case something happened. Now that I look back I realize how much courage I possess, in the sense of going into the unknown without any fear, or knowledge of it, that something wrong could happen. It never occured to me that a forest could be a menacing place, on the contrary, I have always sought solace and healing in it.

The forest feels like the marsupial pouch I am never too busy to return to. I feel a deep connection with it and it amazes me as I am a woman born and raised in the urban jungle. But since I was a child I felt discomfort at the idea of me having to live between four walls.

I liked the view over the city of Suhl that I could have in the forest. I also like that there were benches put in the forest so any tourist could gather their thoughts.

I often put some good treats in my backpack and enjoy my daily walk. I could also practice my photography by trying to catch the atmosphere of the forest. Somehow it always feels like the reality could never be caught on camera as it evokes something in your soul that you can’t print on paper…

The comfort of autumn

Autumn has come. There is always such a sweet feast for the eyes to see my go-to forest in my town during this time. I do not know about you, but I feel so trapped in these tiny concrete buildings we call home. I dream about living in a house with a big yard and about waking up and seeing green life in front of my eyes. I want to be grateful for what I have because it was something I wanted for so long, yet I feel that I belong somewhere in nature more than in a confined space in town.

I can’t help but feel a bit melancholic once in a while. And then , with all of my strenght, I go to the forest. And I feel peace.

I admire how nicely the colours are shifting. The light. When I catch some good light in my walks I am always in awe. Could I ever paint this splendor on paper and render its true beauty?

I am going through a painter’s block right now. Since I came back from my Denmark adventure it feels so hard to get back to painting. I do not know why. I just feel stuck and someday even hopeless. It seems such a big thing until I go on my walks and I forget about everything. I remember that even the people with the biggest achievements turned back into the soil like simple flesh. I look at the tarmac that I am walking on and recognize the work of many men who have built our society, with all of the inventions and hard work. As a woman I feel admiration and gratitude. It is not often that I realize that we might take for granted everything the past generations have build for us.

I have read the other days that the human being is the only creature in the world that tries to justify its own existence. The trees, the animals don’t even try. They just are. I am still trying to not feel guilty whenever I am not doing anything productive and I allow myself to just be. I used to feel very guilty about this and I have tracked this back to my childhood days. We are born perfect yet as we grow up the others around us teach us about our imperfections. Ironic isn’t it?

I arrive at one of my favourite spots and I take off my boots and my socks. I have read about the practice of grounding, as in sitting barefoot in nature. It just allows me to feel more in sync with the Planet and more relaxed. It feels rejuvenating. I sit in silence. I wish I would not have to go back to town. The noise of the cars, the constant agitation, the blocks of concrete, everything seems like a chaos for my ears. Has it happened to you to feel that after you exposed yourself to some time in nature that you can’t find any sense in the chaos we have built in this urban jungle? Maybe it is just my artistic nature, my romantic and melancholic side that makes me yearn for silence…

I wonder what could autumn teach me. The lesson of letting go? The fact that there is always a silver lining despite the suffering? The beauty of transformation? The richness that diversity brings?

It has been a while since I saw down barefoot, looking at the sky, doing absolutely nothing….every imperfectly perfect human being should try that. It feels like I can be enough just the way I am.

My thoughts as a forest person

Here I am, at 33 years old, starting a blog about my adventure as a human being in the forests. I grew up in the urban jungle. I did not have a childhood like Tarzan, climbing from one tree to another.

But one day I went through a heartbreak. And I felt that I need to just go. Out. Somewhere. And this is how my beautiful addiction started. The more time I spent in nature alone, the more I healed. At first I was afraid. But my curiosity and pain were much bigger than my fears. This happened more than 5 years ago. Not much you would say. But for me….it was like yesterday.

I still manage to find my peace there. In the quiescent forest. Where all I can hear is the birds and my incessant thoughts. Oh boy…the clutter! The noise we have inside our mind. The constant rumination. It still takes me a long time until I manage to shut it down. I have a lot to learn from nature and from sitting in silence.

I often notice how the urban life does not fit me. I feel trapped inside the confinement of my walls. I call it home and I am grateful for my shelter, yet my heart yearns for a house with a big yard , maybe a house in a forest. I do not know where life will take me but starting a blog about what I feel when I go in different places with lots of trees and peace feels right.

It feels right. It feels peaceful. To write. Welcome to my inner home, hopefully you will feel that you can find a place to belong after reading my stories.