LOVE AND PAIN

What attracts you to other people?

In reality life involves pain

Happiness, we all want it, we all crave it, we all strive for it...but what is this elusive thing we are looking for?

A sense of pleasure, gladness or gratification, that doesn't last?

The harder we pursue pleasurable feelings the more likely we suffer from anxiety and depression.

What does it mean to live a rich, full and meaningful life?

Does it mean take action to cherish the things that truly matter deep in our hearts?

Does it mean to move in directions that we consider worthy?

Does it mean to clarify what we stand for in life and act accordingly?

It is a profound sense of a life well lived and such a life give us the full range of human emotions: pleasure, fear, sadness, anger and pain...

As human beings we are all faced with the prospect of getting sick and die, sooner or later we all will loose someone close to our hearts through separation, rejection or death...

We wil all come face-to-face with crisis, disappointment, failure and painful thoughts and feelings will follow us....everywhere...

We can't avoid pain, we can learn to handle it much better...

to make room for it, rise above it and create a life worth of living.

If you love somebody deeply, you know you will feel pain, there is no way to avoid it and you still open yourself to your feelings and accept the pain as a natural part of love.

Accept the painful memories, do not fear them, they happened in the past and can no longer hurt you.

No one wants to feel pain, everyone feels it. Menancing shapes half glimpsed from the corner of your vision are far more disturbing than the things we see clearly.

Observe your pain, breathe into it and allow it.

If you are breathing, you are alive. It never stops until the day you die, use it to help you stay connected with life...a breath of fresh air, a deep sigh of relief after a stressful day...

Connect fully with your environment what can you see, hear, touch, taste and smell?Abandon the search for pain free existence, the more you try to avoid the basic fact that all human life involves pain...

...the more you struggle with that pain when it arises and thus you suffer even more...accept the pain just like you accept the love that inevitably comes with living...

I am coming home to myself, layer by layer, the painful issues of the past soften and resolve.

I listen to many stories that are riveting, inspirational and moving. Most people have a more difficult journey that mine has been.

Pain and love,

not angry pain, not tearful pain, not reproachful, nto desperate...

Pain and love...pain and bliss.

As in birth as in death.

To David J.R.

When I was a little girl,

Grandmum told me a secret:

"If you really want something,

there will be a way."

Is it angels or the power of positive thinking?

Is it determination to act

or the courage to be guided?

Between these impulses the adventure is born.

The roaring of the ocean never stops

almost everyone is struggling

colours so sharp

hot, fluffy sand

with dry, salty crust on top

the taste of tears in your mouth

the pain just doesn't go away

and you are not alone

this realization comes

when you open your eyes,

your ears and your heart

and you hear other people out.

You stop and ponder,

why should this be?

Sunshine breaking into trilions

of fragments

in the shallow

the power of money,

love and creation

living so high

falling so low

rocks meeting water

sand meeting grass

blue meeting blue on the horizon

human meeting perfection

the perfection of the human mind.

On a damp,

fog-shrouded morning

a paleoanthropologist from Madrid

stands before the entrance to El Sidron

and gingerely lowers himself into the black hole.

An underground river

had hollowed out

a deep vein of sandstone

ten minutes into the cave

he discovers 'the tunnel of bones',

the last nine Neanderthals,

five young adults

two teenagers

a child about eight

and a three year-old toddler.

All showed signs of nutritional stress

in their teeth

not unusual in young Neanderthals

late in their time on Earth.

But a deeper desparation is etched

in their bones,

they were cannibalized

by the first humans.

Whoever ate their flesh

for whatever reason

starvation

or ritual,

within days they died

the ground bellow them

suddenly collapsed

leaving little time for hyenas

to scatter the remains.

The scientist picks up

the mineralized bone

of our closest prehistoric relative

who dominated Eurasia

for 200,000 years

and with the large brains

and enormous strength

seemed equipped to face anything

on Earth,

except those modern human migrants

from Africa,

us.

Why did one kind of human being survive,

and the other disappear?

With each generation

the humans

became increasingly

skilled

at predicting

and avoiding danger,

even now

when the wilderness

was pushed away

by the modern world

our foreheads are wrinkled

by any of a million

and one other

common worries

because our mind

keeps assessing

and judging

almost everything.

We are living

in quick earning

and spending times,

most people deal with their money

the same way

how they deal with their feelings.

The lucky ones

give and receive

graciously

with a hug and a smile.

They waste money

as if not worthy

of holding onto anything

precious.

Others are insatiable,

greedy

for more and more.

And some are as tight

with their purse

as they are around their heart,

the flow of giving and receiving

is awkward

and embarrassing for them.

In the early human times

the tight ones would not survive,

if your group rejects you

it won't be long

before the wolves find you.

Is it why,

so much energy

is spent,

worrying

whether people will like us?

Always looking for ways

to improve ourselves

or putting ourselves down

because we don't measure up.

We are so sophisticated

now

we can dream up

a fantasy of a person

we would like to be

then compare our real self

to that impossible

perfect image.

Think about the ambition

of any Stone Age man,

the more

the better chance of survival,

the more food

keeps him alive

through times of scarcity

the better shelter

protects him from weather

and wild animals

the more children

gives him a chance

that some of them survive...

and our modern mind

continues to look for more:

money, status, love

new car or new house

if you succeed

you are content

for a while

until you want more....

Thus evolution has shaped our minds

that we are almost inevitably

destined to be never satisfied...

The stories of a happy childhood

are all the same,

the parents love each other,

there are children to play with

and there is a bit of nature

to have adventures.

The stories of an injured childhood

are all different,

unique,

tragic

and complicated,

just like most human lives.

When those children

will grow up,

almost half of them

will at some point

be so overwhelmed

by misery

that they seriously contemplate suicide.

With all the professional help,

advice and wordly wisdom

we can not rekindle

that sparkle of the great fire of life...

Love is radiating from every infant,

springtime,

the power of youth,

what will happen to them

at the end of summer?

We live longer than ever before

but with each extra year

we are loosing the hunger

to conquer the world.

Who knows what the future holds,

there is only hope

warm afternoon sun of mid-life

abundance of harvest

joy of sharing....

The Happiness Trap

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Creativity and me...

What do you do to improve your creativity?

The end of Summer - Peel Inlet

Was your childhood hapy or miserable? What did you want to be when you grew up? Do you remember when you found out there was no Santa?

I have often wondered if my own answers would be really honest. But maybe once you've been honest you find out people like you for it and the world doesn't implode.

Adam Zwar in 'The Agony of LIfe' said: "Life is hard, love is hard, but it's all pretty funny and no-one gets out alive."

It is good to keep this statement close to your heart and stop taking your life and yourself so seriously. You and everything you have done and achieved will end up on a pile of dust anyway.

One doesn't have to pursue unhappiness, but you can not avoid it either, it comes to you. You come into the world screaming.

You cry when you're born because your lungs expand. You breathe. I think that's really kind of significant. You come into the world crying and it's a sign that you are alive.

I don't know what it means 'the pursuit of happiness', all I know it is all about connection.

When you find someone you hate a lot, you should really look at it. It's bending toward that thing called love.

When you find someone you love, you love intensely, you should watch it. It's getting closer to its opposite.

One of the ironies of our complicated human nature.

Our own life script is filled with that sense of wit, irony, self-deprecation...

frustration and verbal richness we gathered walking our own path to fight everyday battles.

We like to share our individual life paths with people we trust and engage their sympathies alhtough that is not what we set out to do.

All we want is understanding.

Our creativity help us to open the window on sensitive material, we would not touch otherwise.

Once you have opened the window on contraversial material, it's very hard to close it, and you know your imagination gave you strength to get there....

You can make a poem that's the part of the current conversation.

Writing creatively is an opportunity to make a deep dive into content that is contemporaneous....

an opportunity to reflect in a way that might make reader to feel uncomfortable and confronted....

In life there is clarity and there is ambiguity and there is a natural parallel, and there is some connective tissure there and it is ofen subconsious and not conscious.

Creative writing opens up a conversation. And it ends up with unanswered questions inviting the reader to answer them: "Where do you want to go?"

"Where have you been and where do you want to go from there?"

I like to ask these questions myself when walking alone.

I like melancholy. I like to pretend I am alone in the world and I am just sort of abandoned.

In that world of total abandondment I become attracted to something, instinctively, and I research it, and my research becomes an adventure.

I take you with me on my travels, everyone likes adventures...creative writing takes you there every day of your life...

ONE BLOND HUBBER AND HIM

"You really think this is possible?"

He asked her in a burst

of desperation

suddenly so unsure

of his ability

to fit

in this

little creative world of ours

in our hubpage writing community.

"All I have now is one blond woman who thinks I am special,"

he moaned,

wanting to be out there,

to be heard, to be seen,

so fast

so quick

is there any of us who doesn't?

He is competing every day

with thousands of others

hub aspiring writers

wishing to swim

up and down

all the time

on that endless stream

of never drying out creativity.

There was something in her

that made him want to write,

to open his heart

and tap into his imaginative side...

Can he keep it?

Can he make it?

Can you let let him in

when he knocks so urgently

on your closed doors?

Hubpages is where everyone

can have a go

and take part,

and where all are welcome,

you say,

it's where you can see new talents

getting their first break

alongside the well established hubbers.

It's one of the reasons

hubpages are so popular,

lively, fresh, diverse

and exciting,

no matter what your taste is.

Every style you can think of

is on offer,

and some you never thought

is possible!

Hub circuit is a place

where the people are super friendly

and their comments generous

and responsive.

It opens up a new field

of opportunity

for hobby writers,

but it's an experiment,

certainly.

"If I can do it,

then you can do it."

That one blond hubber

said to him.

"It feels like an old summer camp thing,

you know,

somebody starts a story

and they pass it

to the next person,

so we tend to leave

each chapter with a problem

for the other person to solve,

or the question to ask

or the comment to leave...."

"I was always taking notes

on people

like some really awful

spy,

I was just a word-obsessed kid,

now I like to read

what other hubbers think,

it is moving and exhilarating..."

she disclosed something about her,

and he ponders,

ready to answer back:

"I like to blend facts and fiction,

the lives of real-life characters,

people who I really loved

to bring them vividly

back to life..."

"Those categories for me

are clearly defined,"

she answered back,

"I think the reader needs to know

exactly where they stand.

If you are writing non-fiction,

it means

that what you are writing is true and really happened,

however extraordinary it is."

"I like to write creatively,

to be inside somebody's mind

and their emotions,

and

in a sense,

inside my mind too,

because it's what I think

of a particular situation."

He said with a big broad smile,

feeling the exhilariation

of discovery.

"I like to write

with a certain

'emotional freight'

as a writer

it doesn't confine

where my imagination

will go,"

she replied,

"Tell me more about you,

tell me what are you thinking about

right now?"

She imagined him

sitting in a room

and he would look so sad,

so unsure of himself,

so beaten up,

but then,

he would start to tell

a story

and suddenly

he would come to life

and he would get funnier and funnier,

and his eyes would twinkle,

and his voice

would take on

whatever mood he was exploring...

always in motion...

always

full of

deep thouhts

and feelings...

She closed her eyes

to see those living people

he described

and their courage.

It was an act of empathy,

she listened

and imagined,

what that must have been like

for them

to a greater or a lesser degree.

So there are the facts

of his story

and there is how

that affects her

and how she can imagine

the life of another human being.

The one blond hubber

opened her eyes again

and started to write,

imagining herself

into those lives

without any break,

completely freely,

completely creatively.

Words radiant with tenderness

and empathy

for the human condition,

the language animated

by the need

to understand

the nature of desire

in all its form.

It was like a mysterious

electrical current

running through the sentences,

she sent the words to him

and he caught the writing fever too....

There is a whole lot of emotional energy

that comes

for everyone.

from our childhoods

and from what happened to us

and from how we are constructed,

he closed his eyes and started to play his guitar.

A psychological engine

of before,

nuclear reaction of now,

creating a kind of intensity

between them,

inside them

feeding each other

constantly

with wonders of a brilliant sunset

and impossibly large full moon

that never ceases to shine,

will it be large enough

to sustain their creativity?