If they were few and far in between, there would be nothing to worry about. But this intolerance is widespread and frightening, as there’s no known cure. It portrays the isolation and disrespect of a generation who, hidden behind a digital screen, choose to inflict their misery upon everyone. It’s an unprecedented escalation of universal mediocrity.
When the Real Fun Begins
One of my readers, who had recently seen me on a TV programme, wrote to me saying she was puzzled when I said that a couple should always have fun together. According to her, this was a paradox because prior to that I had said I don’t like big parties and prefer smaller gatherings.
My reader didn’t mention her age but I guess she was about twenty, at the most. She’s at that stage in life where to have fun means to have a wild time. For the record, I like parties; a birthday party, a wedding, a special celebration, albeit with a good break between them. Fine.
It’s just that when I said ‘to have fun’ what I meant, more than anything, was a state of mind. It’s been said that laughter is the elixir of life. I agree. Clearly, I’m not talking about giggling all day without a care in the world. It’s rather an inward laughter, it’s to feel amused by things, including things that didn’t work as well as expected. By now we should know that many things don’t always go as planned.
When the subject of fun arises, young people may think they are the experts, but my theory is that older people are the true masters. Real freedom comes when we’ve finished our college exams, we’ve graduated, we’ve married and had children, we’ve gained professional stability, we’ve separated (that’s optional), and survived it all. Now with nothing to prove to others, or to ourselves, it’s time to pack our bags and travel to places we’ve always dreamt of, New Zealand maybe, and others we’ve never considered, The Atacama Desert perhaps. We may learn a language just because we like how it sounds, Italian of course. We may learn how to play poker, or an instrument, just for the fun of it. We may consider opening our own business.
You might be asking yourselves what has this got to do with having fun with your partner?
It has everything to do with it.
Obviously we need to work a lot to afford all of this, and nothing is better for a couple than to have their minds occupied with their professional pursuits and then be able to enjoy all that life has to offer together.
To have fun is to go to bed early, wake up early, work hard and take risks. Partying is good, yet partying every night is quite sad. It’s life itself, our everyday life, that should be the real party.
The Independent Woman
I was signing my latest book when a tall, elegant, older woman came up to me and said: “I think you’re a phenomenal woman…” Beaming, I took the book she was holding and prepared to write an affectionate dedication. Then she added: “…but I wouldn’t want to be married to you, you’re too independent!”
I distinctly remember the sinking feeling I had when I finished the dedication and thanked her for coming.
How am I more independent than any other woman? Almost all the women I know work, earn their living, defend their opinions and vote for the candidate of their choice. Alright, some don’t like to go to the cinema alone whereas I don’t mind. Only a few lived alone before getting married, as I did. As far as I can remember, almost none of them travelled alone, as I have. And that’s about it as far as independence goes, which, to me, doesn’t seem enough to frighten anybody.
I imagine that in some people’s eyes this so-called ‘independent woman’ looks cold-hearted. Someone who never asks for support, never needs anybody, never cries, never doubts herself, doesn’t appreciate a hug.
When I became old enough to dream about independence, I started eagerly reading Marina Colasanti’s* books. They taught me to renounce dependence and to have my own views about life, and yet to be a loving and sensitive person. Independence is nothing more than the power of choice, to grant yourself the freedom to come and go, to meet your needs and desires and still feel the magic of a love story. Independence doesn’t mean solitude, it means honesty; I am where I want to be, with whom I want to be with.
But do independent women drive men away? Marina Colasanti used to joke, “If that’s true, it will deter the competitive types and those looking for a submissive woman, or those who lack confidence. Not bad at all!”
Unfortunately that older woman is not alone in sharing the idea that independent women are a threat. This idea is not as archaic as you might think. There are still those who believe that being only a pretty face has its benefits. Personally, I can’t see any. I believe female independence is stimulating, joyful, challenging and vital, and a quality that promotes movement and progress in society, among relatives and friends. “I need you” might be a sentence that men hear less and less from us, and perhaps they miss it. On the other hand never before has “I love you” been said with so much meaning.
*Marina Colasanti: Brazilian writer, translator and journalist. She lived in Libya during her infancy, and then moved to Italy where she lived for eleven years.
Is Your Home Happy?
A friend of mine who wanted to buy a house asked me to visit some properties with her. We went to have a look at a few places she had selected, all still occupied. My friend, of course, was focused on the practical side of things – the size of the rooms, the state of the building, which direction the property faced, and the neighbours. I, in the meantime, was just watching how people live.
I’ve read somewhere that there’s only one rule to follow when decorating your home: there should be something that makes you happy everywhere you look. The forgoing is true and correct. There’s not a single object in my house that doesn’t make me happy, either because it reminds me of a trip I went on, or it was a gift from a friend, perhaps it’s been with me through thick and thin, or it brings back good memories, maybe it’s just because it’s fun to look at.
This rule doesn’t apply to one class but to all. Homes can be spectacular but impersonal, with their needlessly extravagant gold taps, expensive, gloomy paintings, and valuable ornaments. They are impressive, no doubt, and must make their owners proud, but I wouldn’t want to live in a place where I could not put my feet on the coffee table.
What makes a home beautiful isn’t the cost of its decoration, but rather how it portrays the people who live in it. That’s what surprised me during those visits: the joyless decoration. A sofa, two chairs, a TV, a hideous ornament on the table… the end. Where were the objects that made them happy? I know that happiness doesn’t require this, but why opt for a soulless home? Nice things make a home welcoming and alive, be it a hut in the middle of nowhere or a fisherman’s house, which is – in many cases –a lot more endearing than a cold penthouse. But mostly, people aren’t interested in the beauty of things and if they try, they get it all wrong, by turning their homes into a showroom where everything looks fake. The result is a decoration disaster. Where’s the touch of nature, wood, flowers, raw materials, and most of all, where’s the sense of humour? How can you be happy in a dreary home?
I’m not judging, I’m simply repeating what I’ve read. If you’re at home now, are you surrounded by things that make you happy? Or is your home just a decently comfortable place to rest and that’s it?
My friend hasn’t found a house yet, but she’s trying to visit empty properties now, where she can better envision how to transform that space into a happy home.
It Will Come to Nothing
Like every mortal, I often find myself in stressful situations – coping with our problems is easier said than done. Yet there seem to be people who are so confident that they make us wonder how they do it. Do you think I know the secret? I haven’t the slightest.
I also waste time reflecting on my problems. I feel envy, I feel bad about saying no, sometimes I think I’m too strict with my daughters, sometimes too lenient, sometimes I feel I fall behind with the world’s affairs, I don’t know what choices to make – all those th
ings that prevent us from having a good night’s sleep.
Since I don’t go to therapy and I don’t sleep enough as it is, I decided to create a personal method to deal with my day-to-day worries. It may sound a bit morbid, but it works. When I trouble myself too much over something, I think: I’m going to die.
I will die, obviously. Everybody knows they will die one day, but we avoid thinking about this unpleasant truth. However, I haven’t been thinking of death as a great tragedy, but rather as a way to relax, and so death becomes, ta-da! – a soothing medicine. In roughly forty years I won’t be here anymore; in the blink of an eye, all my worries will be gone. Nothing of what I feel or think will remain, at least not for me – whatever people will remember of me will be their choice. I will disappear. Vanish. Puff! So why get stressed?
Compared to death nothing is worth the trouble. Back to my worries: Envy. Really? Of whom, and for what? Everybody is going to the grave; nobody will survive to tell the tale. So let’s make the most of what we have. Let’s enjoy the moment and stop gambling on the future. Life is happening at this very moment; the rest is just an illusion.
Despite their love for us, our children will criticise us one day, no matter what. To keep up with the news might be important for our careers, but not necessarily for our well-being. And finally, when it comes to the choices we make, all that matters is how they make us feel now – there’s that magic word again: now! Because soon we and our worries will be history. Even Jennifer Lopez will be history.
Side note: if you are younger than forty, please disregard this article. Before their forties nobody dies. That’s the way of things. Before forty you have the right to all the drama that makes life interesting – honour the first act!
After forty, however, dare to just enjoy yourself and don’t waste time over petty issues. It will come to nothing.
What Are You Thinking?
I was taking part in an event when a young woman came up to me and said: “I’d like to know your opinion about something. When I ask my husband what he is thinking, he always replies that he isn’t thinking about anything. Is it possible?”
“I’ve no idea. But the real question is, do you really do this?” I replied.
In any case, she isn’t alone. We share moments of silence with our sweetheart but love is no defence against insecurity, and that is when silence starts to become uncomfortable. So, to prevent that silence from becoming deafening we pop the invasive question: “What are you thinking?”
This might happen at the most untimely hours; during a car trip, a walk in the park, or even in front of the TV: “What are you thinking?”
I was thinking if the cake will still be good now that I changed the white flour for the whole grain. I was trying to remember if it was Robert Downey Jr. who played Gandhi in the cinema. I was trying to work out how can an elephant, being herbivorous, be so fat.
As Olavo Bilac* would say, "Certainly thou hath lost thy mind."
Our thought is sacred, the only territory free of surveillance, free of judgment, free of investigation; free, free, free. The recreational area of madness. Open space for the imagination. Untouchable paradise. If we are unusually quiet, fine, it’s nice that people around us show that they care by asking if we are upset about something or need to talk. People who care about us notice when our silence is a sign that something is wrong and they try to start a conversation to help out.
But during a car trip when all is well and we are just enjoying the scenery? In front of the TV when we are watching an interview with our favourite film director? This is the silence of peace and quiet; it shouldn’t be broken by suspicion. Yes, it could be that what we are thinking during the car trip is that this relationship has gone too far. Or that the park would be the perfect place for a secret date, preferably with that handsome film director. Yes, it could be.
What are you thinking?
Nothing babe, nothing.
*Olavo Bilac was a Brazilian Parnassian poet, journalist and translator.
The God of Small Things
It’s not easy to hear people say they feel like failures. It’s even worse when said people are beautiful and rich, live in stunning houses, have loving partners, sweet children, successful careers, and travel the world. What’s missing? A life project.
This frustration seems to be common among many men and women who have achieved all they want in life but can’t rid themselves of this feeling of emptiness. What is a life project? For people who already have it all, it could be writing a book, adopting a child, setting up a charity or their own business; in short, something grand. Because all they have is grand: love, health, money and a career. But I believe that this life project so many people search for consists of small things, too small for people used to greatness.
Where can we find this joie de vivre? Closer than we think. Watering our garden. Placing a souvenir at home that reminds us of good times. Reading a book. Walking by the sea, or in the country, surrounded by the beauty of nature. Choosing a picture to frame. Lighting a candle or incense. Relishing a kiss. Admiring the sun after the rain. Choosing an outfit to have dinner with a friend. We can only be saved from frustration by appreciating the ordinary. When we don’t enjoy the trivial, when all of our daily tasks are done by others, when proving to the world that we are happy becomes more important than actually being happy, our needs become absurd. Nothing we achieve will ever be enough if we lose grasp of what “enough” means.
Although this may sound easy, I know it isn’t. Some people are unable to find that inner satisfaction that makes them feel successful just for being at peace with life, despite their troubles.
Some turn to religion. For them it seems the only way to feel complete, but religion often becomes an escape from reality. However, the spirituality we seek is a lot less dogmatic; it’s a human experience of gratitude, without penitence and guilt. It’s gratitude for being here, for being able to find joy in what really matters. There’s nothing wrong with our desire to want, but we mustn’t lose sight of that which is essential.
Inside the Airport
I have not yet figured out how I feel about airports. Nowadays, frustration and weariness, but other than the stress caused by delays, airports fascinate me. I know I’m not alone, otherwise the writer Alain de Botton wouldn’t have accepted to live for a week at Heathrow, London’s major international airport, to write a book on the subject.
The book includes many pictures and observations about this microcosm that stages farewells, meetings, hours of waiting, anxieties and joy. It isn’t a must read, far from it. As all commissioned books, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, has a lot of non-essential information, yet it gives us an in-depth look at what goes on in the non-stop world of travel.
When it comes to airports, everyone has a story to tell. I’ve written an article about some of my own experiences before; for instance, when someone almost sat on my lap, revealing to me I had the power of invisibility. I’ve seen a teenager try to open the outside door mid-flight – I know the attempt was useless, but I’d rather not have witnessed it. I’ve been through the disappointment of waiting for the luggage that never came and in turn arriving at my hotel empty handed. Not to mention my encounter with a familiar face while waiting for my flight at Heathrow airport – it was only Harrison Ford! Why didn’t he try to sit on my lap is something that the Almighty has yet to explain to me.
Well, these stories would be in my book about airports, had I written one. In Alain de Botton’s, what I liked most was when he spoke about how we feel when we are searched, when we have to open our luggage, take our shoes and belts off, step through the metal detector; all of this creates an inexplicable feeling of guilt, no matter how innocent we are. I can attest to that. If the whole process takes too long, my hands start sweating and I anticipate the moment they will find weapons or drugs in my belongings. In spite of myself, when they open my passport and look at my picture, I just stare with my best terrorist face hoping they won’t
find out my passport is fake! But somehow my anxiety goes unnoticed and they stamp it anyway, not realising that the image on the photo and I aren’t alike. Perhaps deep down this is what fascinates us: when we travel we don’t really look like ourselves. Airports are nothing more than gateways for our foreign selves.
Women Under Pressure
In an interview with Veja magazine, Camille Paglia, the American social critic, said that women are so stressed these days that men are giving up on the idea of marriage. To illustrate the frantic pace we live at now, she asked: “Does anyone remember having a restless grandmother?”
Let’s take this one thing at a time.
Nobody had a restless grandma when they were young because times were different. Grandma would settle comfortably into the role of guardian of the family. Perhaps she was content, or not, who knows. But she wasn’t restless. The question I ask is this: “Would any woman today like to live the life of her grandmother?”
Yet I agree with Camille Paglia when she says that women are too stressed nowadays, even though I don’t believe that men are giving up on marriage. Both men and women dream of happy and stable relationships, but the competition we create gets in the way. We compete with men, with our grandmothers, and even more with ourselves. Perhaps that’s the cause of our stress. We still wish to prove to the world that yes we can.
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