Snow. Peace. Love. Meaning.

After a romantic dinner at the sushi restaurant here in town, me and my wife enjoyed Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona at the local cinema and were pleasantly surprised by the amount of snow all around when we, after the film was over, walked out into the night. The easy stroll back home, through the silence of the falling snow, ignited the magic within my being.

I was too awake to go to bed with my wife and so I sat in the living room in darkness, with my water pipe and Keith Jarrett’s Vienna Concert way after midnight, just watching through the window, getting carried away by this enchanting sight of snow and peace.

At first my thoughts circled around the awareness of the incredible speed that the life is passing by with. My son Filip is 17 years and a half. This is how old I was when I went to Africa. Soon he will start driving the car and begin thinking about the University. Dev and Lucija; I barely manage to recognize them when we bump into each other in the kitchen. I am surrounded by these big people. Where have my little children gone? When did all of this happen? Did I fall asleep? Did I blink?

The next thought after this lead, of course, back to my main theme; the meaning of it all. Am I living my life in a meaningful manner? Am I wasting it and will I regret many things when entering the tunnel after some time?

Then the peaceful realization got born within me. An organically and naturally grown little glimpse of the meaning started to breathe. The title of the first chapter of Jack Kornfield’s book A Path With Heart came to my mind, the crucial question that has been with me since I have read it in his book a long, long time ago: “Did I love well?”

Did I love well? I believe that when everything ends this is going to be the only question that will matter and have the power to bring peace within me.

Did I love well?

Yes, the question of the meaning is just as simple. Sometimes.

So…

Do I love well?

Racism immunity?

I have always thought that the fact that I was growing up in an all-white society really gave me a rather limited perspective on life and was sort of envious of people that were born in more culturally diverse societies. But about a month ago at the interculturalist congress and Granada, Spain, while sharing with a young American lady about various topics that had to do with racism, I have realized that perhaps not all was bad about my situation and that I have actually inherited something beautiful – the state of being colour blind. Let me explain.

You see, I grew up in the country that does not exist anymore: Yugoslavia. We were brought up in a discourse that the West, with it’s capitalist exploitation of people, was bad. And we were also taught that the East, with it’s communist dictatorship and ignorance to basic human rights, was also bad. We were taught that neither of the two extremes of the Cold War were of any good and that the world needed the third way. The opportunity for the third way was seen in the Non-Aligned movement that basically consisted of the Third World countries, and Yugoslavia, the only member from Europe. So the heroes that were presented to us were in general, along with Tito, of Asian and African origin, like Gandhi, Nehru, Naser, Kaunda, Mandela… We were taught to respect these people and race did not play any role AT ALL. In fact, white race was, in general, seen as aggressive and non-white as oppressed freedom fighters and a new hope for humanity.

Yet another fact was that we had no first-hand relations with non-white individuals at all. In fact NOBODY had any experience and there was no heritage in this regard whatsoever. Blank page. Nothing happened in the past. No stories, no biases, nothing. So, while talking to this young American lady, who had to, while growing up in the U.S., dig her way through all the cultural prejudices, personal and family stories, discourses of all sort of kinds, in order to build her own relationship (which will, no matter what she does, never be only her own, it will never be pure), I realized how lucky I really was. Whenever this white American lady sees an, say, African American on the street, so many associations automatically jump up, so many layers get stimulated, so many lenses pop up in her mind, blurring and biasing her image, on perhaps a very subtle and weak lever, but nevertheless it is there. This is at least how she has explained to me.

Listening to her I realized that actually my first contact with a non-white person was when I found myself, at age 17, in Africa on my escape from life. And there was no background to it, no pre-planted seeds, no attitudes, no preconceive ideas, just a simple and straight interaction with another human being. The colour of skin mattered just as much as the colour of hair. Nothing. On the conscious level at least.

And to this day I cannot find anything else in regard to my perception of diversity of the colour of the human skin. Seems like my relation to the question of “other races” started out of nothing and did not evolve in any weird ways. I feel like a happy colour blind person. So, as weird as this dead country of Yugoslavia was, I am actually really happy I was born here.

And, speaking of Yugoslavia, here’s a video of my ex-schoolmate with his artistic name Magnifico, about Yugoslavia – The Land of Champions. It is a nostalgic account of the times lost, with using the iconography of spaghetti western films (and some kung-fu movies too) that we all grew up watching and adoring, and with strictly sticking to the macho Balkan English accent. Enjoy!

Just a simple chain of thoughts

Anne-Claire and Ludovic are leaving on the train to Venice tonight, to have a romantic breakfast tomorrow morning somewhere near the Piazza San Marco, before flying back to Paris.

Which reminds me of how beautiful Venice is, especially out of the main tourist season.

Which reminds me of how great it is to live only a two-hour drive from Venice and to be able to go there for a coffee just about any time.

Which reminds me of the day in July when me and my wife put our van on the ferry boat heading from Venice to Greece (on our way to Albania) and enjoyed the view of this magical town while the boat was passing through the Canal Grande, just by the Piazza San Marco.

Which reminds me that I actually have a photo of this moment:

Seeing this photo brings me back to that moment of peace and hapiness and reminds me how much I love my wife. And how much I miss her now, while she is still in North Ossetia. Until tomorrow.

Having cool visitors is cool

So the first visiting party from abroad (out of the three in this month or so) have been here for a week now and, apart from the joy of talking and sharing our lives with dear friends, I came to learn about the other very positive effects cool visitors do have on my well-being:

• since they are not the sort of visitors that would just sit and wait to be served, they have already integrated in our family life, in a natural, relaxed way. Meaning that my life continues normally, they are around the house, they go and come back, and when we bump into each other we chat a bit, decide what to do together and what to do on our own… And it feels like a bigger family, a community of a sort. And I love this feeling.
• having them here inspires me, despite the rather busy days I am having, to focus on doing more of simple yet enjoyable stuff. For instance a glass of wine with the lunch, a ritualistic gathering and sharing with the water pipe…
• being a part of the community they do stuff around the house – cook, do the dishes… With my wife still being away this contributes considerably to the quality of food. We still haven’t finished the pizzas from the fridge, let alone ordered any. Perhaps kids are not too enthusiastic about that fact…
• with taking them here and there I get to be outside more, walk more than I would normally do this week. I even got to see yet another sunset (did not have my camera with me so this is taken by my phone, hence the quality is barely appropriate).

So, visitors, please come and help me meet my need for community, help me eat regular meals and good food, help me enjoy life more and please do drag me out of the house. And do the dishes.

Some crazy weeks ahead

Ok, this is going to be some interesting our-of-routine time in the next few weeks.

• Tomorrow morning my wife flies away to North Ossetia on a humanitarian mission, for ten days. Cat, mice…
• And tomorrow afternoon my dear friend Anne-Claire and her husband Ludo will finally reach our town – they are on their three-month walking tour across Central and Eastern Europe – have a look at their blog. I have met Anne-Claire through interculturalist circles a couple of years ago and we grew into becoming true friends. She is a sunshine! Such a beautiful, pure and shining person and I am really looking forward to see her again, meet her husband and host them in our house for a week or so.
• Just about when my wife comes back another sunshine will come, this time a double feature. My two dearest NVC friends, crazy ladies from Sweden, will arrive to stay with us for a week and do some NVC work together. And to have a lot of laughs. I sense The Force hinting me this is going to be insane.
• Then my wife will be off to North Ossetia again. Cat, mice…
• Soon after she comes back my dear friend from Belgrade, Serbia will come with his family to stay with us for almost a week. I have met him 22 years ago in the military service (along with Nado we were inseparable) and we have been great friends since. They hosted us, for instance, when we were coming, dirty and tired, from our overland journey to India and also this year when me and my wife were driving back from Albania. This dear family of musicians and artists always enriches us with their beautiful spirit, openness and love, and I am so happy we will spend this time together.
• Oh, I almost forgot to mention it; I will be giving trainings and seminars across these times almost non-stop. So, long days, short nights, I guess.

Who cares. I’ll sleep when I am dead. YIPPEEEEE!

And for all my dear friends, those I will meet soon and those I will, hopefully, meet some time later…

Down!, Ego, down!

Today my wife’s parents dropped by for a coffee. After an hour or so of chatting about this and that, they left and I found myself overwhelmed with feeling absolutely humble, and also a bit frustrated with myself.

You see, these two old hardworking people are so beautiful, simple, loving, modest, soft. This simple beauty shines from their eyes and from their hearts and while sitting with them across the table my heart was melting and tears started to gather in my eyes.

And I felt somewhat dirty, utterly polluted with my own inflated ego, self-promotion, smart mouth, cynicism, arrogance…

Sometimes I feel so tired of myself, of my persona, my own ego. Because it takes such a long long long time to peal all these layers off. And there are so many, glued just about everywhere.

Oh, well…

The refugees are us

Today is the Bloggers Unite for Refugees day and here are my two little stories that helped me see who and what refugees really are.

1983, Sudan.

I was 17, no money, no direction, no goal, basically just following my own nose, running away from life that I found intolerable, hoping to find a meaning down the road. Alone, an alien in an alien land. I was a refugee of a sort. My second initiation into the adult life. I was already quite a few months on the journey and I found myself in Wau, a village in the forests of SouthWest Sudan. There were not many ways leading to or from Wau and I thought, having travelled to Wau on the roof of the train from the North, that the logical direction to proceed would be south, to Juba. The only way was the jungle track and the only means of transport were occasional trucks. I managed to get on the UNICEF truck driving refugees to Juba. So there were 45 of us, for five days on this truck through the jungle, sweating together and chasing away the tsetse flies during the days and sitting around fires, fighting mosquitoes and sleeping on the bare ground somewhere in the wilderness during nights. We were all without belongings, with our hopes only. Me, a young confused hippie wannabe and them, children, mothers, fathers, old people, youth, literate and illiterate, healthy and sick, merry and sad. We were all together in this. No difference at all. We were all in troubles and we were breathing as one. A community indeed. And this community took a good and loving care of me, the bewildered outsider with pale skin, long blondish hair, silently gazing somewhere distant.

2003, Iran.

On our way back from our magical overland family journey from Europe to India, me, my wife and our three kids stopped, for the second time, in the desert town Bam in the eastern Iran, at the beginning of the Baluchistan desert. We already knew the place and we enjoyed stocking up on yummy local cookies with dates (best cookies on the planet!), strolling around, talking to locals… We knew Bam and we liked it, although we have had a traffic accident there a few months before and our van finally lost it’s European shiny virginity. It was sad to know that this was our last time in this lovely and hospitable place.

After many weeks and many kilometres we finally arrived home and only a few days subsequent to our arrival, we woke up one morning in our warm and cosy apartment, and learned the shocking news: a massive earthquake devastated the city of Bam. 40.000 people died. 40.000!

Tears started to roll down our cheeks, hearts were pounding, we were crying. For us this was suddenly not only a number, one of the many numbers we hear on the news all the time: 15.000 died over there, 25.000 left without shelter on the other continent, 100.000 dying of hunger yet on another one… No. This was real for us, no way of shrugging with our shoulders and denying it. Yet, nobody else understood. For our friends here in Europe, the 40.000 killed people of Bam was just an abstract number. For us it was pain, sadness, awareness of our city being demolished, our people being killed.

After these and other personal experiences that have widened my horizons, I want to scream out into the world: “The refugees are us!” It is not them somewhere over there, it is us. It is our mothers, it is our fathers, it is our sisters and our brothers, it is our children… And yes, it is ourselves.

Refugees can not be disconnected from us, the lucky ones. They are us. How can we sleep peacefully and happily, knowing they are out there?

So, my question is: what do I do about that?