We got our beloved van out again, just to drive across the border to Croatian coast and camp for a few days, enjoying the last bits of Adriatic warmth and sun. We mainly rest and take it easy, observe the sea to spot dolphins (I actually did one today, but only with binoculars ), do some work on editing our book, nothing big really. And we observe how this ridiculous dispute between our two countries over a few metres of sea border is affecting the attitude of people – not very strongly, but you can sense it somewhere in the air. You see, this is not only causing diplomatic tensions (and show-offs), but also through media bombardments shaping how people perceive each other across the border.

It all results in rising nationalism, the us versus them talk, the emotion I never felt related to in any way, not only in this case, but in general sense. Nationalism is not only a completely unknown territory for me; the very existence of it triggers me off. The fact that people do feel and express nationalistic emotions draws a lot of aversion, frustration and upset within me.

I remember growing up in a sort of a neutral country in the decades of the Cold War and I can clearly remember how, even in my childhood years, it all seemed so terribly stupid to me; the fact that human species, inhabiting the same old planet Earth, can not do any smarter than drawing distinctions and fighting wars, killing million for some ideas, for some religious nonsense, for who is right and who is wrong, for the question how is a piece of a land going to be called. I remember I was, a young boy, so furious when thinking about that. It just did not feel right and I couldn’t not be affected emotionally by that. I just couldn’t accept that everybody was taking this way of living for granted – you know, humans having wars here and there, now and then. That seemed to be generally accepted as a normal way of life of human species.

And I am still that little boy being in a shock, staring at it all in a disbelief.

I still get so irritated by any sort of nationalistic speech and thoughts. People saying things like: “Our nation is the best nation in the world. Our country is the best country. We believe in the right God. We are proud of our country. “

Now what does “being proud of your country” actually mean? I guess it means that some people in the history, living in the same area as you were born (by a sheer coincidence, let’s face it) to, well, these people accomplished some things that you like. This is nice, but to be proud of that? It makes sense that people are proud of something they have accomplished, but to be proud of something somebody from the same area, far in the past, has done? Then why not be proud of everything people accomplished in the past, on the whole planet. Let’s celebrate the beauty of the human spirit. And let’s mourn the stupidity of it too.

I guess that I am not only allergic to violence, but also to nationalism.

And now I am getting in touch with the possible reasons for this allergy, for this reaction within me. You see, whenever you define yourself as a Croat, American, Chinese, Pakistani, French, Egyptian…, and whenever you define me as a Slovene, Argentinian, Australian, Tanzanian or Japanese, you focus on and emphasise the petty differences and draw a distinction between you and me, between us and them. And this is not something I want. I yearn for quite the opposite.

I want to connect despite differences, I want to embrace the diversity and bond across it, I yearn for connection, for togetherness, for communion, for Ubuntu… Yes, this is it, I can see it clearly now. Whenever I see this nationalistic emphasising of differences and evaluating them as good or bad, I actually feel sad, torn, hopeless, because not only do I value the communion of people across differences, but this is actually how I perceive this reality, this humanity. I don’t see us and them. I just see all of us.

Although it may sound cheap and wishy-washy or whatever.

Last weekend I took my two teenagers and we drove off to Milan, Italy, on another prolonged weekend, to just hang out together, re-connect, enjoy each other’s company, with no pressure squeezing us anywhere.

The reason we picked Milan was that none of us had seen it yet and we like discovering new places, but primarily we all wanted to see Da Vinci’s Last Supper. And kids hoped to do some shopping – something I could not care less about. But since just waking around old cities and observing life is fairly enjoyable for me, I did not mind either.

Many weeks ahead I tried to buy the tickets for The Last Supper over the internet, just to learn that they tend to be sold out many months in advance and that there was not tickets left for that weekend. I attempted many different websites in order to buy tickets and I sent numerous e-mails, but just kept getting negative answers. No tickets left in October! With our hotel already booked it seemed we were going to miss our primary target and I sort of started to face this fact.

However, I just couldn’t let it go, really. So I did some more research on the places like Trip Advisor and learned that sometimes there are some tickets left and that one needs to call and be very persistent to get them. So I picked the timing very carefully (9.30 seemed best – I guessed after the morning coffee they would be fresh and positive), put on my best voice, expressed a lot of empathy and connecting language to the lady on the other side…, and got the tickets. No problem. Piece of cake. Thank you, thank you, you may all sit down now and stop clapping.

A small thing indeed, but reminded me of a big learning that got confirmed so many times in my life. I first started to notice this thing after reading about the magic parking technique about twenty years ago (weird, everything in my life seemed to have happened about twenty years ago). The idea was to just be persistent with intention when trying to find a parking in the city, not falling into the pitfalls of whining, upset, panic… So this is what I started to practice; get into the street where I wanted to park, squeeze in somewhere temporarily and wait, with clear intention to get a parking lot and with still and peaceful mind. I felt like a hawk. My attention was sharp, my spirit was calm and I was fully ready. It never felt more than five minutes before I spotted a person on the pavement, taking car-keys out of their pocket or purse while walking. I started the engine and followed them slowly (felt like Bruce Willis)… The next minute I was happily locking my parked car.

From then on it happened so many times, so many hopeless times on airports, traffic jams, train stations, deadlines, problems, critical situations, where I could have gone down the automatic line of despair, but somehow managed to stay focused. When in New York, for instance, we were half a Manhattan away from Broadway, with tickets for the In the Heights show that was just about to start, stuck in the metro station and just learned that the line, OUR LINE!, got shut down due to technical problems… There were so many great reasons to start arguing there and then about who’s fault it was, who was the first one to be late, why did we miss the last metro, who, what, why, why not… Yet we managed to stay focused, with clear intention and, thought it looked that the only way to get there would be for Scotty to beam us over, we managed to sit down in the theatre just seconds before the lights went out, true all sweaty and barely able to catch our breath. But we were there!

The trick seems to be to not go, in these crucial moment, down the path of blaming either ourselves or others, cursing over the destiny, whining and crying and feeling pity for oneself, just simply not go there, but rather breathe, remain calm and present, attentive and focused on whatever we are hoping to achieve. This sheer intention tends to do the magic.

I, of course, don’t think that starting a two hour journey an hour late will do the trick, no matter how much intention we have. Since the right intention will start way before that, enabling us to start on time in order to make it on time.

And I also don’t want to push in to the limits either, claiming we can fully and arbitrarily create everything in our lives, like some modern quantum physicist and philosophers suggest. I just believe that often, when things seem hopeless and impossible, they just simply seem that way, but they don’t necessarily are impossible and hopeless. And with a peaceful mind, clear focus and intention, with keeping moving rather than stopping in despair, we can get way much further.

Yet, on the second thought, while speaking about the laws of physics: I have experienced enough “impossible” things in my life to have learned to never call anything impossible. Perhaps, with a 100% intention and 0% reluctance, maybe it is possible to alter the physical universe and walk through the walls, who knows.

Or maybe not.

Came home from participating on an inspiring advanced training for group facilitators (after a week of leading trainings non-stop) and I felt drained. Not really ready to go to bed with my wife yet, and not sure what I had energy to do. Just sat there until the idea to light a late-night fire in the yard came to my mind. So for about an hour I just sat there, mending the fire, poking with a stick here and there, feeling how this magical energy-shift was taking place. Yes, there is something utterly magical about fire; it has this calming and cleansing effect on us, humans, doesn’t it? I find it sad to see how we are losing the touch with it.

Anyway, there I was and suddenly I got the idea that now I could spend some time checking out the blog of Lilly, a young blogger who commented on my last post. When reading her comment back then, I had a quick look at her blog and felt connected, and touched. So, now, with the fire burning in front of me and my laptop in my lap (where else?), I started to read her posts. And got totally carried away. In my memories, in thoughts, in feelings. And the fire died out.

So I spent some minutes in getting the fire going again, went back to Lilly’s blog and… found myself sitting in the dark and cold night, with the fire long gone. And I got it going…, only to let it die again…

I am not sure what it was, but it was one of these connections that happen and are not easy to explain. Was it that she is just about the age of my oldest son and that this gets my thoughts and emotions going? Or was it that she seems to be struggling with somewhat similar stuff as I was at her age? Or was it the honesty, purity and beautiful simplicity of her writing, that got through to me? Or was it something else?

The only thing I know is that it indeed was one of these connections, when you feel that you just in a way know somebody over there, although you don’t know anything about him or her, never met them and probably never will.

So, Lilly, just felt like letting you know that there was an old guy sitting by the fire in that chilly night, somewhere on the other side of the planet, tremendously enjoying your writing, feeling connected. And content. And happy.

Keep going, dear Lilly, keep breathing, writing, smiling… and going.

It is funny how being a trainer and a facilitator makes me think very deeply over and over about certain issues of my own personal life – I guess much deeper than I would have, had I worked as, say, an engineer. Perhaps.

Anyway, one of the issues we often play with on my workshops is the question of crucial turning moments of our lives. Moments when we took a big leap into the unknown and so our lives took a radically different course. And so, while working on these things with the groups, I think about my own turning points over and over again.

It seems to me that one of the main turning points in my life was when I, at the age of 17, in secret packed my backpack, took my passport and a few bucks I have had, and left home. This ended in a half-a-year hippy style roaming through the Balkans, Middle East and North-East and East Africa. Partially this was a turning point because I finally ceased whining over my imperfect life, imperfect parents, imperfect teachers…, but rather chose to do something about it; made a bold step into the unknown to see what turns out. I still can not really understand where did I get the courage to do that from. I must had been pretty desperate.

But perhaps even more importantly, this step forced me to start facing the existential dilemma of freedom – at the age of 17. You see, on the one hand there was an utter beauty to the freedom I was experiencing from the moment I walked away from my pre-set life. Suddenly I was totally free, free to go wherever I wanted, free to do whatever I choose to. I was free to rediscover myself every single day, to live or to not live, to carry on a virtuous life or to lie and steal… Suddenly all the moral and cultural obligations started to melt away and the feeling of freedom while moving through my days somewhere on the South Balkans, was incredibly uplifting and intoxicating.

But soon enough I started to discover the other side of the coin, the other side of freedom; the responsibility. When I, a brave free guy, found myself with zero money on the streets of Istanbul, freedom was not so fun anymore. When I was going hungry in the dodgy parts of Cairo, I couldn’t just go home and open the fridge – since there was no home anywhere near. I was free and I was fully responsible for myself at the same time – there was nobody to blame anymore, the way I was used to blame everybody in my previous and not-so-free life. I was also completely free and fully responsible to choose whether I wanted to wait a few weeks – in the company of about a trillion blood-thirsty mosquitoes – in Southern Sudan for the jungle river to recede after the rainy season so that the truck could pass through, or to ford it (neck deep) with the risk of a close encounter with a crocodile, and keep walking on the other side through the wilderness until, well, until I got somewhere. When a drunken soldier had his gun pointed at my head somewhere in the middle of Ugandan forests, demanding money which I did, of course, not have and which I was actually needing just about as badly as he was, it was completely within my responsibility to find a way of getting my ass out of it. Nobody volunteered to take the responsibility for it and I was not in a position to call my daddy to help me out. And so on and so forth…

To cut the long story short, the choice of making that step into the unknown certainly reshaped my life and after that nothing was anywhere near the way it used to be. Not only did all these experiences utterly reshaped my perception and interpretation of life, but the freedom and the responsibility entered full throttle, and they were not just fun. Speaking of freedom; not so long afterwards the freedom crash-landed when I was called to do the obligatory military service. Oh boy, was this a different story altogether, ha ha…

The both sides of this freedom/responsibility coin I am still taking dead seriously – as you may track down throughout this rambling of mine in this blog. And perhaps this is also the reason why I get so irritated with people whining over the imperfect circumstances in their life and acting out this victim role forever. Because I used to waste my time there too and I am still a bit embarrassed by that period.

And perhaps this is why I struggle and juggle so seriously with this dilemma as a parent of teenagers, trying to get the responsibility side of that damn coin across, not as an moral obligation, but simply as another aspect of life. Because I would truly love to contribute to the lives of my teenagers in a way that would help them to at least start sorting out this eternal dilemma of life as soon as possible and enter the adult lives with more inner clarity than I have had. Which is, in the absence of maturity rituals and while trying to not use power over them, not the easiest thing on Earth. But being aware that learning to take full responsibility for one’s own choices and feelings seems to be a crucial step on the path of emotional growing up and also on the path toward a fulfilling life, I just feel that as a parent I definitely wish to find a way to help them in this matter.

When talking to my friends I sometimes sense a sort of an envy, in terms of: “Well, you manage to live such an inspiring, intense and versatile life. You travel a lot, do all these various things, lucky you…” And I think about it afterwards; what is it that makes all the difference?

Well, one thing that contributes immensely is definitely my wife, who keeps researching, opening doors and dragging me towards new horizons. There’s no way of being a couch potato around her. And yes, I admit, it is also me; I myself truly want to explore life, spread my wings and breathe freely in this existence.

Yet, the other day I realized there is also one very very simple thing: I don’t watch TV. We don’t even have one in our house, because we kicked it out about five years ago. We watch a DVD per week or so on our projector, and that’s about it.

Sounds completely irrelevant, doesn’t it? But let me continue: I just read that in the US people watch TV on average about 4,5 hours per day. In Europe the average is a bit lower, about 3,5 hours per day. That sums up to 25 hours per week. This means more than one seventh of a week spent in front of the TV.

One seventh of life!!!!!!!!!!

With additional 3,5 hours per day we can get loads of sleep and move through life completely relaxed and rested. We can study and complete a MSc in no time, write a book, do the voluntary work, climb mountains, have a perfect permacultural garden, learn to play instruments, build a house with our bare hands, learn languages, walk the dog, have meaningful meeting with people, just sit and play with children… Or meditate and get enlightened in a record time.

Any of these things will put us to bed in the evening with more fulfilment than if we have watched the stupid TV for these 3,5 hours.

And I don’t want to even go into the questions how much time is, on average, spent on shopping (about an hour per day on average), internet…

Speaking about not having enough time…

If this was our last day on Earth, and we were looking back on our life, what would we be happy with and what would we regret? I bet we would not be thinking: “Oh, I am so happy I have spent one seventh of my life in front of the TV. It brought so much fulfilment, joy and happiness to my existence.”

More than a year ago I was noticing how helpless I was when trying to do some swimming alone, without my coach around. When alone in the swimming pool, I always managed to find hundreds of reasons why to not continue swimming. With the coach yelling at me from the side of the pool, everything was suddenly possible.

But then I noticed something started to change, bit by bit. When we were this June in Crete on a short holiday, on our favourite South-East part of this wonderful island, I managed to do a lot of swimming, every day, quite some distances. And jogging keeps becoming more and more easygoing, enjoyable, no struggle at all. Am I recovering? Am I waking up from my death bed? Has somebody finally replaced my batteries? Yes, indeed, I hear you asking all these questions.

And today the big victory came. After leading the first day of a conflict resolution training here in Norway with a very inspirational group of students from literally all over the world, I went for a swim in the pool and guess what: although I was totally alone in the pool and my trainer being about 1.800 km air distance away (I am not yet rich enough to drag my coach around with me, though it would be fancy, right?), I did the whole regular training, all the laps, distances, everything. On my own.

Am I hearing standing ovations? Good, good, thanks a lot, this is just the appreciation, acknowledgement and support I have been needing.

So, I guess something is getting stronger. Is it the mind? Is it the body?

Whatever it is, it’s alive.

OK, finally some time to catch my breath. I am not complaining over the speed of my life in the last few weeks, but I really started to desperately need somebody press the pause button:

• first there was a one-week NVC training in Greece. I can hear you going: “Oh, bastard, I hope he is not going to complain how hard THAT was”. No, absolutely not, I am not going to complain, since it was truly fulfilling, all this swimming in the ocean of genuine connection with myself and with people around me, discovering new worlds within and devouring the beautiful environment, human as well as just simply sun, sea and Greece around. But it was intense, nevertheless.
• immediately upon our return we both dived into a week of leading trainings every day, with loads of work that needed to be done in between.
• in addition to that my blogging mate from down under, Razz and his wife Engogirl dropped by and stayed with us during that week – which meant a lot of inspirational sharing, eating and drinking (Razz is a hell of a cook so I urge you to invite them to your home). He can also teach your kids about photography, his wife will teach them mathematics and engineering, they will do gardening…, what can I say, another cool guests to have in the house.
• in the midst of it all we needed to pack again and off we flew for a week in Norway, to give a nonviolent conflict resolution training (me) and an intercultural skills training (Marjeta) in this inspirational college where we like to go so much.

Anyway, here I am, in this wet and windy Norway, just back from a long run, feeling how my system is slowly calming down and getting ready to start with the workshop tomorrow, with blissful silence and serenity of nature all around.

And in this process of slowing down I sort of remembered that I am actually writing a blog and that it has been getting pretty dusty and rusty, with me not finding time to post things regularly. Which led me to recall how the other day Razz was sharing his weird experience with the flow of visits on his blog. And than this lead me to remember another blogger Hayden, who told me that her blog got enormous amounts of visitors when she once posted a photo of Monica Bellucci. You know, the search engines thing – people searching for naked photos of Monica…

And this thought got my dirty mind going.

In a weird direction.

Toward the dark side of the Force.

And out came a plan, a vicious plan indeed.

So, let me show you some photos. Firstly may I introduce you to the gorgeous and sexy yet not naked Monica Bellucci (notice how smart the wording in this sentence is?)

And here is the photo of equally gorgeous and sexy yet not naked Angelina Jolie.

To be attentive to the female population as well, here comes a photo of the handsome and sexy yet not naked Brad Pitt (I will never understand why some women tend to deny this that he is really cool)

And, last but not least, here comes handsome and sexy yet not naked George Clooney (some of you may remember I have a special connection with him, others will understand too if they only care to dig deep into the comments in this post of mine)

So, let’s see if this shakes the rust and dust off my blog. 

And for all those innocent souls that stepped right into my diabolic trap; this is a nice personal blog, you see, so why don’t you sit back and relax, have a cup of tea, feel at home and click around a bit. You may even find it enjoyable.

I had a strong yet very liberating insight just an hour or so ago. Talking with a good friend of mine about how certain circumstances and events from my childhood affected my persona and how I am still, somewhere within the depths of my mind, carrying with me automatisms and patterns of thinking from that time, I suddenly realized that I had, in my childhood as well as later, almost never really expressed my needs. My needs have been very much kept locked up and suppressed for most of my life.

I can remember shutting down, bit by bit, every time my expression of a need was being met by an evaluation. When, as a child, I expressed I needed some respect, I was being told that not only I was not good enough to get respect, but that I was not good enough to even have the right to need respect. I was not important enough to even have the right to need attention, let alone to get it. I never worked enough to have the right to need rest.

Yes, it really seemed that one firstly needed to gain the right to have needs. And I did not seem to have succeeded in gaining this right. So I learned to not have needs.

After internalizing this in a form of a heavy duty self-evaluation, I soon found myself fully judging my needs as a sign of weakness and dependency. I thought having needs was utterly immature and unspiritual. I learned to even feel guilty for having needs, since this was so selfish. You know, how can I even think of talking about my own needs, when there is so much suffering everywhere.

Yes, sometimes it is so darn hard to just allow myself to feel my needs and just let them be, without trying to suppress them, fix them, evaluate them, sort them out, manipulate them…

Oh well, oh well…

After this realization I now feel incredibly content and have a good deal of clarity inside my being. Yes, I have had needs in my past and these needs were often totally ignored, denied, neglected and not even considered at all. Both, by me and by others. And consequentially I felt lonely, very very lonely.

And I have a lot of needs now. For acceptance, freedom, appreciation, autonomy, celebration, meaning, consideration, sexual expression, peace, trust, understanding, joy, rest, relaxation… Right now, having all these needs seems not only OK, but actually beautiful.

Needs I am having seem to be the most alive aspect of me.

The proof of me being alive.

Among the many important things I have learned about the nonviolent communication and nonviolent relationships, the issue of requests vs. demands holds a special position. Not only that it is now completely clear to me that I don’t want ever to demand people doing anything at all; simply because I don’t want them to be doing anything out of being forced to do it by my demands, but rather because they would be genuinely interested and honestly motivated to do it – you know, the children-feeding-ducks analogy again. Another thing that I also learned is to distinguish within myself between requests and demands. Namely, sometimes I might be quite convinced that I am only requesting people to do something, but then it turns out that there was a demand hidden underneath this polite request. The way of checking out is pretty easy; I just need to sincerely ask myself: “Will I be completely happy if their answer is NO?” If I will be disappointed, angry, hurt…, then this means I was in fact demanding, expecting the other to behave in a certain way, with plenty of shoulds in my head: “He should this, she shouldn’t that…”

Anyway, lately I have been struggling with another issue in regards to the question of demands and requests. Working with youth or when communicating with my teenagers, I often find it so difficult to get across that I am only inviting them to do something, proposing something, requesting, but not demanding anything. Somehow my communication gets distorted somewhere in the empty space between us. Our dialogue follows this algorithm:

Me: “Would you be willing to do ….?”

Teenagers: “So are you saying we should…?”

Me: “No, I am not saying what you should or should not, I am just asking whether you would be willing to …?

Teenagers: “Yeah, but the thing is that you are expecting us to…?

Me: “No, I am inviting you to… And if my proposal is not working for you, I will be only too happy to sit with you and try to find a way that will work for everybody…”

And sometimes this dialogue continues: me sincerely inviting, them hearing demands, me proposing, them hearing shoulds and shouldn’ts, me honestly requesting, them hearing orders, me wanting to empower them and their power of choice, them hearing restrictions and limitations… Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes weeks for them to start hearing my message…

It seems to me that the contextual communication is overriding the direct one. It is not what I am saying and what the energy behind my words is. It is rather who I am. You see, I am an adult and they are teenagers, kids. From their perception I am from the hostile tribe of grown-ups who don’t listen, who don’t hear, who don’t pay attention and who don’t give a damn about kids’ needs, feelings, inner worlds, opinions, perceptions…

I belong to the violent tribe of grown up masters of the world, who have the power over kids and who just demand, order, expect, boss around and manipulate in any way just in order to get their way. I am a member of the aggressive clan that they have learned to be very careful with and fight very hard to emotionally survive.

Actually, understanding the context in which they are hearing my words now makes my attempts a bit easier, a bit more clear. Now I at least know that when I start working with a new group of teenagers, I need to be extremely careful to not invade their world with my adult arrogance and to not try to rape them with my “wisdom”. Because then I will only prove to them that I indeed am from that tribe and the war will start.

What I need to do to is to sit in front of them as simple and open and honest as I can, vulnerable and imperfect, and listen to them with a sincere desire to understand their world, to respect it, to connect with it. And patiently wait for the inspection and evaluation period to be over and to, perhaps eventually, be honoured to be trusted and invited.

And when this contact happens, it is just about the most beautiful feeling of connecting with another over a huge and a deep gap.

The older I get, the more enjoyable I find stretching out and giving, contributing to the well-being of people of there. It is just plain enjoyable, you know, in terms of feeding ducks, it feels like the best thing I can ever do in my life. To help making somebody’s life more beautiful.

But, on the other hand, with this I also seem to be more prone to forget about my own needs and start losing balance after some time. The difficulty begins with the fact that at the moment of deciding whether I will reach out a bit more, I really feel that I can do it, I feel that I want to do it and that I will enjoy doing it. And when I do it I still enjoy doing it, giving, helping, reaching out. It all seems perfectly OK.

And then I wake up in the morning and I am on the edge, with zero patience, not wanting to see anybody, just wanting to be alone and regenerate, recharge my batteries, nurture myself in complete aloneness. Since I feel totally empty and dry. What I don’t like in this situation is that the people that are closest to me in my life get to bear with the antisocial, grumpy, introvert, frustrated and tired me. Rather often.

This used to be at least a bit clearer some years ago. Then at least I was aware that, when being asked for help of favour, my yes had a hidden no somewhere behind my nervous smile and I knew I just had to learn how to say no when I actually meant no. And I did learn to do that and life was not too difficult in this regard.

Nowadays my yes to reach out and give is a true yes, a sincere yes from my heart. I truly mean it and I am enjoying it while giving, but then I wake up one day, gasping for air, with batteries plain dead.

I guess the next step for me is to learn to foresee that I will be soon needing some space and some time for myself and to provide this for myself before I even start feeling the need for it. Start cooking food well in advance so that it is ready to be eaten when I get hungry. Sounds like some sort of Super Zen, but it also sounds like plain common sense.

Damn, finding and keeping the right balance between contributing to others and contributing to my well-being sometimes seems to me so unbelievably hard, as if I am missing an organ, a sensor to tell me what is going on deep within and give me some hints. A GPS device of some sort. Well…

Well, I will just have to learn this art, I guess, what else is there to do?