Something is getting stronger. But what is it?

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.

Monica, Angelina, Brad and George

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.

Am I nuts or what

It was absolutely amazing. I was lying in the bed and could not hear anything, not a single sound. Nothing, an absolute absence of sound. And it was like this every evening, every single evening of the last week. I have spent the last week in Norway, leading a couple of workshops in the bellowed RCNUWC College where I like to work so much. It seems that every year I enjoy yet another aspects of this beautiful environment – be it its multicultural diversity, be it the enthusiasm and the brilliant intelligence of the students, or the sense of remoteness, or the wisdom that some students demonstrate at such an early age, or the sense of a community…

Well, this time it was just the simple nature. The shock of the clear air and complete serenity each time I stepped out of a building. Billions of stars on the entirely dark sky overhead, with no light pollution whatsoever. The water, the mountains, all these magical elements that I have been feeling already so disconnected from, now completely present, powerful, tranquil… And the silence, oh boy, what a silence. Not any different then the one in the desert, really. No cars. No planes. No sirens. No drunk parties screaming hysterically. No background city buzz. Absolutely nothing.

My friends, as beautiful as it was, it actually got me feeling a bit sad and restless. What on earth am I living in a city centre for? Ok, there are some handy aspects of that – I can walk around the city, to the cinema, to the café, to the theatre… And… Hm… Well, I guess there are other things too… And it is not the worst situation, you see, we actually do have a bit of a green space around the house, and the traffic from the streets is not too bad out of the rush hours, and on Sundays it can be even enjoyable to sit outside. Or really late at nights, have a fire going in the yard and enjoy – trying not to let the occasional maniac drivers and the screaming tires of their cars ruin the feeling completely…

I mean, it is really not that bad. But, sitting on the Oslo airport now, with my lungs still full of oxygen and my skull still filled with the silence and images of tranquillity of this lovely little remote fjord, I feel I have been completely wasting my life over there in the city. This is not what a human life is supposed to be like. Disconnected from nature, from its fundamental elements, trying to survive the day-and-night ongoing bombardments with noise, pollution…

On the other hand, I know that if I announce that we are moving out of the city into the wilderness, I will dramatically shorten my life span since my three teenagers will poison me in a matter of day or two.

So I guess I’ll just have to wait for a bit. If the world holds on for long enough.

The Responsibility of Parenting

A couple of days ago I came home from Norway where I was giving another Conflict resolution training to students at the Red Cross Nordic United World College. Working with eager kids from literally all over the world is such a breeze and immense inspiration for me after loads of workshops and trainings given in the business environment. With the absolutely serene nature around being a cream at the top.

On the other hand, it always brings up quite some memories and emotions from within me. Not only does it strike me that my kids are already of this college age (therefore I am not as young as I like thinking I am), during the training and working on questions of needs, free choice, inner conflicts, inner obstacles, lack of self confidence etc, students come in touch with some deeper realms of their beings. And when they come to see me in the breaks to share some intimate problems they have, seeking empathy and support, I am always touched by the fragility of us, human beings, on the one hand, and with the amount of burden they already carry around with them at their age, on the other.

From a certain point of view it is really sad to see how deeply they (and all of us, of course) were shaped by the countless influences from their social environment, starting with their parents, families, schooling system and the culture as whole. As Foucault would have said (I guess), the individual is so utterly manufactured within the discourse of the culture and social environment that we can hardly speak of anything like an individual at all.

From the day 0 our children are left at the mercy of all almost omnipotent adults around, bossing them around and pre-shaping them, willingly or unwillingly, in all sorts of directions. And this process continues on a daily basis, for years after years, forcing them to hyper produce strategies to emotionally survive.

Now, the scary part for me right now is the fact that I am shaping my kids as I write this – and have been doing it all along the way. Thousands of to me seemingly unimportant events and hundreds of those that even I can see as important have left piles of scars and wounds, without me even being aware of them. From their most early childhood my words and my silence, my actions and my non-actions, kept creating certain confusions, fears, pain and so directed their inner emotional life in certain directions. Yes, I also have given them love and support and respect and all of that, as much as I could and probably above average, however this does not change the amount of the painful impact I have caused. And does not provide me with much comfort.

Couple of months back when I realized the amount of love I have, completely ignorant of that, withheld from my kids, my heart almost fell apart. All those years have seemingly rushed by like a tornado and soon they will be leaving home, off into the world and into their independent lives, with all the luggage they will be taking away and having to struggle with for the rest of their lives.

Little did I know about the responsibility of parenting when, many years ago, the idea of having a child or two seemed like a very nice, easy and romantic one.