Life Is What You Create Of It

I have approximately 57 hours left as a resident of San Francisco. I’ve made this beautiful city my home for 5 years now and haven’t quite absorbed all there is to it. With it’s hundreds of restaurants varying from exotic to raw-organic, charming neighborhoods that offer cultural surprises, romantic viewpoints along the bay and peaks, there’s an endless amount of untouched territory that I have not navigated in the 7×7 grid of San Francisco. I can attest to the idea that one may never really come to know this city very well, and perhaps that is what makes this city so beautiful and easy to fall in love with. Every morning’s agenda brings a new flavor to San Francisco, and I’m so grateful for having lived in this city to experience the places I have seen, the feelings that I have felt, the foods that have saturated my taste buds with delight each time, and of course the people–the ones that I have brought into my life and those who have left an impression on mine.

As I sorted through my possessions today, I couldn’t help but take a trip back down memory lane during my life here in San Francisco and recall the moments that helped shape who I am today, my values, and my beliefs. Upon moving to San Francisco, I chose to furnish my whole apartment, buy cookware, decorations, lighting–the whole thing. I used to care about making my home a place that was comfy and stylish at the same time, but after years of accumulating possessions and worrying about where to place my new art piece or paintings, I began to realize how much these things really didn’t matter once I started traveling more and spent more time on building a healthier lifestyle. There’s some quote out there that goes something like, “the things you own end up owning you.” This past year itself, I’ve downsized my possessions to 31 things I own. I’ll talk about how I did that in a later post, but in the meantime, let me get back to reflecting on items and its memories.

I took care of recyclables and goods to donate first, so I sorted through my books (probably the most difficult for me) and picked out which ones I thought I wanted to keep and others that I felt would light someone else’s imagination, along with a box of manuscripts, short-stories, screenplays, essays, and research papers I’ve written. As I sorted through these items, I was impressed with how creative my imagination could be at times and how quick I was to take up a new hobby or research something. I was once an aspiring screenwriter who wrote stories about pain, humanity, truth, and the unspeakable. I wrote research papers about the power of Communism in shaping a culture, people, and economy to prosperity. I wrote short-stories about self-discovery and class-divides, and manuscripts based on science-fiction and historical fiction. I was fascinated by the things people were scared to talk about, and even more fascinated to dig deeper and discover what these things were like, and so I wrote about it. I wrote because these issues and ideas needed to be provoked and thought about. If not read entirely, at least thought about.

I sorted through my clothes and shoes next, and was intrigued by the stories each style told. I went through a hard-partying, every Thursday-Friday-Saturday night clubbing/lounging phase where dresses embroidered with beads and sparkles wrapped my 5’3″ frame and 5-inch heels that screamed “kill your feet” danced away to European-style beats. I partied that way for a good 3 years, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be partying like that ever. It’s a good experience to go through at least once in your life, and I’m happy that I did when I could. It brought many fun memories, created new relationships, and taught me a lot about what kind of lifestyle I really wanted for myself–and partying was just not it. So I said goodbye to my hundred-dollar dresses and shoes, told them “thank you for making me look good that night”, took away the memories and lessons that it gave me, and moved on to the rest of my wardrobe.

Surprisingly, I don’t own a lot of clothes or shoes like most women would. Instead, I like to mix-and-match, adding accessories to brighten up my outfits. I disposed a lot more clothes, shoes, and accessories today, and I made sure to do it quick with no chance of giving myself a second thought of, “maybe I’ll wear this again in 2 months”, because I almost never do. My advice? If you won’t wear it again in a month, seriously, just get rid of it. I’ve found that it takes too much energy worrying about the latest trend or picking up the hottest it-piece at H&M. My attitude towards this has a lot to do with my experiences travelling with very little. I never over-pack and aim to only have 10 or less articles of clothing packed whenever I travel. I’ve gotten used to this kind of living and especially used to having limited resources available to you. Sometimes, you just have to make do with what you have or get creative and turn that long black skirt into a black mini dress. When I go through my possessions, I think about how much more I am optimizing my happiness by just letting go of things and welcoming a more minimalist lifestyle. It’s very difficult to let go of things, and if you’re a girl, it’s twice as more difficult to let go of clothes and shoes. But like I said earlier, the quicker you let go of something, the less chance you have at giving it a second thought–when it comes to possessions. Believe me, the less you own, the more freedom you feel.

I am now down to a few books, a large luggage full of clothes, a mid-size luggage full of shoes, my guitar, and my computer. These are the things that I own now. Have they created what my life is today? Partially. They’re all pieces that attribute to my tastes, and give me “flavor”, but I say partially because what really created my life and what it is today, are the experiences and places that I’ve seen. All that I sought for, I discovered. All that I was curious about, I learned with feverish devotion. All that I wanted in my life, I designed to benefit my soul, well-being, convictions, and values. As I near the completion of packing up and letting go all the possessions that I’ve accumulated during my 5 years of living in San Francisco, I feel a sense of peace and freedom for having nothing and everything at the same time. I came across a wonderful and inspiring quote that was tweeted today by a fellow traveller: “In the end, no one can take away what you’ve seen or what you’ve experienced”. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that the real possessions and values in our life are the experiences, places, and people we meet. Sure a nice car, brand-name clothes and bags, or a really well decorated home, is great to have, but are those the things you will be most happy with in the creation of your life? Will these possessions and what you own define your life? Or will you choose to define your life by the experiences that you seek? The choice is ultimately yours to make.

Five years in this beautiful city has given me enough to move on and seek out new horizons, new challenges, people, and new experiences. So here I am in my last 57 hours with my 5 possessions and a starving hunger for more adventure, knowledge, love, compassion, moments, and happiness. Life is what you create of it. You are the only person that can design the way you want your life to be, so make it good and make it a story that can inspire others to do the same.

Yours,

Noemi

The Art of Romance

Romance is a royal road to soul as much as it is a path to genuine, conscious loving.

The Wanderer learns that when she falls in love, she will project not only the most noble qualities of her own soul but also, before long, her most negative shadow qualities. She knows eventually she’ll see her own shadow in her lover’s face, and, when she does, it will be disheartening, frightening, possibly repulsive. Knowing this, she’ll say yes to love anyway. Unveiling the shadow is as valuable a gift of romance as any other–and as dangerous.

The Wanderer knows her love affair has the potential to reveal mysteries both joyous and painful. Intense feelings and nonordinary states of consciousness will challenge and possibly erode her understanding of what life is, and who she is. She hopes for this as much as she fears it. If, in the rapture of love, she should feel like her true self for the first time in her life, she will know that her partner is only a catalyst. If she does not learn how to praise the Mystery when it shows up as love, the experience will fade and she will blame her lover for the loss as much as she had once given him or her the credit.

The candidate for soul initiation discovers that soulful romance keeps her in direct communication with the unknown, uncovers her sacred wound, reveals her shadow, and opens the door to ecstasy and union with the beloved of the soul. She discovers that sexual love is a spiritual experience as well as a carnal one. She learns to look into her lover’s eyes and see not just her friend and sexual partner but also a reflection of her own animus or anima (that is, the inner man or woman who serves as her guide to soul) and also, perhaps, a reflection of the divine lover.

She will also learn how romance and a surrender to her innate sexual nature usher her into a more robust membership in the natural world. Our sexuality, after all, is one current in the great streaming of nature. In a soulcentric approach to romance, we revere sex as a celebration of the nature both within us and without.

Go deep within yourself and seek the shadows that hold your deepest passions. It contains values and perspectives needed to round out our conscious personalities.

The Other Woman, Men and Codes

Subjected to society’s rules of conformity, the other woman works to please. Pleasure gave status and recognition. Kindness, mediocrity and submission to instructions gave boredom, security and a life, lackluster of the thrills that enchant us. They are objectified trophies collected, hidden and polished to remind the beast that lies beneath. This carnal nature is deep within us, engraved in our genetic coding, aching to feel and be released without a moment’s thought…

We are crafted to believe that definitive codes make life efficient, honorable, and simplistic. Codes have a synonymous nature. They are built to hide the truth, the mess, the true nature of one’s heart, mind and real functionality. They are given and instructed on to follow, as if life were pre-calculated to accuracy and predictability. What we call “codes of conduct” can be curses of man’s failure to diagnose the real and contagious spreads of conformed behavior and inhumane consumption.

We provide and feed these systems. We bring convenience, teach them immediacy, allow for more consumption, and leave behind those unfortunate to climb to the immediacy of real-time change. We have become worse than the animals we were to begin with.

If you want hope, you must go back.

The Human Experience: Back to the Basics

There once was a time when people wrote hand written letters to express our feelings and thoughts to our loved ones or travelled miles to surprise those we admired and held close to our heart with the hope of meeting face-to-face. When I think about “human connection”, I think about being with someone in the very physical presence and sharing an experience that doesn’t quite match the hyper-connected relationships we nurture online. Being with someone physically, expressing part of yourself through hand written letters, or interacting with true authenticity and honesty, holds a sentiment that no real online connection can make.  When I think about “human connection”, I think about how beautiful the feeling is when we have nothing else on our mind but the person right in front of you–living, breathing, blinking, staring right back at you and listening right there with you. It’s what’s missing from our human lives today. We find ourselves so unknowingly devoted to our phones, and mobile devices that connects us in an instant to millions of people we barely know–or in my case, hundreds of people I rarely know or speak to anymore.

As much as I love expressing my ideas and feelings through online mediums, there is nothing more that I love than being with a person or people in the flesh and blood. Breathing the same air with me. Thinking, sharing, laughing, discovering, contemplating and feeling a real human experience that cannot be replaced by a screen. It’s this sort of feeling that really ignites my nerves and gets my blood flowing. It’s what makes me feel alive. We’re all so consumed in our digital lives (I’ll admit that I am guilty of this too) that we forget the real human experience that happens outside of our online realms. I too, forget at times, but make every effort to remind myself that nothing can substitute a real human body and it’s real human warmth and fascinating mind and soul to an online body. Before our lives became consumed by hyper-connectivity and over saturated with a number of social networks, connecting and interacting with someone in a physical sense–whether it was through an extension of our feelings onto paper or being in the physical presence of someone–”connecting” meant giving a part of our real intimate selves to bare the wait for the second our physical selves met face-to-face or to sit patiently with time to receive written words back from our beloved.

What we need now more than ever, is to shrink ourselves back to the basics of real human connection and give ourselves back the human experience we long for. Whatever it takes, whatever places you must remove yourself from, I dare you and myself to risk one or two hours of your time without the comfort of our instant online connections in the palms of our hands, to spend some time experiencing the feeling of being in the physical presence of another unknown to you. It’s a feeling that nothing else could match. It’s discovering and travelling through the stories of a past to understand a little bit of their soul and the life they have now. It’s listening to a living creature breath and speak the things that drive their passions for life or spark their curious minds. Nothing can substitute this feeling, and you’ll know what I mean when you’ve done enough of it.

Go ahead, surprise yourself by going back to the basics.

The Beginning of a Life Long Journey

The month of May marks itself as a very special one. It marks the beginning of Spring, where all aspects of life are in bloom–love, nature, clear blue skies–and the most important marker, change. As Winter woes melt away with the coming of Spring, some of us may find ourselves enjoying a new romance, embarking on a new career, or if you’re like me and a recent college graduate (hooray!), preparing the launch of my dreams and passions of becoming a social entrepreneur. Even though I may not have a long list of “professional experience” as a social entrepreneur (what is that? I’ll explain in a bit), one unexpected type of skill to have formed to be a social entrepreneur or leader is the emotional intelligence. So many people think that entrepreneurs are driven by money and commodification, but the only value real entrepreneurs are driven by is the need to help and enable the needs of the individual to create a better community. Think about it. So what is a social entrepreneur? Recently, I’ve started to subscribe to Ode Magazine‘s newsletters, and have discovered that a community of “intelligent optimists” do exist! Another key characteristic of an entrepreneur: optimistic. In the face of challenges and failures, social entrepreneurs have a tenacity that is driven by an optimistic, yet humble, spirit. Ode Magazine provides content that tells the stories of social entrepreneurs and how they are creating businesses that help benefit individuals and communities. It sounds like a non-profit, and you can call it that, but there are ways to be a profitable business and still pay out the dividends by enriching and improving the lives of others. Check out charity:water to see how one social entrepreneur created a businesses that enriched his own life and improved the lives of others. Okay, so I didn’t lay out a complete list of  what a social entrepreneur really is, because in essence, there really is no criteria. You only need to believe in your vision and be passionate about delivering the value it will offer others and the community as a whole. What I aim for is to help and enable the opportunities and improve the lives of others someday but I know that it’s going to be a life-long journey, and I’m ready to be that life-long learner, so I hope that you (whatever place you are in your life) can become a life-long learner of life and discover its many hidden facets.

Let’s move along now–amidst the twenty-page thesis papers, maintenance of my personal website and blogs, working twenty hours a week, and nurturing my soul and well-being, I have been absorbing as much knowledge and information as I can on social entrepreneuriship and how to make your dreams, passions and visions into reality for the benefit and development of others. One particular author/entrepreneur whom I highly admire and look up to, is Chris Guillebeau. I had been following his work and blog posts on his website, The Art of Non-Conformity, and pour my gratitude towards him for believing in his passions and dreams, being a role model, and empowering the passions and dreams of others. Before I stumbled upon Chris Guillebeau and his philosophies, I was constantly searching for like-minded individuals, which wasn’t easy to find or cultivate in others, so I always ended up going to bed with this feeling of “am I the only one who feels/thinks/believes this way?” During this search, I was confused and didn’t understand how other people could not  be aware of certain trends and patterns that our culture and people were beginning to fall into. I had realized the development of an unhealthy and in-genuine society our institutions and businesses (corporate mostly) were sustaining and promoting. What is happening is this: We live a pre-formulated life of carrying out the expectations of society–go to school, get a job, make some money, create a family, teach your kids to do the same, and then you depart from the world. What was missing from this pre-formulated list of things to achieve are the words, “follow the path of your dreams and passions and remember to give back to the community.” If change is so constant in our world, why do we fear change in our own lives? There is a way in which traditional institutions and businesses can operate and promote healthy values and provide tools that help enhance or improve the lives of others and the community. There might be some skeptics and cynics, but it is possible to create or redesign institutions and businesses on the added values of contribution and social justice. Think about it!!!

So now that I’ve taken you through a short ride of tangents and circles (at least we stayed on topic) on the beginning of this road, take a moment to think about what your dreams and passions are. What compels you to get up in the morning? What activities would compel you to live life with complete gratitude and happiness? We need to ask ourselves these questions. I dream to become a social entrepreneur who wants to help change the world, even in the slightest ways, by providing the right tools and resources to empower and enable the dreams of the voiceless, of the powerless, and of the hopeless. We are not meant to be slaves to the corporations and societal norms that employ and brainwash our dreams. Instead, we are meant to share and cultivate  in each other, the ideas and dreams that will change the world. By doing this, we create more innovation and when our innovation spreads, change spreads. One day, change won’t be feared.

Let’s come together and share our ideas, exchange dreams and passions, and take action in this awesome world of opportunity.

Cheers to the beginning of your life long journey and commitment to your dreams and passions.

Wishing you all the best, standing by your beliefs, and rooting you on!!

Noemi

A Burning Passion

It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm,
we can roll ourselves over ’cause we’re uncomfortable
Oh well the devil makes us sin
But we like it when we’re spinning, in his grin.

Love is like a sin my love
For the ones that feels it the most
Look at her with her eyes like a flame
She will love you like a fly will never love you, again

It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm,
we can roll ourselves over when we’re uncomfortable
Oh well the devil makes us sin
But we like it when we’re spinning, in his grin.

Love is like a sin my love
For the one that feels it the most
Look at her with her smile like a flame
She will love you like a fly will never love you, again

Memories on Love Within Time and Space

Recently, I’ve been exposed to the observations and reflections on the death of love, the wreckage it leaves behind, the traumatic pain from cutting open the flesh and ripping apart of all the human pieces, the death of imagining the future together, the years of memories once nostalgic but now are haunting ghosts that creep into every second of a thoughtless moment. Living, becomes difficult. Feeling? You feel nothing else but loss and bereavement like you’re just moving through the constant lulls of life–you’re in purgatory. You’re in limbo for weeks, for months, and time–time just extends the length of death. Believe me, I’ve been there and experienced all that I’ve described and more.

As I listen to and absorb the reflections and feelings on this, I cannot help but recall my own similar pains and experience. I recall the moment and the feeling that my heart instantly felt when I found out that there was “another person”, that “we’re not right for each other”, those choking phrases of “I cheated on you…” “..again”, and the worse to ever touch my ears, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” I recall each pulse of my heart beating with all the blood that it had left to try and keep me alive, but I flat-lined. I was dead. There was absolutely nothing in the world or universe that could bring me back to life.

For awhile I didn’t do much or feel any inkling of happiness or enjoyment for that matter. How do you begin to heal from such a painful thing? Soon after, we go through the phases of denial, self-destruction, borderline psychotic, immense sadness, resentment and blaming, and begin to lose sight of life and love for ourselves. I didn’t stay in this state for too long (obviously I’m writing this having gained more strength to move on). With time, the pains began to lessen as I allowed myself to feel every single particle of pain that hurt in me and compacted it in my days and nights. I cried, I quivered, I shook uncontrollably, hell I cried buying groceries and getting dressed for the day. But these things don’t last for too long, trust me, it’s all a part of the healing process. After allowing myself to feel, literally, every little thing that trigged some sort of pain, hurt or analysis of the past, I had realized after suffering for months that, that part of my life needed to die in order for me to be reborn with the life and love that belonged to me, that awaited me, that deserved the real time that I had left in this universe.

Of course, coming to this realization wasn’t easy. I had to accept that that part of my life died. And all of the memories and feelings that filled the pages and years of it were now with a past that no longer could define or be given the permission to create or affect my present or future. There were times when my mind would become masochistic and attach memories of the person and our relationship to certain images or smells or things I did during a day. It was frustrating and irritating at first, but it’s all just a test of your own strength. It’s the phantom of the past that tugs at your present to try and steal your current state of growth and happiness. But remember–and I told myself this every single day (even out loud)–that you can choose to be happy, and choose to live the life and have the love that you want as long as you allow it to happen. There is no one in this world that could be given the permission to choose your happiness, who you are, what you love, how you love, and how you live your life but you.

The most important love to have, is the love that you allow to give to yourself. You can create it and recreate it for as long as you live. You can choose to bring in new experiences and feelings into your life and enhance each day by nourishing your soul with self-love. Before you shared your life with someone, you shared your life with your dreams and passions–don’t ever forget that. Now, that is not to say that you shouldn’t share your life and love with someone again, but that you can thrive and live a happy and passionate life in the present with or without someone.

“Your past experiences and future projections are nothing but mental phantoms. All you really have is now. To dwell is to pass up any progress you can make in the present.”

Two years later, with relationships that could account (feelings and experience-wise) for a span of a ten-year long relationship in my archive of memories on love within time and space, here I am now–stronger and resilient than ever, more loving, compassionate and happier than I could imagine, and I can honestly say that, life truly does get better. As you get older, so do your memories–and they begin to fade and become distant stars that, although still shining, are not as bright to bring the light and warmth to your present. Those few stars that do shine and burn brightly during your darkest nights and through sunny days are the ones you just haven’t discovered and chosen to see and be guided by. The only way through life, is to live through it even if it means experiencing multiple deaths of yourself in order to recreate a new life with the kind of love that enhances your happiness to a new level, extends all the seconds that make your memories last and moments in the present, completely timeless and unbreakable.

Love yourself. Love fearlessly. Happiness is closer than you think.

Yours,

Noemi

Veins of passion, vena amoris

As I sit here on my newly built dining table on a stormy spring night, I cannot help but mistake the cold chills I feel for something else that is circulating in my body.

My passions tremble deep within my veins. Every pulsating beat that my heart churns out, warm blood flows feeding the fuel that drives my passions to insanity. Blood cells push and dig into the thickness of my epidermis dying to be perspired in the open atmosphere of life; it cries to multiply in the oxygen that we breath. How do we differentiate now from dreams when veins of passion circulate inside of me? Resuscitate me. Breath new life into my veins. Drain me of the trembling passions that fill my soul and thoughts with restless nights and days of longing and dreaming.

 

Rêves écrite

It is a cloudy Thursday evening. Silver-lined clouds creep past glowing buildings and hovering lights. Black coats and rubber soles stamp slick paved streets with moonlit eyes. Hearts are being broken, dreams are coming alive and wandering souls gravitate to traces of warm love and hope. Written dreams. Ripped-up dreams. Re-written dreams. Would-have been dreams–racing an endless marathon with bare soles and driven hearts. We lie in our beds late at night or gaze at the world from a window dreaming, hoping, praying, wishing, thinking of all the things we must do and feel in order to live our “reves ecrite”.

His written dreams are to love and be loved wholly and honestly while some others have dreams to be known and acknowledged by the masses. It is a never ending cycle that we run during the course of our lives as we all will discover. We constantly search for the perfect balance of making our written dreams come true. Along the way, we might find that we have to rewrite it constantly and maybe even discard it altogether to start over again on a clean new slate.

As we grow older, so do our memories. And as our memories grow older and age with us, so does our grip on the past in our present. Many things, for many unknown reasons, happen. When we allow ourselves to rewrite our written dreams over and over again with relentless passion and honesty, a happiness burns inside of us that will learn to naturally fill in the rest of the words in our written dreams. All things fall into place according to what you give yourself to start with: happiness.

Searching for Clarity

There is a clouded reality that we all live in.

Few of us ever really notice because it has become such an integrated part of our lives just like the air we breath. What’s even scarier is that because it has become so integrated into our souls, the very characteristic that makes us who we are–is lost. Try this experiment: Count the number of people who a) are looking down at the ground and b) are “plugged-into” their iPhones. You’ll be surprised at how many people do this. It seems as though the human-kind has relinquished the very idea of real “human-connectivity”. In a world where we can “connect” in micromilli-seconds to a friend living in the opposite side of the world or view real-time tweets from a stranger in remote places, you would think that this advanced-technology that we are constantly surrounded by improves and enhances our “connectivity” but, does it really? Have we really enhanced our human-connectivity? This has been something I have pondered over for quite some time as I learn to accustom myself to this clouded reality.

So, what is “human-connectivity”? What the hell does that even mean today? In our over-indulgent, hyper-active society, there must be someone or others out there who know what it means to be connected, in the most human way possible. As independent as I am, I don’t deny that there are days where I’d like to feel this “human-connectivity” with someone but that is such a rarity to have since, like I stated earlier, we are all living in a clouded reality missing a certain piece that makes us uniquely human. Forgive me if I sound cynical, I am just exhausted from living in this clouded reality and trying my best to search for some clarity here. I think about this constantly, some may say that I “think too much” but really, we all “think too little”. I suppose that to think of it and try to break it apart to make some sense would be too tiresome and really just a waste of time for some but, the very act of ignoring it only prolongs our naivety to the destruction of our innermost human trait. I can’t even give this trait a special word because words do no justice to the feeling that I am trying to comprehend here. And so I search through the thickness of the fog that clouds us all. I search for clarity and seek to find the truth behind the layers of disguise and questionable elements of our personalities.

Hopefully, someone will see the beaming light from my flashlight and dare to look and step closer.