What we leave behind

I caught this title from the ending of the Deep Space Nine series.
I liked the idea that we always leave something behind.
Maybe in everyday of our lives, we are constantly choosing what we take and what we leave.
Granted that everyday, life seems more like a string of choices that can be rewritten if we just go back and redo a bit of the past in the continuous present. Today, if I call a friend, I am choosing to grant attention to that one person in particular, leaving a series of other possible encounters behind. But tomorrow, I may call another and thus instill the illusion that I am not leaving anything behind, but instead make conscious choices by will, keeping day by day what matters close.
A poem, a music, a film, a play, a painting, all these expressions of art are continuously undergoing selection by what stays and what moves one. Every now and again we revisit some old favourites, to keep them fresh in our memory.
Alas, with living entities we often are faced with the painstaking fact that some things that are left behind, do stay beyond our reach. We often invoke them by memory but that is a fickle trick, one tapestry that almost immediately loses grasp of the original moment. For a fainting moment it allows us to recall the highlights of a particular event, but without actually experience the full spectrum of nuances that the whole extract of life had right there and then.

Personally, there are many things I miss.
I do dwell on recollections to preserve a fresh sense that what I have left behind is not so far gone that I cannot somehow feel it as being some echo from yesterday. My memories will eventually fade away to oblivion as my faculties start withering and ultimately, when death leaves my body and memory behind there will be nothing left.

There is a constant hope, some comfort notion of an afterlife existence, albeit unproven, whether by reincarnation, spiritual evolution, transmutation, you name it... Religions of different sorts hold its believers hoping for a life after death, where somehow we can reencounter all of those that has left us behind so long ago.
There is no proof that it may be so. For now, the marks we leave, each of our living days til we die, are in fact all that we can be certain that we actually are leaving something behind. Hopefully those that survive us will carry on the tale of our existence for generations to come. Plus, if the deeds he made in life were worthy, those too will carry on.

I leave this entry, one of many, behind. Hopefully, this text will outlast me in the physical world and might hold some meaning for someone I will leave behind.    

State of Life

Hello dear ones!
I am not sure if I still have any readers (or if I ever had), but I will keep writing just in case I am the only reader.

Nothing extra to say. I am still alive, despite the emotional earthquakes.
Still here.
Still alive.

Friendship

Should we dare to say whatever we think to our friends?
What if it is a matter of opinion about an issue they did not even asked but concerns them?

I sometimes wonder how far should I go to tell a friend to go colm monkeys out in the jungle rather than tell me their views on specific items that affect me dearly. Maybe I am not ready to engage them on their turf of opinions, specifically if they have to do with situations that I am not dealing well.

Having said that, what gives me the right so vomit ideas towards closest friends, with the arrogance that my view on something that was not asked for, called for, is the right on, and worse, that they need to know it... because for some reason, my view of the world is the right one.
Well its not.
But neither is theirs.
We just all pretty much agree on a set of ground rules to make the world a semi-understandable place, when in reality is a very complexed place.

Oh well... I am not in peace with some of my friends now. But I need to be in peace with myself first.
Still, I do not feel troubled, I just do not have patience anymore to bullshit, even if it comes from my most endearing friends. They will not stop being my friends, I am just not going to take it anymore.

Hopefully

Does money buy love?

The other day I was driving home late at night and I decided to fill the silence within the car with whatever sounds the regular programing of the national broadcast radio was offering to its listeners. To my surprise an interview to a famous portuguese comedian was on and I was drawned to his specific answers that stayed in my mind and led me to put these words here.
Still, its not without surprise for me that this comedian showed such an intense view on subjects like suicide, happiness, depression, love, wealth.
At one point the interviewer mentioned a quote by somebody the comedian knew that read more or less something like this:

"Money can buy true love"

The comedian agreed and offered some stories to reveal how money can sustain the endearing part of a growing relationship and by opposition, how the lack of it can blur, with the greyish and sour nature of a succesion of poor days, the purest of love, by occuping the clarity feeling with the dirtyness of perception.
He implied this by sharing a story of two couples he knew on opposite situations, one that was the typical woman that loved the comfort that the money of her lover could buy and eventually realized that the money was only a means and that the man was such muc more, and a poor couple that had two glorious weeks in wealth and that when they returned to their meager condition they could not linger in the passion of that fabulous fortnight.

I could not help but reliving some of my own experiences on this field, and oddly enough I found that I agreed with the proposition. For sure, money does not buy happiness or love, but it is a powerful catalyst in sustaining the nature that leads to it.
Which leaves me with the question. If money does play a role in buying love, does it come a time where the love is pure and true to withstand the lack of it?
Think about this for a moment.
Imagine that you had lived for two weeks in a glorious richful setting that helped you live a fantasy that for all ends and purposes can be mistaken by true love; and when your days in "paradise" are over and you and your love interest return to the bland reality of everyday life and then find out that what was fueling the love was not the relation but the setting - would that relationship last if the setting lasted?

Some friends have frequently suggested  that some relationships fail because what drives love is not the true nature of the person but the idea we make of the individual helped by the circumstances that are being lived while making the acquaintance that lead to intense passionate affair - but is it love?

The proposition of the comedian was that if you live in the beautiful setting for a prolonged period of time you eventually pass the point of no return and you become head over heels.
However it was no clear in his interview that if a change of scenario took place would the loving couple change its view?
In some cases, crises provoked by outside parties can affect the stability of the relationship. Is it fair to blame the rupture on these sources of disruption? Or is it more honest to see the feeble nature of the couple, that at first sight of trouble, found that the exit was the solution?
Is true love something easy that flows or is it something hard, that constantly resists the harshness of time?

Being a professional single for the past 40 years, with some ponctual moments of affection in my relations, I do wonder about the merits behind successful relationships. My parents for instance. They started their relationship in a harsh scenario. My mom was a modest young woman that was raised on a rural village in struggling conditions that work hard to find a break in the big city; while my father had already 4 children from a previous marriage that ended badly, mainly because of the emotional instability he had due to the unpleasant effects of an overseas war with the colonies.
But still, they had me out of wedlock, they managed through odd times find the delicate balance that allowed them to be together for almost four decades. The eventually got married after 12 years of relationship, and my mom took care of my father until he died at age of 84.

The comedian also said in his interview that life is more like a wagnerian opera that mainly feels like a long dull four hours with ponctual moments of sublime beauty and awe.
My parents life had this simultide as so many other lives in the modern times.
But still the money or the lack of it does play a part in the way we perceive the way we want to feel the tune of our lives.

Limelight

"Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination ... and a little dough.' 
Cavalero

Friends, nothing could be truer.
For Life is rather wonderful, full of awe and amazement if one just steps aside the ill perceptions and accepts the unfolding of events as an active player; rather than being a mindless spectator, someone who expects events to come to him and drag him out in a sort directionless raft that may actually take the poor sod anywhere worth going. 
The chances to take life's paramount nature are all there.
At every turn, in each second, with each breath.
We might let pass a few but soon, for sure another will definitely  ensue. And the true wonder of this little spectacle of chances is that the act that can make a difference can take place early on or just before your very last breath, with a kind of poetic justice that is written like the very last footnote that arranges all the previous actions up to the point in such a way that one's perception is changed, and what seemed to be a series of seamless unrelated events finally holds meaning.  

And all it takes is...

Courage to act
Imagination to know how to
Dough or luck to apply it when it needs to

For my part, I know that I have missed so many twists and turns in my life to make a difference, but I cannot ignore the load of opportunities that to this day I have grabbed the best way I could. 
Our actions, they are all up for interpretation, depending of the beholder. Trust me that they can always be played for better or worse, and perceived the same or inversely.  
But the beauty of if it all, is that even though those opportunities happen once... New opportunities will soon appear, prompting fresh results, unthinkable possibilities leading you to new and unfolding venues.  
For all that is worth, the limelight of life is comprised with right performance in the right time. 
It is the true action that needs to take place, either by word, silence, or momentum. 
The limelight will be remembered for the right chance taken by the performer.
The unique nature of how wonderful life can truly be is measured by the timing it takes to enjoy the right moment fully. 
And the right moment is now, with each breath, with each second, with each page turning.
So I dare you all, to rise for the moment that is now and take this life with the joy and sorrow that the event inspires you, but live that emotion fully because the opportunity is before you right now.

Thank you Mr. Chaplin for this lesson on humanity, through your own Limelight that inspired these simple but heartfelt words.