Fear no more

Fear of the unknown, of the long, lonely path leading to dreams might stop us from reaching those dreams. I don't remember when I had lost my fearlessness, but I am trying to get it back now. Nothing is lost forever, I think. At 17, I ventured half-way around the world chasing a childish dream that many would have deemed overambitious and unrealistic, but that didn't stop me. At 18, I was at the gates of that dream, of living in this country I barely knew anything about and even though it was not much like I had expected it to be, I was not about to give up and leave. Somewhere between 18 and 22, I lost that great ambition, that attitude of "never say never" and settled into a comfortable resignation or compromise.

Now, some years later, I feel like I have grown up a little finally. Not by any means all the way, but a little at least. I am much more aware of the happenings - state of mind, emotions, thoughts, feelings, I suppose - inside, sometimes rather chaotic. Looking deep, I had come to the conclusion that I comfortable is not something that makes me happy. Challenges, goals, the thrill of achieving are more exciting to me. Some dreams don't fade and that means something. Like when you see a great shoe in a store, but it's too expensive or a little too funky and you're not sure whether you should buy it. If you leave the store without it and then the next day and the day after that you are still thinking about that shoe, you should go back and get it! It's almost never too late. Even if they don't have it at the store anymore, you can find it online. It might be a little more work, but if you still really want it, you will find a way to get it. Unless you are the type to give up when the store manager tells you that they had just sold the last pair in your size.

Well, I was once told that my size was not available, anywhere, and I believed it and made some compromises.

For some time, I have known that I had enough of compromises.

Riding my bike down along the Hudson river in the dark, windy night, I was overtaken by an incredible sense of freedom. I felt that there was nothing that could stop me. Adrenaline, endorphins, whatever causes it - my tolerance must have gone down during my 6 week hiatus from running - it was so real. A moment of complete freedom from worry and thought. When I got home, I just knew what to do. To take charge and move forward. It is scary, yes, I know it's going to be extremely hard, yes, lonely, for sure, and long too, but I have to try, that I know for sure. And not matter what happens and where I end up in life, I just have to be able to say that I chased after every single silly and childish dream and at the end, all I want to be able to say is that I have no regrets.

Comfort

Perfect end to the long work-week: Phoenix concert in Central Park, thanks to Doug for introducing me to their music! Wish you could have been there.



Video was not taken by me, although I had tried as well, but this reflects the craziness pretty well I think.




This was my first time in Central Park for some weeks now, since not being able to run. Felt a little sad, then the excitement took over. I just love concerts, especially outdoors. The crowd, the pushing and shoving, ducking from cigarettes about to burn your hair, smell of joints all around, the craziness. I wish it was a little longer and I wish we had gotten there earlier to get a better spot, but it was fun.

Perfect beginning to a Saturday: talking over brunch and Bloody Mary's, perhaps a little before noon - it's ok on the weekends :) Some wise thoughts are sometimes born out of good Bloody Mary's: what we're all looking for, is just comfort: to live in a place we feel comfortable, spend time with people we feel comfortable with and do things we feel comfortable doing. Yes, so simple and so true. But, maybe before any of those can come true, we have to feel comfortable with ourselves and then I think that all the other "comforts" will fall into place by themselves almost.

I think I am not quite there yet but feel like I am on the way to comfortable.

No man is an island

It's great that, just like in a journal - I suppose this is a journal of sorts, just very public - I can go back and read about what I had been doing and experiencing a year or a few months ago. This morning, I was looking for a specific entry...

Early June, I wrote about a guy on the subway who made people so happy by singing "Here comes the Sun" on a rainy summer evening. One of the few really talented artists who play on the subway to make ends meet and probably because they like it. We sure appreciated it. The whole train, with all the drunken people riding home at 1 am on a Saturday morning, joined in to sing with him, it was wonderful!

Last night, by total coincidence - isn't it always like that?? - I ended up at an Irish pub in Midtown, actually, the theater district, which I think is a weird area to go out in, but anyway, I ended up there, with a friend, playing darts (I should really be better at it considering I have to throw little pointy objects with my right hand, but I am really horrible :) All of a sudden, I heard the familiar "Here comes the Sun" played in the background. There was a guy with a guitar in the back of the pub, singing. It was him! The guy from the subway in June! I recognized his name too - Randy Stern - eventually. When he took a little break from his show, he went around with his hat collecting money - starving artist! I told him about my subway experience and he got so excited, we chatted for a few minutes. I love it that this kind of thing happens in a city of 8 million people and that 2 strangers can cross paths multiple times in life - who knows how many times really?? - and each time, have a little bit of an effect on each other. No man is an island.

It's a beautiful concept, really, so obvious yet so rarely do we remember. In John Donne's words (he lived in the 16th century):

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

He was a Christian and this quote obviously has some religious connotations, but I think it's incredibly meaningful in itself: we are all connected and we do not thrive when isolated from each other.

You look great today!

I am addicted to coffee, that's a fact. I also drink my coffee with lots of milk (healthier, right?). Mornings when I don't have milk in the refrigerator (happens unnecessarily often), I get grumpy. Until I make it to the nearest coffee-shop, I am in a bad mood. This morning was one of these mornings.

BUT, as I was standing in a long line - with lots of other grumpy caffeine-addicts - at the coffee-shop, a woman in a really cute outfit with a very lady-like fedora was just leaving with her large cup. I was thinking how great she looked: petite, everything fitting so perfectly, tight leather jacket, nice jeans, nothing too fancy, but the fedora really did the magic! As this was going through my head, the man in front of me in line said to her "You know, you look great!" as she walked by. She was surprised but seemed grateful as she thanked him and left. I think she had a big smile on her face too. I smiled too. How nice to hear something like that on a grumpy morning. A compliment from a stranger, with no agenda, no creepiness, just genuine wish to make another person feel good, can really brighten a gray, grumpy Wednesday morning.

Wheels

Ah, what a great weekend! The sun even came out today finally!

Although as soon as I start thinking that life can be and should be uncomplicated, it shows me just how unexpected it can be. Frightening yet wonderful to realize that you just never know what's going to happen. I think, to enjoy the ride, you have accept this completely, and always be open to those unexpected moments. And when I worry about things too much, Becky puts me back on track. There is no one right path, we all try our best to enjoy the ride in our own way. As she put it, and this will be my motto from now on: "You could be 50, confident, in shape, and sleeping with 26-year-olds."

On my way home from a long (3 hours) bike ride today, I took a break by the Hudson (pics above) and then also got to witness a falcon, apparently, in Manhattan - I was told this is a very peculiar thing, and that there is only one falcon family living on the whole island. I am not joking when I say that every single person walking/running/biking by stopped to look and take pictures of this bird. Including myself:

All inside

On my way home from meeting some friends on the Lower East Side: perfect for a bike-ride all the way along the river, especially beautiful at night. Photos do not do it justice. The lights reflecting on the surface of the river, the bridges connecting our little island to the rest of the world, the lights of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building right there next to each other - at least it looks that way - I could have stopped on every meter to take another picture, but then I would have never made it home. Truly awe-inspiring sight: last night, they made me feel like the city used to make me feel when I first moved here, which is hard to describe... all I know is that is makes me tear up and feel very lucky. Happiness I guess. The ability to be in that moment, see not just look, observe the beautiful and the magical and let it just be and let myself just be, in that moment. Happiness.

The good thing about not being able to run has been that I have been out on my bike pretty much every day. I need the exercise, it doesn't hurt to ride the bike - walking only hurts a little now, without the monstrous boot :) - and I need to make my money's worth since after my last bike was stolen, I impulse-bought this new, slightly more expensive machine the day after. No regrets. Quite the opposite, actually: even though it only has one gear and every little hill is a challenge, I really like it, it's much smoother and I love the simplicity - no gears, no colors, no trouble - it helps that I now have 2 locks and obsessively lock both wheels and the frame every time I stop. Earlier in the day, I biked up on the West Side by the Hudson all the way to George Washington Bridge and back, which took almost 2 hours. Perfect weather, perfect bike path all along, not too crowded, everything would have been perfect if not for my chain giving a really loud squeaky noise when I pedaled. A little oil did the trick when I made it to the bike store, but every time I had passed people, they were covering their ears, which is what I wanted to do for those 2 hours too!

Where I want to get with all this is the following: I have always been a "cup half empty" kinda gal. I always found the worst in every situation, never let myself be happy in the moment - I think I never even stopped to notice the moment - always worried about the future and thought too much about past with too much nostalgia. I was the kind of person who would say that "only if" this or that were the case, then I would be content: Only if I lived somewhere else (New York), only if I didn't HAVE to do certain things (studying or fencing), only if I found a nice boyfriend, only if, only if... always some external circumstance that I could blame for not liking the situation I was in. Then there came a point where I realized that I could not depend on things outside of my control and that in fact, it was myself I didn't like, and that the only way I was gonna reach the things I set out to reach was to learn to like myself and could be content regardless of external circumstances (well, mostly).

The most important thing I realized was that always being negative is really depressing: it creates more and more negatives and the next thing you know, you're stuck in an endless cycle of negatives. Sometimes it's the easiest to dwell on a bad situation, a break-up, a passive-aggressive boss, an injury or a bad mood and feel sorry for ourselves. If we play the victim, maybe others will feel sorry for us too and we don't have even try to deal with and maybe make the situation better. It's much harder to try to look for the source of the problem and change something to make it better. Change is scary and sometimes it leads to unknown territories, physically and emotionally. But unless we try, we will never know whether it's gonna be better. And this is something I have been struggling with so much lately: there is nothing scarier than going against the current and leaving the smooth, nicely paved road for a path yet unpaved, not knowing where it might lead and what might wait along the way. I have to overcome my fear before I can reach my dreams.

To start - well, I didn't even know it at the time - a friend lent me a book written by a Hungarian philosopher, called "The magic of every-day life". Sounds a little cliche and a little like a self-help book. Maybe it is - but nobody could tell I was reading a self-help book since it's in Hungarian :) In the end, it was filled with some cliches, some big ideas, new ideas, things I totally disagreed with, things that are so obvious but I had never thought of before; it's almost a "how-to-guide" to life. And then there was this list of "guidelines to a better life" or what she calls it, "how to get along with people", that I love and thus, will try to translate to the best of my ability:

1. We can only conquer this world, made up of unending fights and filled with constant change, by being even more dynamic, making more effort and never giving up.
2. Determination ends where magic begins.
3. Our behavior, inside and out, our thoughts, words and movements are all magical manifestations.
4. Everything material is born out of ideas, including our diseases, failures, and bad fate.
5. Healthy, constructive, harmonizing thoughts create balance in our bodies and our circumstances.
6. For one to have control over his or her fate, overcome depression and demonic ties, one has to be able to control his or her thoughts.
7. To think is to have an effect.
8. Treating those around us with grace and kindness creates an invisible, psycho-magnetic zone around us.
9. We cannot think with the intensity of a feeling or passion without those around us being unconsciously aware of those thoughts.
10. For every phenomenon, without exception, there has to be a moment of conception, and every later development depends on that moment.
11. One who wants to receive has to give first.
12. By changing the way we approach our circumstances, we can actually change our circumstances.

What I took away from this book and this short list is that at the end, our happiness or unhappiness, our circumstances and the way we are and we are seen by others are all inside us. Nobody else but I myself can stop me from reaching my highest potential and greatest happiness!

Now, keeping these things in mind, go out there without fear and conquer the world!

New trend in women's footwear

I got my sexy boot today, ugh, took some time to figure out how to walk in it... not sure how long I can tolerate this, for god's sake, it's a little fracture in my foot, why do I have to wear this knee-high monstrosity???