Stepparenting 101

After some time of silence, I would like to write about a new subject that has become a very meaningful and integral part of my life in the past year.

If we divided the world into 2 classes of people (apart from men vs. women), one of the most obvious dividing line would be people having children and people with no children. That is: parents vs. non-parents. Parents and non-parents see the world in radically different ways. We could certainly agree that one group may never have the same perspective in life than the other. As they say, when your child is born, your life will permanently and irreversibly change.

I belong to the category of non-parents but in a weird way: non-parent, but still having children in my life on a regular basis. The children of my significant other.

Giving birth to and raising your own child is an extraordinary experience (I imagine so, not by experience… ;-)), but kids suddenly catapulting into your life – without you ever giving birth to and raising anyone before – is probably not less so. You join in as a newcomer in the process, with no previous experience in the bittersweet path of being a parent, and you have no other choice but to rediscover yourself, trying to find the parent authority figure, somewhere hidden in your little toe, which – you thought – never existed.

Every situation must be different, depending on the different factors in its complexity, but two things that cannot be avoided are a certain level of transformation of personality and a number of questions to be raised: Who am I to them? Who are they to me? Can I be proud of them when they perform well? Should I feel ashamed of them when they misbehave? Am I allowed to tell my opinion to them? Am I welcome or not, knowing it’s so difficult for them? (this one is easy… probably not, at least at the beginning. You have to be ready to be the enemy, by default, whatever you do.) How close is too close? How far is too far? How and where do I set limits? How much time to spend with them and how much time to step aside and leave them alone with their father? What can I bring in when there are already well-defined family patterns petrified? Many of your core values come to the surface, as a mirror, such as what level of intimacy is comfortable for you, how can you set limits etc.

Many books are written on the subject, but I believe reality is always different, and the individual personality will never allow you to follow instructions letter by letter. What works for me is interactivity, i.e. silently observing the needs and preferences (or lack of them) and adjusting dynamically. All this in the hope that they feel good with us. As pieces of a puzzle to make a whole. And among the many potential roles concerned – the nanny, the cleaning maid, the adult, the housewife, the authority figure, the “step-parent”, Dad’s girlfriend, “Cruella”, the Intruder, etc – there is one which I find the best. Very simply, that of a friend who is always available and can be counted on.

If you have a similar experience, please, share it here.

2015 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,800 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Written in the stars above?

On the occasion of our new year 2016, which for me symbolises “looking forward”, this time I’ll write about astrology. I have always had some special curiosity and some extent of fascination towards it, so let me share my attitude to astrology.

Imagine that in the moment you were born, in that specific time and place, the sky is photographed. To put it simply, that makes your personal horoscope, holding the secrets of your character by the various angles and interactions of planets. I know and I can acknowledge it: astrology is not really accepted as a science (as today it is considered as a pseudo-science rather), lacking some solid scientific foundation. When I look at the horoscope in the daily newspaper, I also find it just another form of brainwash effect of media with some commercial interests behind. Nevertheless, I have had some openness and interest in astrology and concluded in myself that if you approach it in the right way, it can actually bring some benefit to your life: it can give you some guidance, some self-awareness, some understanding of others, some clues, some preparation.

So what is a “right way” to approach it?

1. First and foremost, it had better be considered as possibilities, influences and tendencies instead of hard facts. So do not let it rule your life.
2. Although astrology has very solid ancient roots, always base your opinion on your personal experience. (Myself, being a proper mixture of Gemini and Cancer, I do see the characteristics of both of these Sun signs in me.)
3. Do not oversimplify. Obviously, a human being is far more complex than being able to define by 1 of these 12 zodiac signs, and this is properly reflected in the vast complexity of astrology. The 3 elements that define your basic character are the position of the Sun (defining your core personality), the Ascendant (defining how you are interacting with your surrounding) and the Moon (defining your emotial setup) at birth. These 3 already show a quite unique representation, but it’s still just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of further planets’ position shows further refinements and potentials you have as a unique individual.
4. Your free will is your birthright, which cannot be taken away from you by any astrological constellation. It’s always up to you how you move forward (=how you cope with certain influences), so there are no pre-determined paths.
5. Apart from your personal horoscope, the transits (when an actual moving planet forms an aspect to a horoscope factor in your natal chart) can give you useful hints of certain tendencies in certain areas of your life at a certain time.
6. There are always positive and negative aspects in every situation. In every difficult situation it’s always better to search for the opportunity in it.
7. Watch out for not credible astrologers who may not have well-founded knowledge and unauthentic sources of information. Always question authenticity.

Fancy some experimenting? You can do it here, where you can find explanations and access to free horoscopes, provided you know the exact hour and place of your birth. Feel free to share your thoughts on astrology here.

 

Dare to be ill?

I’m spending these days at home, in “solitary confinement”, coping with influenza. This situation made me think about the past and present approaches to illness in society and the evolution of medicine. When I was a schoolkid, the usual scenario was going to the generalist who always prescribed antibiotics and I recovered in one week at home.

So what has changed?

First of all, being ill is not “a la mode” today. In our accelerated world, most people prefer ignoring the fact that their bodies “cry for help” until the problem grows too big. It is a sign of weakness and I also see some kind of compulsive attachment to work. We just love to feel indispensible at work, it seems to be an important part of our self-esteem. Resting is totally underrated, though sometimes the message of the illness is simple: STOP!

Secondly, a change I welcome is the lesser use of antibiotics. Fortunately, today research already points at the negative effects of antibiotics on the body and its inefficacy in case of viruses. This means less of them is prescribed, and the focus starts to be directed towards natural remedies.

This leads to my third point: I’m glad to see the growing popularity of natural treatments. However, unfortunately it’s still difficult to find a physician who is looking at the body as a whole, not just the symptoms and one organ, who is open to the concept of natural remedies and who is actually well-informed about the available natural treatments/products out there. Your homeopathic medication – often much more effective – is not recognised, hence not reimbursed by sickness insurance. Most probably your doctor will not know about anything but what school medicine taught him, sometimes he will even be sarcastic when you openly show preference towards nutritional or natural solutions. School medicine prefers fast, mechanical (surgical) solutions, treating the symptoms, artificially interfering with the delicate chemical pattern of the human body. However, it alone fails sometimes in the face of a number of diseases, putting unnecessary and useless burden on our immune system. This tendency somehow deprives school medicine doctors of their omnipotent power, which was so characteristic in the past decades.

So the rediscovery of the natural is apparent, though I see a fierce battle between school and alternative medicine. I hope that the natural will continue to gain ground, and soon conventional medicine will not be the baseline and alternative just a question of belief. I would like to see the two hand in hand, the benefits from both approaches joining forces, with clever considerations on when one is more relevant than the other. That would be the most reasonable future direction of medicine.

Smartphones, tablets, give me a break!

I’m sure most of you have already seen this funny image of making wifi the absolute basic human need in the Maslow pyramid. I find this the tragicomic truth.

I see compulsive technology-driven multitasking everywhere. In any meeting, 80% of people are playing with their mobiles/tablets/laptops, during the presentation. When meeting a colleague in the airport, and waiting for boarding, it was not possible to have a conversation with him in those 10 minutes, without him having to send 3 sms-es in the meantime. When speaking with a friend on the phone, I hear her typing on the PC in the background. My neighbour next door is sending me sms-es as default communication. Yesterday I went to see a standup comedy show, and one of the comedians was just fidgeting on his mobile on the way to the stage. He started his performance, putting his mobile on a chair nearby, and he was checking it out every now and then during his 20-minute performance.

I start to feel uneasy in the company of these people, as I feel their vibrating buzzing restless energy, and our personal interaction degraded. How has it become so difficult to focus on one thing at a time? When has technology become an addictive drug? Why can’t we just give a little rest to our mind, not forcing it to be divided into 2-3 at a time? Are we really so important that not reading e-mails for a few hours would mean the end of the world?

I work in the area of information and communication technologies, but paradoxically, I feel that modern technology, as much as it faciliates human interactions, it also kills them to a certain extent. It carries the danger of degrading personal encounters, distorting communication and most importantly, deteriorating our health, as being constantly exposed to electromagnetic radiation, pushing your mind to constant multitasking, always in “doing mode”, never in “being mode”, and this way impacting the quality and quantity of our sleep and nutrition are definitely not helpful.

As much as it seems an unavoidable pitfall of modern society, I do think we have control over this tendency. We do have the choice to limit using social media, technology to a healthy extent, and refocus our activities back to real life.

Are you happy with all these technologies around or have you already tried to distance yourself a bit?

Encounter with a globetrotter yogi

This past weekend a very inspiring person crossed my path.

He is an Englishman who decided to leave all his life behind in the UK, including his well-paid corporate job and his home, to walk in Europe, teaching yoga everywhere he set his foot in. He has no money on him, he has no accomodation fixed, just a backpack with some basic personal belongings. He decided that he’ll live on the kindness of people who appreciate his yoga classes, i.e. their voluntary donations of food and money, sleeping under the sky.

He looked like a very reserved person to me. He admits that he is afraid but he has never felt so free before, and he always feels precisely what he has to do next. He really enjoys the balance of walking in the forests and then the cities, once bonding with nature, then with people, creating a subtle balance of solitude and socialising in his journey. He is open to any conversation to people after the yoga classes, giving them teachings on some of his own truths about life. I was glad to see how fast and easily he was integrated into Luxembourg: the news of his arrival quickly spread among the local yogi community, and by the end of Sunday, our globetrotter was enjoying himself on a local capoeira party, merging into Lux life, happy to share his story with whoever interested.

What inspires me the most in his story is that I see the fundamental spiritual principles for success in practice. He had the courage to make such a decision. Obviously, there may be a higher purpose, a quest for a hidden meaning of life behind his decision. He shows a lot of acceptance towards the circumstances: the people he meets, the amount of donations he receives, weather conditions etc. He has a deep trust in that the universe will support him on his path, also in his own abilities to always find a solution whatever challenge may arise. He has fully surrendered himself to nature and also, to human nature. He also has patience to guide him through his way, and also gratitude towards his experiences.

His experience could very easily prove that there is indeed a life without worldly assets and personal possessions, so unbelievable in today’s society.

The Story of Car X

I would like to share with you an interesting traffic incident which made me think about human pride.

I was approaching a bridge, not wide enough for two cars, hence the traffic is prioritised. I was driving from the unprioritised direction, when I saw Car X in front of me, standing still. As he was quite far away from the gorge of the bridge, where normally cars stop to let cars from the opposite priority direction pass, I didn’t understand what he was doing there. He could have advanced much closer. So I decided to overtake Car X, who might have been standing still there for whatever reason. In the very moment I did it (and another car followed me) and stopped at the real gorge of the bridge to let the cars pass, Car X started to honk furiously. Then when we both passed the bridge, me first, then him, he immediately overtook me. I felt the nervous energy smoking out of Car X when he claimed back his rightful position in front of me. I couldn’t help but smiling.

A funny peculiarity of driving is that you cannot communicate with others around (and probably it’s better like this :-)). You are just driving to the best of your knowledge, as safely and attentively as you can, and every now and then you experience weird scenarios, when you would behave differently from others. And you don’t know what was in their mind, you cannot “discuss” it with them, just stay there all alone with your thoughts, with your own interpretation of situations.

In this specific case, however, I noticed another phenomenon: how human ego and need for “validating your right” and “revenge the offense against you” can totally blind you for a few minutes. Probably he calmed down 2 minutes later, but in those 2 minutes all he cared about probably is getting back those 2 metres of advance he lost so cheekily, feeling humiliated.

Well, I don’t blame Car X. Actually, I feel sorry that I hurt his feelings so much, unintentionally. At the same time, it surprises me how “emotional” driving can be, how people can take it so personally.

If you have an interesting driving story to share, feel free to write it here.

In the crossroads of influences

Nowadays I noticed how much we are exposed to certain influences and what a big challenge it can mean.

Let’s suppose you have a certain problem to solve and you share it with some people around you in the hope of getting some ideas about the solution: friends, professionals, whoever you think might be a good source of help. You consult these people and very soon you realise that they 1. all have very concrete ideas for solution, and they are totally convinced that that’s the right one, 2. they all have very different views about the solution and most importantly 3. they all want to persuade you that their solution is the only one you need.

First I became very frustrated, then I realised that I start to resist all of them. Why? Easy. It’s basic psychology: the more someone wants to convince you that you should follow his way, the more resistance it generates in you. It makes me wonder: why is it so very important for people that someone else follows his/her way? Certain people make such a big fuss about it that they even get offended if you decide not to follow them blindly. They believe in something and they see no other way but that another person will also need to believe in the same thing. Based on purely the belief of the other person.

So should I never ask other people then? No. After some frustration I started to realise that the best way to handle these multiple opposing views is to simply listen to them and filter the information you may find useful for yourself, and with their help (or without) you make your own solution to the problem. Which is yours after all, no one else’s. The conclusion for me is that in our everydays it can be a real challenge to stay you, but it’s worth it. This way you are the only person responsible for and in control of your own life. Also, we all need to learn tolerance towards the others and accept that others may choose different ways from ours, and there is nothing wrong with it. 

Three things, plus one

The other day I was reading about a 100-year-old man, who – to the question of what’s the secret of long life – mentioned 3 things: 1. healthy food and drink, 2. a comfortable place to have a good sleep and 3. fresh air.

So simple, nevertheless, how much we forget about it, so often in our everyday rush. As a consequence, our body protests and we fall ill. Now this is the case with me, so I need to reconsider my eating-sleeping habits, what causes me stress, and I must confess, I have really a lot to tidy up if I want to be healthy again. We tend to take it for granted, especially at young age, that our body always works perfectly, even if we neglect our diet, eating hastily whatever we find around (usually some fast food), even if we don’t give enough sleep to our body, and even if we lock ourselves in our offices and homes without regular outdoor exercise.Very important lessons to learn, and sometimes there is high price to pay.

I would add a 4th thing as well. Time for yourself. Usually, as a “slave” of our duties at work, at home, in our family, we run from one place to the other, and we forget about OURSELVES. If by some special circumstances we need to slow down, e.g. because of an illness or becoming unemployed, most people get scared saying “So what will I do now? How will I spend my time?” Duties are out, so what am I supposed to do now? Some even force themselves back to work to the daily rhythm, as an escape, even if unfit, being afraid of staying at home alone. I asked myself the same question a few weeks ago, and it took me some time to realise: well, the body is intelligent, it knows when to stop, and probably now is the time for MYSELF. No wonder it feels strange, because normally it doesn’t happen. We have so many functions that it just cannot happen. However, this is actually the most valuable time you can ever spend and the best investment: to get to know yourself, your likes and dislikes, to set new priorities, keeping your own well-being in focus. Probably a tougher job than just simply going to the office…

If you have ever been halted in your daily routine and you have own experiences and strategies, feel free to share it here.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,500 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.