How labeling others hinders connecting with them on a deeper level

I am no fan of Hollywood or the show business, but I do like to talk about the human experience, and behind all the glamour actors are, after all, human beings.

In this interview, Demi Moore shares her own human experience with humbleness and wisdom and gets to this conclusion about her mother:

The quote comes from the third part of the interview

I ask myself if I haven’t already decided who my dad is; if I am taking away the opportunity for him to be anything else.

What do you think? Could you have forgiven your mother for doing what Demi’s mother did to her? Or is there someone you have already decided who he or she is? Are you interested in knowing who else can they be?

 

 

 

How to avoid going mad

In every matter of life –in both the natural and the human world– imbalance precedes balance.

Dark precedes light, loves precedes hate, and sickness precedes health.

And though we all prefer light, love, and health; is this immature preference what unbalances our existence.

To be in the middle means having no preference for the “good side” of life.

The secret of a good marriage

Those of you who watch The Daily Show know that Stephen Colbert adores his wife.

After having 3 kids and being married for 25 years, he knows what makes a couple stay together.

I’ve been married for only 5 years, but I already agree with Colbert.

We all are in some way or another hard to be with.

And as it is said in the career advise world -that when choosing for a career you just have to know which shit-sandwich you are willing to eat- in choosing a life partner you also have to think about what human “dark traits” you are willing to put up with.

So make sure you soon identify your own “dark traits”, because chances are someone is already putting up with them.

After leaving Japan, riding in Mongolia, moving back to Germany, having a difficult pregnancy, and giving birth to a healthy beautiful son…

I am back!

It’s been more than two years since the last time I wrote a post.

But if I haven’t written anything in the last two years, it’s not because of nothing. As you read on the subject, I’ve been busy.

Moving out from one continent to another is not an easy thing, especially if you have to pack and send approximately 10 boxes by ship and wait months for your things to arrive.

And even though we did a 4-days stop to horse-ride through the Mongolian steppe, it’s not my idea of a holiday to see it interrupted by falling off the horse.

Being in Mongolia was, nonetheless, an educational experience. It taught us to deeply realize 2 things:

1. We can and want to live with fewer things
2. The West consumes and wastes too much

Back in Germany, we felt uncomfortable being surrounded by too much of everything: too many options at the supermarket, too much furniture at home, too many clothes and shoes, too much food wasted, and too few things really appreciated.

I am not trying to glamourize poverty, but I wonder at what point having many things becomes having too much that we drown in a sea of stuff (a year later Marie Kondo’s and other minimalists’ philosophy became a trend, so I suppose that is the answer).

We arrived back in Munich at the end of July and I had plans. But you know John Lennon’s quote:

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

John Lennon

And thus, life happened to me.

We planned to have a child, but I thought that it was going to be an easy ride. I’ve heard of women working until the 8th or 9th month of pregnancy with few setbacks, but when I started bleeding, suffering horrible insomnia, and vomiting each time I ate a banana, I realized that life was throwing me a Lennon…

…and lemons, so I made lemonade.

Although I had to give up a job –that I had recently found– because they didn’t allow me to work from home, I taught Spanish on italki.com from my bed and took consulting opportunities on a freelance basis.

This worked for a while until some amniotic liquid leaked out after the amniocentesis. When the doctor told me that the baby was ok, but that I would have to stay ten days in the hospital, I sobbed like… I cannot even describe it.

After coming back home my health improved. I decided to take things slowly and focus on my pregnancy. I did a course on Hypnobirthing and that changed my mind from wanting a c-section to desiring a natural birth (if anyone wants to know more about this experience, feel free to contact me). He was entangled in the umbilical cord though, so I had a c-section after all. That was ok for me.

And then:

Those of you who are parents –and some of you who don’t– will understand me: the beauty, the amazingness, the perfection of a son, of a daughter, the constant awe in which one lives, the deep and felt wish for them to keep their innocence, their open-mindedness, their will and their confidence, their strength and their humanity; this is love.

Beginning in August 2018 and for a year thereafter I was in what in Germany is called Elternzeit, literally “parents’ time”. I took 12 months off –during which I studied German– and my husband took two.

And now I am back. Back to the professional world and to social media. Back to finding a way to do meaningful work and help others with it. Back to writing on the wall as the same Daniela that stopped writing two years ago and yet a different one too.

As Jodie Foster said:

Change, you gotta love it.

 

Will Japan change you?

Many moving to Japan may think that the very nature of the country will change them.

And in part, they are right. After all, adapting oneself to the different environments one will encounter in life is not only a skill but a necessity.

But we in the West tend to see Japan portrayed as this super technological hub in which robots are everywhere. Far from the truth. For example, you won’t find a single person using Robophone, and if you ask Japanese about it, none or very few will know what you are talking about.

Yes, in modern houses in Japan many things are automatized, and yet, paradoxically, paying with cash is still the norm, and few places accept credit cards.

So, if daily life in Japan is not the super technological place you see on TV and the way of life is also not so different from the West, then how will Japan change you?

After 2.5 years living in Japan, I came to the following conclusion:

Apart from the language, there’s nothing so unusual in Japan that will change you. After all, they have copied many Western ways and, as a foreigner, you can build yourself a type of bubble in which you don’t have to comply to “Japanese ways” (the hierarchy, the submissiveness, etc.)

And you can build yourself this bubble in Japan or any other foreign country, for that matter.

I think Japan per se will not change you, but how different is your home country from the country you are moving in, that is, the degree of differentness, and how you respond to this difference.

If a Chinese or South Korean move to Japan, Japan won’t change her much. But if a European or an American does it, yes, he will probably change more than the Chinese or the South Korean, but not as much as we might think in the West as a result of how Japan is shown to us.

For that matter, I think Mongolia would change anyone from the West much more.

So if you want to experience the necessity of having to change as a result of your environment, unless you are living in a Buddhist temple, please don’t move to Japan.

 

What I learned from horse riding in Mongolia

When talking about going beyond our comfort zones, we often refer to an intellectual way of doing so: to challenge ourselves in ways that require our brains to learn new things.

But in this case, I want to talk about physical comfort.

To go beyond your physical comfort zone is to arrive at a point in which being physically uncomfortable becomes, paradoxically, comfortably enough.

This past July I went for four days to a horse ride in the Mongolian steppe. I spent the night inside a nomad family’s yurt, slept on the floor, didn’t take a shower at all, and ate the same food every day. I was in constant pain from the beginning of my trip.

And yet, every day was a reminder of how well it felt to spend time in nature and how little we humans need to survive.

Yes, the nomads have a hard life. They don’t get to live many years. But being in Mongolia also made me wonder why in the West do we want to live for so long (I think this should be a choice, but this is another topic).

And why do we want to have so many possessions that require us to have bigger houses when a yurt might be enough?

Maybe living like the nomads is extreme, but I think living like rich people do it is extreme too.

I’ve always liked having few things (and I still think I have too much), but after being in Mongolia, I am more committed than ever to possess even less.

I’ve learned that is uncomfortable to live like the Mongolian nomads, but now I know that I can do it.

Now I am aware that any other physical discomfort or lack of material things I might experience won’t be comparable to my Mongolian experience.

That if I even got to enjoy that precarity, then I can live with fewer things than with what in the West we tend to think we need.

I learned that I could find comfort in the discomfort.

Even in the discomfort after falling off a horse.

But this is also another story 😉