Anger never dies

Life isn't easy. Life isn't fair. Happiness isn't something unreachable, but it doesn't fall from the sky: you must deserve it, you have to fight for it.

Happiness is something everybody searches for. Who would be crazy to seek for unhappiness except for the crazy one? But what's happiness? Few people know, few people understand it because a lot of them think this is an universal concept while, actually, it is subjective.

Performance society tries to standardize this concept and those who lives in the immaturity constantly get frustrated by the constant feeling of unhappiness and emptiness. In this case, happiness isn't in the present time, but either in the future, lying in the hope that someday things will get better, or in the past, a time of sweet memories. This Eros love to the performance blinds and the individual gets incapable of questioning some things about oneself and the world and, consequently, of understanding the misery this one complains so much.

Laziness and cowardice are things so hard to fight against... snapping the bubble and leaving your comfort zone is so hard... “it's so comfortable to be small”, Kant would say... it's so hard to have the attitude to change: change yourself, change one's own reality. It's so much easier to curse and envy. It's so much easier trying to despise other's victories for the miserable of spirit feels less worse when feeling hurt by other's success and happiness.

In order to be happy, or unless feeling happy without appealling to its artificial means like drugs and anti-depressive pills one must, first of all, being humble to recognize one's own imperfections and vulnerabilities. It doesn't mean embracing the fail or being ridiculous. Ridiculous is thinking you're being ridiculous by confessing to yourself your own fears that might sound silly and childish, more ridiculous than this is having the romantic vision of life by thinking that happiness lies in a Hollywoodian amazing life or that is, necessarily, the standard of the society of performance.

Life isn't easy. Life isn't fair. Happiness isn't something unreachable, but it doesn't fall from the sky: you must deserve it, you have to fight for it. It includes some sacrifices and the path to happiness may be, ironically, torturous in the beginning. Leaving the comfort zone never is easy, letting go the tutor's hand and walking in total dark it's quite despairing, but if you want to be free, dare to break with your immaturity! You have to try at least! Falling, crying and being eternally traumatized with the pain will never help anyone to get anywhere, except if it has an appeal to the people's pity, that isn't neither a little virtuous and it is pathetic, it's being proud of one's own cowardice.

Projecting your own imperfections on others using them as weapon and shield may even sound smart initially, but who really losses with this? You may harm someone, but if this person has the minimum of maturity and self-love, he won't let himself to be affected by the words of someone who seems to have a disturbed feeling of pleasure in the sorrow and in gnawing hates. He just doesn't care, he's doing what the resentful child always wanted to do but was too coward to even try: he is being happy, he is living the life! That's way the feeling of envy and despise face to the other's success.

Nobody likes this type of negative people. Nobody likes people that are always complaining about the same problems every single day projecting the reason of their unhappiness on others. Nobody likes people that are always in the defensive ready to attack and that refuses help and refuses to help oneself. Nobody likes people that got traumatized after their first and only fail that start to think that nobody and nothing worth. That the world is bad, that people envy him, that everybody's an ignorant and that, as long as he hadn't born in a golden crib, he is destined to be a never recognized talented person. Then, he doesn't understand why the world turns it back to him and, thanks to his shameful arrogance, he thinks the world is wrong and unfair, but he's never able to recognize that HE is the problem. It's so much practical projecting this imperfection on another one and being sarcastic... Is it being happy?

Well, happiness is subjective. If an individual is happy gnawing hates, good for him, although it is very dubious. In order to be happy, it is not necessary to have all that the performance society implies for us to be and to have, and it doesn't mean as well, refusing everything it sells us. The most important thing is being in peace with yourself, doing what you like, being surrounded by people that are with you to plus, not to subtract you and to let you down, feeling bizarrely happy by trying to bring you down for the misery they spontaneously decided to live with.

References

FERRY, Luc. Qu'est-ce qu'une vie réussie? France: Grasset et Fasquelle, 2002.

COMTE-SPONVILLE, André. Petit traité des grandes vertus. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.

KANT, Immanuel. Answering the question: What is Enlightment? Königsberg: Büsching Magazine, September 30th 1784.

An amazing life

We are subjected to several kinds of dictatorships in our society. Many of them are imposed in a subtle manner, but very present. There's no one putting a gun against our heads pushing us to do a certain thing. It's the society, the culture who put this invisible gun. But the hand that shots never is theirs, but ours. The choice is ours.

One of the dictatorships is the happiness'. It doesn't mean that happiness is a bad thing, obviously it isn't, but you just can't concept it. What makes one happy, may make another one unhappy. The happiness dictatorship doesn't take it into consideration and establishes a standard. And this standard seems to be accessible only to those who have money – lots of money.

Happiness is having a big and comfortable life, having an imported car, being able to go abroad, having a pretty skin, a pretty hair, a pretty body, a nice job, going to best parties and eating and drinking the best the money can provide you. Fame, power and money: if you have the three, you would be happy according with the dictatorship.

But we know that the rich people also cry. What's the point in having these stuff if people approach you by interest? How is it possible to be happy living surrounded by safeguards and living in a fancy prison? Anyway, few people perceive this dictatorship. Few people think critically, maturely, wisely. Many prefer to live in the bubble of their ignorance, happy with their convictions and carpedienzist lifestyles.

In order to be happy, you have to think big, fly high. Happiness, then, stays attached to things that are usually unreal or inaccessible to many people. In the seek for the dream, people live in the future and forget about the present. And in the seek for “big and better” things, the smallest ones start to be ignored.

Following the happiness dictatorship is not enough, it's necessary to show it off. By behaving in this way, we will be contributing to the guns to be put against people's heads, perpetuating the cycle. We need to assure others and ourselves that this dictatorship brings happiness. Who's out, is treated as someone unhappy and influenced to believe he's really unhappy, starting to question his self-esteem.

In order for us to be happy, we must have an amazing life. We should feel ashamed of ourselves of doing simple and worthless things, specially, talking about them. We must have horror to the trivial, to the routine. And we must, of course, practice the exercise of self-affirmation. Everything must have be great, in the contrary, it's despicable and deserving of depreciating adjectives carefully chosen, because it's necessary to destroy the self-esteem of the people for us to feel better with ourselves.

But the truth is that almost anybody lives a Hollywoodian life. Almost anybody lives the life so intensively that causes good envy commentaries: “Wow! What a Carpe Diem well-followed!” We are driven to treat the celebrities as gods and foolishly believe that money brings all the material stuffs, that brings fame, that brings success, that brings love and finally happiness. And in this blind search for happiness, we leave the life pass away because we were always living in the future, never in the present.

Tromsø

The hot milk cup warmed my hands during that sunny, but cold, winter day in Tromsø. In the moment that my eyes lied on the opened petit suisse pot, the snow outside melt down and I got back to the 1992 summer. The snow was replaced by the vivid green of the grass.

We ran barefoot along the river coast and its transparent water. We could see its bottom full of rocks and even some fishes. And through the wide and opened fields we could fly a kite and admire the curious shapes of the clouds. Or the several stars that the city lights weren't able to hide in the sky.

The kings of the world excavated the ground seeking for treasures. They climbed some hills as if it was a big fjord. How much History could an abandoned house to have?

Two pots of petit suisse and twine and then we had a telephone. Calm and cozy song playing inside a house. A dog running to catch a ball. No worries.

Chicken soup if you caught a cold. Advices when you were insecure. Studying together if one of us had a tough exam in college. Hugging when we failed, hugging when we succeed. Presence if some of our relatives and friends were gone.

At that time, we lived well. We were friends, we were partners. By the look, we could read unspoken words, we could easily understand what each other were feeling and thinking. We were not concerned with the annoyance of the boring people. We couldn't see fun in laughing at people that were different or eccentric. We weren't concerned in judging everyone and everything. We never wanted to be the center of the attentions, being better or worse than anyone.

We were only concerned in living, in appreciating the beauty of live, enjoying a simple life not expecting miracles or everything great. We don't want to waste time with sadness and its unpleasant consequences.

Nothing has changed, we are just older. We still see the world with the same eyes. We still can see and feel the beauty even in the small things.

We have each other. We are more than friends, we are more brothers, we are more than a family. We are a fortress when we are together. We are light when it's dark. We care, we take care of each other. We are a couple that life joined, unable to be separated by anyone.

Smell of caramel

Everything has begun in that cold morning, when the Sun painted the city of orange and filled my day of heat and light.

That Tuesday could be like the previous days: boring! But it was not. And it had the ingredients for such a thing. Sleeping just three hours in order to get medical examination in a public health center with a shit pot inside the backpack, as well as the cold of the fall could have made the day harder.

A lot of people complain of waking up early. It is not very pleasant having to wake up, leaving the heat of the bed to face the cold and all the annoying situations at work and a possible morning traffic jam indeed. The morning period can make all the difference during the rest of the day. It is the prettiest period of the day of all.

When the Sun rose and illuminated little by little the cars of the federal highway, the billboards and facades of the stores with its tones of orange, more vivid and intense every minute, filling the city of life, it was foreseen that the day was going to be good. The confirmation came when Andrea Corr started to sing “Tinseltown In The Rain” on my mind. Thank you, Andrea.

Some people can be so close, but so far from others. And one of them was on the other side of the highway. I reminded him when I was coming and I saw the red with white waves logo. And he has been figuring my thoughts every day since I met him – virtually. Obviously, he might have no idea of it. I wondered of what he could be doing but, mainly, what he was feeling.

Loving is a very good feeling, the best one person can ever feel. The pain on loving and do not be loved is proportionally inverse. Time is a bitter medicine and it is not in small glass vials, but in barrels. It was not love, it was not. It was not love, it was a trap. A sadistic smile upon the face of the one who had the heart broken by the beloved one. The affection object now was also suffering the pain of loving and not being loved. He focused in the wrong one and ignored that one who could be the right one. It serves you right!

It was not a brilliant day, but it was a nice day. And deserved. After weeks of stress at work, finger slashes, oral mucosa slashes and food reservations, and the committal days to put the things in order, a happy day was more than deserved.

The smell of caramel was somewhere in the room. Or was it steeped on the cloak? The laugh came easily, even in the presence of crabby people. The reflexions too and the sureness that those Tuesday was being a happy day, without the need of being perfect. The things flew as if I had drunk a dose of Felix Felicis.

Just like love, happiness is a feeling so nice that it does not matter if it is true or not. There is no space for fears and doubts when a person feels that. He only wants to feel it and make it last forever, if possible.

Everything has begun in that cold morning, when the Sun painted the city of orange and filled my day of heat and light.

Ropes and people

Somebody has told me that there is a pot of gold in the end of the rainbow that can be found in a familiar place.

Welcome back to the hot and dirty road of Guinea-Bissau where hearts are dragged. Once again we are there, walking without stopping, taking right and wrong ways. Destination: happiness.

Throughout our journey, we will find lots of people willing to help us (or not) to take the right direction. They will join us. To them, we will be tied by an invisible rope on our feet.

Some people will walk in the same rate than ours. If we are tired or down, they will pull us ahead and will show us the way for us to take. They will become our friends and they will be my our side either we take different ways or until the road is over.

A lot of people will become a dead weight for us to carry. They will not help us when we need, they will not pull us through, but a humanity feeling inside our hearts will morally obligate us to carry them. They are unusual people we carry and make us tired. Why do not we get rid of who does not bring us anything good?

And there will be those crazy people that will try to pull us back. They will pull us to the bottom of the well they live in with all their might. They can not face themselves behind us or see us too close to the pot of gold.

Inside our pockets there is a sword we can use to cut the ropes. The decision of going ahead leaving behind everyone who does not allow you to be happy is yours.

No more caring with about other’s problems if they do not help themselves. No more caring about people who does not care about us. Someday they will forget us.

Café

Was it a far away dream? Was it the more intensive sensation he could ever live and that he could never relieved again?

It was an ordinary and cold afternoon. A body of an unknown man appeared lying on the floor. He was cold and he did not make any movement, apparently, he was dead. People in that place, curious, raised the traditional questions: “who is he”, “where did he come from” and “is he alive”?

Another unknown man walked straight to him, taking with him a steaming cup of coffee and milk.

The smoke slid in the air and entered into the fallen man’s nostril, heating that cold body. And that cold body that was hard and without life as if it were a rock, reacted. He had just been born.

— Drink this cup of coffee, my son, — asked the man, his Savior, that have given him a smile and turned around and went away with His mission accomplished.

He did not know anything about himself and his past. He just knew that he wished to drink that cup of coffee, as though it was a surviving instinct ask.

He drank the first sip of coffee. It was the first time he had ever drank coffee and milk in his life. The heat warmed his whole body and he felt full of life. The sweet flavor of the coffee also did not remained only in his stomach but it flowed through his body and reached his mind and heart.

He was a young man that would like to share all his happiness caused by his first sip of coffee. He met people, made friends and enjoyed those happy moments that were lived for the first time since he drank coffee.

Time went by and the cup was getting out of coffee but someone always served him more. Sometimes the cup itself used to fill it up by itself, just like magic. During this time, coffee was changing taste and temperature.

Few people brought hot coffee and milk. Some people only brought black coffee with sugar. A lot of people brought black cold coffee without sugar. It was a bitter coffee, hard to drink.

The man absorbed everything the coffee could give to him. He was a coffee addicted now. His animal instinct already knew that coffee was giving him life and that without it, he might lost it and become a cold rock on the floor once again.

In the begging, coffee was sweet, hot and flavorous. As time passed by him, he had experienced the coldness and the bitterness and they also flowed through his veins, reaching his heart.

More and more coffee. More cold and bitter coffee.

There was not that pleasure in drinking coffee anymore. Was it a far away dream? Was it the more intensive sensation he could ever live and that he could never relieved again?

Sad and frustrated, that man was drinking his coffee as a slave. He knew he could not just give up if he wanted. It was not allowed by him and by others.

One more sip, one more sip, one more cold and bitter sip of coffee. Inside that bitter heart, the feeling of hope remained there reminding him that one day coffee would be sweet and hot again. He already knew that it would not be an everlasting sensation, but he was willing to enjoy it until there would be no coffee, and then he could thank his Savior personally for giving him life.