365 days after Dublin…

Not so long ago actually, Ildi and I were writing in our last few weeks in Rotterdam. She mentioned that it seemed I was back, to what I admitted to have been living for six months in a ghost of who I was. I promised Ildi to save that conversation and go back to it when things were getting hard. With my head a little bit more in its place after a rather hard shake up from life, this night seemed to be the perfect night to go again over those lines. So what have I learned since then, when what brought me back to life could be what has the potential to sink me today? Well… I think I have learned from what put me cold turkey back then is that becoming a ghost is a conscious decision we can make when things are not as nice, but we can also decide not to. Oh yes, another rational tribulation as if an excess of rationality hadn’t been my problem already in some aspects. So yes, I have done some crazy stuff in the past months based on a hunch. But in Spanish we would say “el que no arriesga no cruza la mar” or well in English I could say “No pain no gain”. So… some of the troubles are still there, some others are part of the ghost that this time I didn’t let become. So how do I come to this realization? Probably I have learned to like myself more since, contrary to what one may think. So it is time to accept that more than I thought I did I come to Ireland based in a hunch, but that is not necessarily bad in the end. One can call it fate or it was meant to happen, or whatever is the optimistic cliché of your taste. The point is, I may have “lost” a bet (or two maybe I won it but I don’t know yet), but I have got some other things and people. So with still no clear future I am comfortable to know I have done things well done always and good chances are to come. I guess some friends have been right to say “I don’t worry about you” Oh well… said by so many people now… Some doors close and other windows open…wise… it is right. As an official holiday hater (no, I don’t enjoy Christmas, my birthday sucks year after year and I think that New Year and Valentine’s are absolutely overrated and put your personal life into a ridiculous amount of unnecessary pressure and expectations) something absolutely unexpected and nice happened for once… a call and a message at midnight, just when I had given up on the smallest nice things. Just like I called on a birthday careful to take into account the time difference, I got a message and a call just after midnight. A sweet message is the sign of the beginning of a new era. My knees shake… where will life take me now? As I do since I focus on the moment that is now. “Tú sólo quieres mis besos” I used to hear; maybe that was it at that moment. Enjoy that kiss for the moment in which it is happening, enjoy the moment for what it is and let it happen. Suffer it when it needs to be suffered. Life is to be lived fully bit by bit, even the 8 hours of work. Let work and play get mixed up Buda would recommend. Maybe it is not so deep, but it let’s you live with no regrets, just as each moment you are truth to yourself. Experience life with intensity. Don’t become a ghost, a nihilistic mirror of who you wished you had become, of what you wanted life to be. That is what Ireland taught me, what brings honest nostalgia to leaving. Ireland, a tiny island in the west of Europe and some of its people have brought me back to experience life and death as they should be experienced… fully. Will I be back? Perhaps… There is no plan, there has never been.