Hopelessly Hopeful

It has been long time since last time I wrote, even if I had clear in my mind the title and the topic of the post since a week. The main problem was that when thinking about putting down words, I was spontaneously thinking about this post in English. I have the impression that thinking in English helps me in summarizing concepts and going straight to the point. However I was reticent about starting to write in English because I think it's a bit ambitious from my part to expect to write correctly, but I'll try...so in order to stop worrying about it, I apologize now about all the possible mistakes I will make! 

When I started this blog I didn't think about the fact that I needed to find a nickname for myself! When asked I replied on the spot:  Hopelessly Hopeful, like that! I still don't know exactly why I picked that one, but once Vivian, while chatting about a guy, defined me with this two words! ...and I think it fits me somehow. In italian it might sound like "disperatamente pieno di speranza", but obviously there is no exact translation for it. And it doesn't sound that classy either! :) I think in English most part of my days. I have friends which I always speak in English with, as Alexandra. The subject of the post wanted to be the end of her blog: her last post was this picture....only! That looks pretty much like Hopelessness. I think it's a "very vivid" picture for representing a broken heart. I've always thought about a broken heart like a heart with cracks and rifts all over... it bleeds but it will recover at some point. Here somebody is shooting at it! Here's the story of this blog as far as I got it. 

Alexandra started her blog with a friends of hers, Andreea. Alexandra decided to start writing because of  her overwhelming feelings towards a guy, who was maybe The One, but maybe not... The title of A&A's blog was: "Women are for friendship, men are for fucking!!!" It' a page where you can find somewhere themes for adults... 

I remember once Alexandra wrote a post on her blog indicating all the reasons why she considered herself awesome... it was a beautiful one! It's a shame it's written in Romanian and she had to translate... She left her country 4 months ago to study and she's planning to go to the U.S.A. for the last year of her master degree. 

In this scenario, "The-Guy-who-maybe-is-The-One" pop up in her life. She closed the blog few weeks later. So I guess that the primary source of her inspiration stopped existing. I hope she will find new inspirations soon and maybe open a new blog. Personally, I started wondering which was my source of inspiration for writing.... When I opened my blog I had no idea about what I was going to write day after day. It was a book that gave me a more precise idea about the kind of blog I wanted to write and about the style I wanted to aim. It's called "Eat, pray and love", by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's about the story of a woman who left her husband, and after the divorce she decided to write a book about a travel she intended to do. She spent 4 months in Italy to learn Italian (eat), 4 months in India in order to learn how to meditate (pray) and 4 months in Indonesia. I haven't reached that point yet, but it must be something about love... I want to share with you sentences taken from Chapter 49 that I read today. Liz is in India in an Ashram:

"When I was nine years old, going on ten, I experienced a true metaphysical crisis. Maybe this seems young for such a thing, but I was always a precocious child. ...-from single digit to double digits-... Soon I would be e teenager, then middle-aged, then elderly, then dead. .... My old sister was almost in the high school already... Obviously it wouldn't be long before she was dead. What was the point of all this?...

This panic I was feeling at age ten was nothing less than a spontaneous and full out realization of mortality's inevitable march, and I had no spiritual vocabulary with which to help myself manage it. ... My sense of helplessness was overwhelming. ... I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything. I suppose this urge to force the entire universe  to stop in its tracks until I could get a grip on myself  might have been the beginning of what my dear friend Richard from Texas calls my "control issues". Of course my efforts and worry were futile."

"As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift -or curse, perhaps- of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day. How are you going to cope with this information? When I was nine, I couldn't do a thing with it except cry. ... If I were going to have a such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now.  Hence all the traveling, all the romances, all the ambition, all the pasta. ... if I could have split myself into many Liz Gilberts, I would willingly have done so, in order not to miss a moment of life. What am I saying? I did split myself into many Liz Gilberts, all of whom simultaneously collapsed in exhaustion on a bathroom floor in the suburbs one night, somewhere around the age of thirty. I should say here that I'm aware that not everyone goes through this kind of metaphysical crisis. Some of us are hardwired for anxiety about mortality, while some of us just seem more comfortable with the whole deal. You meet a lot of apathetic people in this world, of course, but you also meet some people who seem to be able to gracefully accept the terms upon which the universe operates and who genuinely don't seem troubled by its paradoxes and injustices."

"But Sean is one of those people like me who were born with the itch, the mad and the relentless urge to understand the workings of existence. ... Sean's father listened with mild interest, watching the fire in the hearth, smoking his pipe. He didn't speak at all until Sean said, 

- Da, this meditation stuff, it's crucial for teaching serenity. It can really save your life. It teaches you how to quiet your mind. -

His father turned to him and said kindly,

- I have a quiet mind already, son, - then he resumed his gaze on the fire. But I don't. Nor does Sean. Many of us don't. ... I need to actively learn what Sean's father, it seems, was born knowing, how to, as Walt Whitman once wrote, stand apart from the pulling and hauling... amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary ... both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it at all. ... The other day in prayer I said to God, - Look, I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could have some day an unexamined lunch? - 

Buddhist lore has a story about the moments that followed the Buddha's transcendence into enlightenment. ... He knew that it would be only a meager percentage of people who would be served by (or interested in)  his teachings. Most of humanity, he said, have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them. ... The Buddha decided he would become a teacher for the benefit of that minority - for those of little dust. - I dearly hope that I am one of these middle dust caked people, but I don't know.

 I only know that I have been driven to find inner peace with methods that might seem a bit drastic for the general populace. (For instance, when I told one friend back in New York City that I was going to India to live in an Ashram and search for divinity, he sighed and said, - Oh, there's a part of me that  so wishes I wanted to do that... but I really have no desire for it whatsoever, -) I don't know that I have much of a choice though. ... Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. ... You have to admit that you can't catch it. That you're not supposed to catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment come to you.

Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has an handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were drop this handle for even a moment, well - that would be the end of the universe. But try to dropping it, Groceries. This is the message I'm getting. Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. ... Even the Italian post office will keep limping along, doing its own thing without you - why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don't you let it be?

I hear this argument and it appeals to me. I believe in it, intellectually, I really do. But then I wonder - with all my restless yearning, with all my hyped-up fervor and with the stupidly hungry nature of mine - what should I do with my energy, instead?

That answer arrives, too:

Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."

This is just a small taste of "Eat, pray and love". This book is really inspiring me and a lot of questions raise in me while reading. I really recommend it to everyone. I found the words in Chapter 49 very evocative and I wanted to share this with you! 


Enjoy the reading!
(You can find the book on Amazon at 7.99$...)