Let's set the record straight

   Please, stand up with me and promise you will never stop doing whatever it is you love doing. Please promise you will never quit enjoying life and been positive about things that you love, just because someone else says that you’re not good for them. You know why?

 Because we are over seven thousand million human beings in this world and, even so, no one has the right to diminish you or your love for anything. Not one person, dead or alive, can do that? Not your teachers (good or bad) not your parents, not your so-called friends, not people you meet once or people you talk to a lot. No one, simple as that, can tell you what you are able to say or not, what you can feel or not or what you can think or not.

 Attention! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn from others, as that is one of the most beautiful and bright keys in the world. Learning is not only about techniques and structured forms to achieve something. You can also learn by hearing someone speak about their opinions, about what they love and what they hate. You can even learn a lot from the world by looking at the people on the street, in a market or on the bus. You just have to be attentive and be open about it all, not judge it and render it “useless”. Remember, even in the most horrible person, there’s a thread of good and even in the best person, there’s evil sleeping, so don’t rush in your judgments.

 Whenever you have words, whenever you feel like you must say something, please, do. Who cares what others will think? Your need to speak and be heard and learn is much greater than fear of ridicule. Besides, we can only be ridiculed if we subject ourselves to those awful feelings. When we own what we say and do, no one can really out us down using our own words as weapons.

 Never be that person who attacks for attacking, who tries to put down someone else in order for you to be on top. First, the world will never remember you were on top, only you. So, think about this: will you be able to live with yourself knowing what you had to do to be there, to be on top of the world? Guilt is a very slow poison but once it’s inside, it will act without a doubt.

 One of the most important things is to observe and listen. You will never get too far in life if you don’t do these two things. Stop and look at every side and see what happens. People always have different opinions about things and that’s not bad. Don’t try to impose your view on others, try to understand them and see why they think that way. If you think they’re wrong or not, that’s not what’s really important. The trick is to know how to learn to take all of that that you are not to build yourself better, to make yourself a greater human by learning from what is close to you, as well as from what is far.

  And please, accept criticism when it is your turn to be in that spot. Be able to hear when people say things that you don’t believe in, thing that might even make you uncomfortable. Remember the world will never revolve around you or them, so just open up your mind and listen and learn, no judgments.

 No one, no matter your religion, your ethnicity, your sexual preferences or your eye color (anything), will ever be on a position to tell you to shut up, to stop saying whatever it is that you believe in. Because after listening, after learning, after mashing up those things with your experience and your decisions, then you can say what’s on your mind in the best way possible. In a structured way, a proper message can be send to others about whatever you believe in. And you know what’s the best about it? People will listen.

 When opinions are built on solid ground and with strong conviction, people will respect them, no matter if they agree or not because, again, that’s never been the point. People focus too much on right and wring and false and true, but it is most important to acknowledge that the world is a mix of all of that. The world is built on our truths and our lies. What would the world be with our lies? Better o worse?

 Never let your morals attack someone else’s just because your conviction is too strong. Conviction works when it is used to explain and set your message straight. It’s never good when you use it to diminish others and to demolish everything other people have built close by.

 Respect is also one of the best ways to go about in life. Because how can you listen to someone, how can you expand your knowledge and your mind in general when you have no respect for others, or worse, for yourself?

 Many people have said that the first thing is to be honest with yourself and respectful of your own being. That means that you know your limits, you know exactly who you are and how you exteriorize that and also how we behave inside, in our minds. You are the only one to be able to choose the limits of your life and whichever you chose, that’s great, but always have them in mind and remember that your rights, in law, end when other person’s rights begin.

 Some are too fast to judge someone because he or she did this or that but they fail to understand that they are seeing it all from their personal points of view. They say certain things go against their morals and decide to ignore the morality of the person that originated whatever it is that is under siege. Yes, they are people that can have doubtful moralities but there are others that seek to impose theirs on every single person they meet. How can that be better, how can that be good in any form? Has imposing ever worked among humanity?

 You just have to be true to yourself and honest and respectful of yourself and others, never forgetting that you have a voice. You have a right to say and to think and to do and to stand up and shout if that’s what you want to do. And these rights you have are not consequence of the human law, but of life. You are a biological being that, for better or worse, evolved into what human being are today. Nature gave you vocal cords, the ability to stand up, the ability to walk, and run and, maybe best of all, nature gave us a brain.

 Inside that brain, there’s a universe we haven’t even begun to understand. An entire universe resides up there, inside our skull and every single person has one. It doesn’t matter if they are right or left wing extremists, if they are women or men, if they are old or young, black or white or speak English or Spanish. We all have that universe inside our skulls and we all have the capacity to decided what it is we do with it.

 Do we use it only to go forward, like in a video game, or do we fill it with information, with all of those beautiful things we like and even those things we hate? Because we are all an amalgam of those two opposites. Our own little universe can have so much and it helps us be a fully formed human being in the physical world. All that information inside that thing inside our skull, is what makes us... us. And we are not on the side of it as that universe is ours. So we can control it.

 We can learn with it, we can listen with it, we can refute and fight and struggle with it. It won’t be easy and it cannot be easy. Because life, the mere concept of life, is so vast and incredible, that just cannot be an easy thing. We will have to face our demons and we will have to meet a lot of people that we won’t like.

 But we will also feel people that, when they smile, we feel better and warm. People that make us believe there is a way out for humanity. And, also, life’s about looking around and living whatever it is that is happening around us. Enjoy your moments with your pet, reading a book, standing on the street as it rains or on a plane. Learn to feel your way around those moments, those precious moments that, after all, are only yours because when you feel something, it’s instantly personal. No one else will feel it exactly the same and you will never feel what others have felt. And that is tragic and beautiful.

 Finally, I think we can agree that this message is expected to make everyone who reads it believe they do count and that no one has the right to shut you up. Inteligence is only relative. Speak louder, make your voice be heard and never let people put a hand over your mouth. Bite if you have to bite, kiss when you want to kiss them and just fight your way to wherever you want to go. Life’s not a struggle, the struggle is to live among humanity and that’s only achieved when you take into account what I’ve just exposed. Cheers!

The forbidden jungle

  The waterfall had always been a lonely place, as it was located deep within the jungle. No one would have ever reached it on purpose, instead stumbling into it by mistake. It was said that the waterfall and its lagoon had the capacity to change locations and appear wherever people needed them to be. Many explorers and escapees from a nearby prison wandered into the jungle and got lost for days. Many of them, to be honest most of them, where eaten up by the jungle, whether it was by the fiery creatures inhabiting it or by the secrets that lay beyond the trees and the mossy ground. There were no natives to the jungle that could tell anyone about what lived beyond the first few kilometres simply because no living being, at least of the human species, had ever been able to come back.

 In satellites pictures, the jungle appeared to be dark green and even black in some parts. And it was all trees and trees, no sign of any waterfall or lagoon, which was only none to those few that had wandered into the jungle and survived. But as said before, these people never left the jungle. Instead, they remained in there, slowly transforming into wandering souls that helped protect the jungle and the secret within it. People that suffered this faith would not suffer or deny their destiny. Once they realized why they should give up their natural lives, they gave it all willingly. After all, those who survived were always the best humans, the examples of what was good and admirable about the human race.

 Such a person was Captain Roma Tennant. When she entered the navy, so many years ago, her peers only saw her as one of the women of the ship. But they had no idea she was far stronger and more capable than any of the men that worked with her in any of the Navy’s vessels. She was always the most oriented and the fastest one, also having great skills for shooting. She was prized several times, always involved in missions of war but far from any real battle. When she was finally sent to it, she became easily traumatized. She saw the few friends she had made in the Navy died, blowing up next to her or simply falling to their knees, a bullet in their foreheads. Her mind, however, got to hold on.

 The bit of sanity that remained in Roma was enough to destroy one of the enemies’ battle stations, thereby giving a perfect position for support troops to launch an attack that would make them win the fight. They did win, after many more casualties and Roma was able to survive, killing even more men and hiding in a sewage pipe. She was rescued by her country and brought back home but the truth was that Roma had been devastated by her, her mind almost broken by images of flying limbs and blood tainting every single drop of water. Her recovery took many months and her family thought they had lost her forever.

 And, in a way, they did. When Roma was able to walk again and use her arms and speak, she told them that she couldn’t live in the city anymore, as the sounds there reminded her of the sounds of battle. Cars and cell phones and planes made her very uneasy, very nervous. So her solution was to go and live by the sea, buy a boat with the money they had paid her for her services in the military, and simply live a quiet life in the ocean. She had to win the respect of her fellow men, once again, by proving she could easily manage to control a fishing boat, a cargo ship and even a small ferry to transport people across a small stretch of water.  She did exactly that at first and then travelled across the globe, working in jobs not very different, trying to bring peace to her mind and food to the table.

 She went to every big port in the world but, as she had realized before, cities were not for her, not even their harbours and marinas. She would settle for smaller towns, where she could be around people that she could recognize every day. But that eventually gave her more problems as she was reminded of the many people she had lost in battle. After one of her episodes, she was institutionalized for several months. This time, she had no family nearby and no one apparently notified them of her state. She remained in her cell, receiving shock therapy, which they still thought would be of any good in the country where she was. Eventually, they let her go when they saw she was calmer, less violent.

 Roma left that country fast and ended up in Indonesia, where she established herself as a fisherwoman. The locals there were not very happy to see her, a woman, trying to compete with all the men. She felt so harassed, that she decided to move upstream, through a large river that crossed a huge jungle. There she would finally be alone and she would be able to have a decent life for the remainder of her days, no matter how many they would be. She then noticed that explorers, scientists from all over who saw the jungle as an incredible source of discoveries, frequently visited the region. They said that a new animal was discovered every six hours and a new plant every eight hours.

 It was hard to believe such tales but Roma decided it was business and she dedicated herself to tour the scientists up and down the river and even through some canals and streams she had discovered. All the foreigners that got on her boat always came back as she was more daring than most people of the region and they knew it was because she had seen more of the world than they had. For a couple of years, explorers became her friends and she would always be there to greet them and take them wherever they needed to do their research. She had fun doing it, as she felt at peace for once in her life and it felt good.

 That changed the day she met Alexander Epps, an American scientist that had heard tales of the forbidden jungle and arrived in the region asking loudly for someone to take him there. Everyone said no, even Roma. She didn’t know all the tales, but she did know that the region of the jungle he was asking to go was very tricky in terms of navigability. She was skilled enough to go, she was sure, but it was difficult to live there and ignore the stories she had heard, about teams of twenty people that left for the jungle and never came back. Boats that appeared out of nowhere in the river and people recognized them as the ones that had transported lost souls to that dark patch of the forest. Roma was an adventurous woman, but she was no fool at all.

 However, Epps was a scientist and his research had also dropped the name of Roma. How it was known she lived there now, was never truly explained. Nevertheless Epps came to talk to her and tried to convince her to take him to the forbidden jungle. He insisted for months and she always said no. But then, as intelligent and twisted as Epps had always being, he tricked Roma into watching some images and footage of the war she had been in. He bombarded her with information, facts and so on. Just as he predicted, she snapped. But before she could lose herself to her own mind, Epps convinced her that the only way to purge herself from everything was to make a good deed and that was to tale him to the jungle.

 The next day, she took his team of ten men in her boat and carried them upstream. As expected, the jungle grew thicker, until it was impossible to keep advancing by boat. She told Epps it was her time to return but he threatened her with a gun and made her walk in front of him. None of that mattered anyways as in only one night; all the men of the expedition would be killed. Roma had not seen such carnage, not even in war. There were gigantic snakes breaking the bones of men, jaguars that destroyed a person in minutes and huge birds with beaks that could poke out eyes in the easiest way possible. The last one to die was Epps, who was impaled by a shadow Roma had seen before.

 Alones and in the brink of insanity, Roma wandered through the jungle, trying to get out of there but knowing one of the beasts was probably waiting for her. She was getting impatient, asking for the jungle to eat her, to destroy her life once and for all. But then she heard the humming of the water and, some steps in front of her; there was a perfect lagoon and a great waterfall where she cleansed herself from everything. Even her memories seemed to leave her as she washed her body. And then, beyond the trees, she saw a light. At first she thought it was an animal but then she realized it had the shape of a human being. Whatever it was, it was asking her to come towards him.

 Slowly, Roma did exactly that. The entity was one of the many souls that lived in the forest, one of the oldest apparently. It took Roma by the hand and took her to a trip where she left her body and transformed into a better version of herself. They wandered all around the jungle until the spirit took her deep within the trees, beyond the killer animals and the poisonous plants, beyond the waterfall and its soothing waters. There, in a space covered by plant life, there was a rock. It was the colour of blood and looked harmless. The spirit invited her to touch it and, when she did, she felt complete. And she understood why no one that wasn’t worthy could ever survive the forbidden jungle.