He came back

   Trekking the archipelago was an adventure, there’s no other way to describe it. They had always been there, available for everyone to go and just take the challenge. Technically, they were a national park but getting the permission to walk through the islands and sail was not impossible to get. The only condition that could annoy people would be the fact that a guide sent by the government office in charge of national parks would have to get a seat in the group that would be crossing the islands.

 Amak was the name of our guide and he was only the third member in our small party. I was one of the others. The second member would be my husband, the person that had initially thought of the trip. He had been dreaming about it for many years, as he had been trekking the world with his parents since he was a little kid. They were ecologists; so travelling around the planet was a common thing for him. He had a birthday on Mount Everest and his parents wedding had taken place in the Australian desert.

 Somehow, he had ended up marrying to a person like me, someone that rarely travelled more than a hundred kilometers away from his birthplace. I had only flown on a plane three times in my life and they had all been moments of a certain character, like birthdays and special occasions for my family. I had met him in college and, to be honest, I had never really liked him. He had the attention of every single person at every moment, he was the one all girls fell in love with and all guys admired.

 It was just like that until the very last semester; when we were almost forced to interact do to the impending arrival of that dreaded moment when you have to make a final paper to sum it all up at the end of the career. The problem, which I now see as a blessing, was that we had similar projects and we were convinced to do the work together and surrender it as a duo, instead of doing it all by ourselves. So we had to start seeing each other often and it was then when everything changed.

 We started seeing each other differently and I discovered he had an image of me, as I had formed a picture of him. Of course, both ideas were not complete or accurate, so it was kind of interesting to uncover that slowly. We became friends after the first few months and then we really got to working on our thesis. We came up with a lot of things together and, by the end of all that process, we discovered we had something very precious between each other, something that was much more special than a newfound friendship. It was the time we knew more feelings were involved.

 After college we separated for a while though, because he needed to go back to his parents who were living in Nepal in that time. I was sure that he wasn’t coming back to the city, so I decided to just be a nice friend before he left. He didn’t say much during those days, preferring to be silent and a little bit distant. When he left, I caught myself crying sometimes, in the most strange places and moments. I just dried the tears and pretended nothing was going on, lying to myself because it was easier that way.

 To my surprise, he appeared in my life again six months later, after a long time without communicating to me. We agreed on talking on a bar and the moment I saw him I felt everything again, as if he had never left. It was strange, so I decided not to act on any feeling and just enjoy the moment. And we did. He told me new stories about his parents and also some of his own, helping people in remote areas and enjoying nature and life at tits fullest. He seemed to have had a great time there and it was obvious he wanted to be there.

 So I asked him why had he came back? It was obvious that he had everything he wanted back with his parents, traveling the globe and enjoying life near nature. And he now had a career to help himself and his family, so it did not make any sense to come back to a place he didn’t like or appreciate it beyond some friendships and the career he had gotten. I turned a bit angry as I said that, but I tried to control myself as much as I could. My voice trembled and my hands were shaking visibly.

 He did the worst thing he could have done in that moment: instead of talking, of explaining himself, he put his hand on mine. I jumped from my seat, almost knocking over my glass full of beer. Everyone turned around to look at me and I was too embarrassed, so I left him there on his own. I walked back to my house, not that far away from the place we had been drinking in. I was enraged and on the verge of crying, my fists tightly closed and my jaw closing violently as if I wanted to destroy my own teeth.

 However, he ran to get to me. Again, he grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me. Instinctively, I launched a punch towards him but he dodged it and made me get closer to him, in a weird hug that he forced at first but then I corresponded slowly. I finally cried and asked him again why he had come back to that place, to me. Again, he answered with no words, something I’ve learned that he likes to do quite often. He kissed me right then and there, in the middle of the street and of the night. It didn’t last long but it was enough for me to let my defenses down and finally get calm.

 And now, year later, he convinced me to travel like he once did. I had no commitment with nay kind of work or with anyone, so he convinced me to work with him and his parents and sometimes only with him. He was the kind of person that helped remote communities stand on their own two feet. He helped them communicate with the world and get access to everything they needed to survive. He convinced me to go with him and I accepted, feeling maybe I needed to change my life decisively.

 That trip crossing the islands was just part of the fun, something to do before and after helping people. The first night, we hugged tightly and Amak slept as if he had never done that before. I realized it couldn’t be that bad to be in the middle of the wilderness with the one person that came back to me, looking precisely for me. He loved me and I felt that every day I was with him, even if he made me do things I didn’t particularly liked doing. I guess he felt I was able to do all that and he wanted me to dare a bit.

 I spent all of those days holding his hands, sometimes for some minutes, sometimes for much longer. I realized I really loved that man and I loved the way he did things and how he trusted in me much more than I did myself. He made me feel better than special. He made me feel I was worth it.

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!

Sushi

   Just when she was about to do it, a man passing pulled her back. Natalya tripped on her feet and landed on her behind, just at the feet of her so-called savior. But she didn’t see him as his savior; he was just an old fool meddling in things that were not of his interest. She got on her feet and just then the train stopped in front of them. She gave one last look of hate to the old man, who seemed to be oblivious to it, and boarded the train. It was peak time and everyone seemed to be too close from one another but she didn’t mind. She walked to one of the windows and just stood there the rest of the trip, staring at the tunnel walls passing by. She had been so close to do what she had imagined for days, and then the man had stopped her and she didn’t even knew why.

 Her foot had not even left the ground, she hadn’t begun to walk and he had pulled her back. Did he already know what Natalya wanted to do or did he just act on instinct? She didn’t care at all. It had been so close and now that it hadn’t happened she didn’t knew if she had to be grateful or not. She felt strangely alive, even there, in such a bleak part of town. In the following stop, she got out of the train and walked to the surface with one idea on her mind. She walked pretty fast, remembering a place where she had been pretty happy some time ago. Natalya wanted some of that happiness now, as she could really use it. She didn’t have to walk a lot. The restaurant only had a few costumers and the waitress recognized her from the last time.

 Natalya sat on a table by the window and decided to have anything she wanted, never mind the price or the amount. She needed to feel better and maybe food was the way to do it. As she waited for the dishes, the woman looked at the window. But instead of looking at the exterior, she found herself in there. Her face was still young but her body was older, as if the two parts that formed her being, body and soul, had decided at one point to age differently. Her eyes were sad and her mouth had always been arched in a way that always seemed to be sad too. Thankfully, the nice waitress came back with her drink. She was seeing the reasons why she had decided to kill herself and she just wasn’t ready to do that, to confront herself right now.

 For the next hour, all that she did was eating. The restaurant served Japanese food mostly but it also had some dishes from other parts of Asia. The waitress commented that one of the cooks was from India, so he had the idea to make rice and curry as a companion to every dish. Natalya thought that was a clever idea and asked the waitress to thank him for his idea. Surprisingly, he came out of the kitchen after the waitress had disappeared and shook Natalya’s hand. She was a bit surprised but she smiled and thanked him again anyway. He left with a clear sense of pride and that was good enough to make her day a better one.

 When the waitress came with the bill, Natalya asked her to sit down. The woman, a young Japanese girl, started to speak rapidly. She thought that her client was going to demand an explanation of her bill or have some criticisms about the food or even complain about the cook. But the truth was that Natalya just wanted to speak to her. She asked her where she was from, how old she was and, at last, her name. Misako was only twenty-four years old and had been born right in the city, her parents been immigrants that left Japan because his father wanted to have a restaurant and there was too much competition in Tokyo. So they emigrated to be more successful. Before paying, Natalya asked Misako if they could have a drink before leaving and Misako said she had to ask, as she was still working.

 They waited until the restaurant was closed to talk and then Natalya found out that the young woman had a life that fascinated her. The fact that she had lived all of her life in the restaurant and knew how to make every dish in the menu was outstanding. Misako clarified that she never cooked for the restaurant but that she tried the recipes at home to check on her skills but she ate it all alone as she was too scared to tell her father that she cooked. She explained that he had an education thought for her: she had already finished law school and now wanted her to get the following degree, for which they were saving. But she had no courage to tell her parents that she didn’t wanted anything to do with law.

 They drank a couple of Asahi beers each, until they all stepped out of the restaurant. Natalya got to meet the Japanese cook, a very private man who only raised his hand to say “Bye”. She also shook hands again with the Indian one, who was still very happy to have his ideas praised. Then, she met Misako’s brother Kenzo, who worked at the cash register. He was younger than her and was visibly sleepy. She realized it was better to let them go to their home. Before doing so however, she gave Misako her number and her email, in order for them to be in contact. She told her that she would come again anyway but that it was necessary for her to guarantee that they would keep on speaking.

 As she walked home, Misako realized she had been maybe too desperate but at this point of her life she didn’t really care. And that was because she was indeed desperate for friends, attention, love and anything in between. Maybe the only way to make friends was to just improvise in a moment such as the one in the restaurant. When she got home, she got into bed thinking of her insecurities but she decided not to do a thing about them. After all, it was them that had almost pushed her over the edge, literally. She was going to make one final effort to be a happy person and Misako would be her first friend to help her do exactly that.

 As she walked up very early for the office, a place she hated more than anything, Natalya got a text from Misako telling her that she had an idea she wanted to discuss with her. Thrilled to know her new friend’s idea, she answered the text right back, on her way to the office. Sad for her, she only got the response once she had started working on the most boring papers ever. Natalya was a teacher on the department of philosophy and the truth was that she hated philosophy and all the pretentious people that populated the campus. They were so filled with hot air; she thought they could fly to Europe and back. She hated that place where everyone tried so hard to be considered smart and unique when, and she had realized this long ago, no one was really special or unique. We are all the same kind of pretenders, of fakes.

 Or maybe not… Now that she had the way of friendship so close, Natalya thought that maybe she had been wrong about people and some of them could actually be real and interesting. Misako was exactly that and she was relieved to get a call from her at lunch. The proposal involved the two of them, and whoever else that wanted to join, cooking Japanese dishes in order to learn more and surprise her parents with a feast in the future.  Natalya thought that was a great idea and proposed they do it in her house. Misako said maybe a cousin of hers would join and that she could bring any friend or family member she wanted, as learning was more fun in groups.

 Unfortunately, Natalya had no one she could ask to come to their first attempt of a class. Many women worked in faculty but they weren’t her friends and she knew it would be weird to ask them, so she didn’t. As for family, she had lost that a long time ago. The following Friday, Misako showed up with her brother, her cousin and an aunt. She had brought every ingredient and when Natalya tried to pay her for the class, she said she had done enough by providing them with a place to practice. In just an hour, they were already rolling sushi and frying tempura. Natalya was a bit clumsy but they all had fun and joked around. They put on music and even danced as they put all the finished dishes together.

 When it was time to eat, they all enjoyed every single piece of food. Besides, Natalya realized the aunt and the cousin were just as nice as Misako, telling her about ancient Japanese tradition when eating and various other dishes they could try to make in the future. That made her happy and she decided to join the following Sunday at the market, to buy fish and eel and crab to make more dishes. Before she even knew it, they were all friends. They shared their thoughts, laughed together and even care for each other. When they felt it was time, they held a great feast at Misako’s home, with traditional decorations and all details taken care of.

 She was delighted to meet Misako’s parents, who were just the nicest couple in the world. They were older than her but wiser without a doubt. The father did not budge, the mother was obviously eager to know what it was all about. When the food came out, they all ate in silence. At the end of the meal, the father spoke in a harsh Japanese, which the aunt translated for Natalya. The father asked two things: where had Misako learned all of this and who was the woman that had joined him. Natalya felt out of place and insecure for a moment but then Misako put her hand on her shoulders and told her parents she had been the friend she needed. She explained how she learned by watching the cook at the restaurant and how she practiced in secret.

The father did not say a word for some time until he asked for everyone to raise a glass for his daughter, and her brilliant future. Misako cried in joy and Natalya felt she had found more than friends: she had found a family.