THE GIFTS OF LIFE

Yesterday, very early in the morning, I walked the streets of Manhattan for more than 3 hours…not really going anywhere just walking with no real destination or purpose, just another illustration of everyday life. 

But quickly, and for no apparent reason, it became a fascinating plunge into the memories of my time in Paris in the early sixties when I walked and walked and walked, incessantly, every day for most of the day, discovering the city and many different neighborhoods of varying cultures, trying to understand the people in this new country, trying to be part of it, trying to feel like I belonged to the strange and sometimes negative world it was for me.

I was very young and already my head was spinning and my mind was confused by the mixed memories of the dramatic recent past years and this new way of living. I learned so many things in these walking adventures close to madness, just watching and wondering about where I would be in this new life with no real links to the real world.

Will I belong to it? Will I understand it? It was an incredible change for me, like a nightmare or maybe sometimes the impossible dream of a new life.                          

Then in the subsequent years, I continued to learn in my crazy travelling all over the world, discovering complete new civilizations and who I could maybe become outside of ME and MY SELF-CENTERED WAY OF LIFE.                                                                                                     

More than fifties years have passed and here I am walking in the streets of Manhattan, wondering and wandering, with memories again assaulting me and I became more and more aware during these 3 hours, how lucky I have been in my now long life…

I started to smile at my good fortune and then whistle and even sing loudly, some people looked at me thinking I had lost it.

Yes, lucky to meet during my life all these incredibly interesting and fascinating people who brought me so much in knowledge, in feelings, in the attempt to comprehend the world and to accept other’s behavior, understanding that we all function in our own ways, or at least we should….

Yes, lucky to understand with the help of others, that judging actions or behavior of others is not always justified.

Lucky to have kept eyes open to discover new worlds and lucky to have been opened by others to look and try to understand new minds and new ways….

Maybe this openness was due to my education or a lack of specific education -always being a foreigner or perceived as a different mind - forced me to find ways to adapt to others.

Sometimes it was difficult and even painful since new encounters and new relationships are not always fulfilling and sometimes create wounds or can even be destructive. Encounters that left me with a bad taste but were always an experience of life, a lesson and a better knowledge of human nature. 

         

Lucky to have been offered new adventures by fate or destiny, lucky to have gone through all these changes, the addition of responsibilities in my professional life with the desire to achieve, always attempting to grow in these different paths of life, adding more colors in everyday life and creating new challenges in order to still BE AND GROW.

Lucky to have met (and still meeting) so many people who believed in me, in my possibilities, and who gave me the tools to advance and to persevere in sometimes difficult situations. They were taking risks and I owe them everything, and these people are always present in my mind when it is my turn to try to help young people- I believe in- to achieve their dreams.

Yes, Luck has been on my side…Yes, very giving people have been on my side… Giving their time, their energy, their knowledge. Sometimes and even most of the time, giving to me without any expectation for me to give back. Did I ever realize it?  Was I conscious of all these gifts handed to me by others and was I really aware of this luck given to me?

Most of the time I did not realize it or perceive it… Was I just thinking in my world of constant need and denial that it was owed to me because I was special and more deserving than the big majority of people around me? Was I blinded by my own image?

Life has been an incredible gift, an incredible source of discovery and an incredible perpetual travel to the next stage, the next adventure, the next encounter.

Was I too busy, too selfish, too obsessed with power to realize the gifts of life? Or maybe I still am but I am going through a moment of clarity in the cloudy sky of life? Was the sky shattered forever?  I know it was not, I love the new sky and I am thankful for the gifts of life and still expecting other ones.

THANK YOU LIFE

I promised myself in the past few years and even more today, never to turn my back or ignore the ones who have been given to me, they are part of who I was, who I am, who I will be… for the years to come.

I was walking in the streets of Manhattan, and each store was bringing images to me, each coffee shop was talking to me with stories of the past…. Of course, we need some kind of imagination to look at a STARBUCKS and be reminded of a bar called “CHEZ FERNAND” fifty years before.                                                        But imagination authorizes the stories of the past to be present and real and beautiful. Imagination is the engine of creativity and sometimes can be the engine of happiness.

In Paris, at the beginning of time, after a long walk, I had to stop in a bar and ask for a glass of water to deal with my thirst and most of the time it was denied with impatience, a gesture of disdain and I was asked to leave the bar.

I sat in the street on the sidewalk and was thinking of what just happened, I decided to go to the next bar and then the next and the next one until a generous soul was finally pouring water (with no ice) in a glass.  I am still drinking water with no ice…maybe the unconscious memory. To almost beg for water was not depressing, it was an act of survival, and will be a lesson for all my life.                          

But now I can think “I made it” I do not need to beg for a glass of water… I can buy it and even more I can afford to buy a coca cola if I want… And yes, before you say it or even think it, I know that to “make it” is not only based on the power of money, but also on a million of other things…                                                      Achieving a balance between the positive and the negative aspects and events of life, finding some kind of peace within ourselves, contemplating the past with acquired serenity, looking at the future with assurance and bringing elements of our acquired knowledge and digested feelings and thoughts to as many  people as possible.

We have to go through life with open eyes on all the chances given to us, and be open to the new discoveries and the encounters who are incessantly presented to us…

Let’s be open to the gifts of life, because too often, we are and can be blinded by self-consciousness, self-importance, by education and sometimes because we have been spoiled in our adolescence or young adult age by the rest of the world.

When I was living in different countries than the US, the reputation of Americans was that they are happier, more innocent, more open to new ideas than we were… Please let’s be sure to go on and make this reputation a reality of everyday, it is a gift of life, it is the only way to go on with our mission… We do not need the fake gifts of substitutes presented to us, believing that they will help us to stay ourselves in search of success!