Good morning, for once! (usually I've been writing good night times)

I think I will not be able to write all I want in the little time I have before leaving for work but I shall begin. I feel so overwhelmed somehow that I could cry and then laugh again, realising that laughter is there.

For about a year I've been processing the thought of centering myself from myself towards the outer world and people around me.

Yesterday was my birthday and I set myself to the challenge of doing 38 (ooops, is that my age? ;-) acts of random kindness. This thought nailed in to me earlier this summer after I had given a peony from  my garden to a stranger on the street. You see we have the most beautiful peony in our garden, that was the only plant we didn't rip off when we moved in here and didn't then yet know what it was but it seemed like a plant worth keeping and for the three summers we've lived here, it's brought me so much joy!  Last summer I missed the blossoming because we were in France so this summer I was even more anxiously waiting for it to blossom... and when it did, I was drunk with its beauty! :-D And so much that one day, I felt it overflowing in me that I have to share it - and so I took one flower and decided to just give it to someone on the street in the center of town. As I was driving to the center of town, I started thinking all the possible places I could take a flower, a nursing home, hospital...

I kept my decision however to give the flower to someone on the street and so I gave it to a woman outside the library. She was surprised, confused and thrilled at the same time. Just afterwards I went to the library to get some books and was looking for something but ended up in the "wrong" book aisle but there was a book standing looking at me with a title Creative Mind. I looked at it and felt IT was a peony for me - I took the book and read it in two days. It was so much for me, so encouraging to my writing process, as I had thought to write the whole summer and finish "a book" I've started - and I've written NOTHING the whole summer and felt like a lost writer from the words that well up in me in aching to come out.

Anyway... I had been thinking it for some time. My desire to be more courageous, to come "out of me" and to be open to where I am. I mean that when I'm going from place A to place B that  I just don't walk in a tunnel as there is no other purpose for me than that direction between those two poles, but to see with whom I'm maybe standing in line at the grocery store, or if there's someone I could give a hand to, or share a word...

My husband saw a childhood picture of me with boy I was holding with my arm and he made a comment that " Oh, you wanted to own people already then"  What....? Of course he hit it somewhere right, though its never something concious of me. I've had desire to have best friends though I've never wanted to name anyone that way because I consider myself to have a few close friends which I do not want to put in any order... but I've held the thought much in me of wanting to belong to someone, and I think that is something encraved in us as human. Our need to feel loved runs deep.



.....This letter has left unfinished but I will publish it anyway. Aren't letters that way sometimes anyway...

Rina

Shall i say a few words
funny how life is
discovering
realizing i've arrived somewhere
today is some lamppost on my journey

i like the feeling
looking back how i've made it
even stumbling so many times
i've made it some distance from my younger self
to some

deeper understanding

i am home with myself

and I shall keep writing
changing languages
from heart to head and
to heart again


...


I promise to be me.


<3 R

This is where I stand now

Hello...

It's a rainy day, friday. The winter is starting to lose last of its signs in the nature. The forest looks quite pale today. I'm waiting for it to bring forth the thousand tones of green... oh, the beauty of Spring when it arrives fully! I hope we get to bathe in the sunlight with the growing grass and flowerbuds that are waiting to pop out from the ground.

I don't really have anything to say.

Do you?

And then again, I always do...eventually. ;-)

I've got myself pretty occupied these past few months. Then, just some days ago I paused in a way that used to be my 'livingroom´, just looking outside, listening to the sounds that come from nature or our surrounding. My thoughts going easily back and forth like waves perhaps reaching new shores, perhaps not.

I've realised how my life is full of activity that doesn't often help my creative mind but blocks it. I need b-e-i-n-g like we all do. At the same I've made a notice of myself that I've lost some of that easy being I used to reach and know with less effort. Now there's a long list of things that I feel I have to go through in my mind as to let go in order to just be able - to rest my mind.

But  as making this notice I find myself trying to make more empty space in me for breathing and relaxation. At the same it's funny that even today I found myself getting grumpy about things that are lying around the house, too many THINGS and I wished I had a HUGE VACUUM I could throw them into and then just breathe Oooh, that looks better! :-D

We people (or should I just talk about me? ;-) get attached to things and then realize owning something is not the thing that brings forth that what we really need inside. I have the struggle of needing to create things and getting bunch of ideas from different materials and then I end up with some things that I have no use of afterwards - and unfortunately I don't throw things out fast enough. When we let things be, we somehow grow blind to them until it is removed and we see the difference and wonder, how in the world could I live or breathe that way?

I'm dreaming of simplicity. In my mind. In my body. In my home. And I know of myself that as I dream something I do start moving towards that goal - even though there are times I feel I'm moving one step ahead and then two back again. But even then, in all that frustration and turmoil of mixed feelings I think we get to know who we are - and start slowly changing our position -as in standing more solidly. Standing and not wavering. The trees have roots and in our forest there are some really tall ones that stand tall, unwavering even in the storm. They know who they are.

Maybe slowly I'm figuring out a new layer of myself as in an oignon (hmm, I think I just wrote that word in french -or is it the same in english -but can't get surely the english in my head now :-D)....

I don't know if any of this makes sense to you, I'm just making conversation with myself and you, whom I imagine to be there - and here.

Ha, I also think I have yet to find a true philosopher friend... If you're the one, please register! ;-)

And so again, I got carried off from the topic. Oui, ca c'est moi!

 For a few days I've been thinking if I should start yet another (3rd) blog, for writing in finnish. I've got myself the courage this spring to call to several magazines to offer my columns and writing but so far I've been rejected everywhere. They always say that we have fixed columnists for a long time now... Today I called the local newspaper and he said the same but then grew curious about what I write and so I proposed to send him a few, as I've done for many others too. We'll see.
At the same I'm not discouraged, I'm glad I've grown more accustomed to making the effort (it took me so loooong to contact the first one) and I believe at some point I'll find my spot...
-but actually that's what I also started to think that maybe I have to start MAKING my spot first in the form of a new blog to give arena to my thoughts and writing. We'll see! The writing course I have has been continuosly encouraging for me and ta-daa, I'm happy about that!

OKAY.

The rain stopped now so I shall end here my mental gymnastics of the day, ha-ha...

***************************
I hope you are well inside out...
sometimes it's hard to be well....
but to be at least the best you can now

Let's stand tall
there where you are
here where I am
be it sunshine
or rain
let's stretch out our roots
and keep growing
***************************

Love,
Rina

Chosen by sorrow

Sometimes I feel I am chosen by sorrow.
The curtains of my heart hang with heavy feelings
even if I choose to look outside to a brighter world.
I am chosen by sorrow and it clothes me from head to toe
even I would like to change my wardrobe.
Even in my smile sorrow is waiting.

It chooses me when I choose joy.
It chooses me when I choose light.
Alone in the dark I walk longing for laughter and the tickling of life.
Sorrow chooses me and I am not free to dance  another song until
I choose him back and dance this dance
cry the tears that I've tried to dam in distant locations
please don't ever find me

I am chosen by sorrow
because it lives in me
in the heart of the mirror I see
the sheets I bury myself in
I find him telling me

there is another song
treasure within the sorrow
In the shore of missing pieces

my sorrow melts away in waves of the horizon
with no walls I shall sail to someone's shore
and be chosen love

<3 Rina

Comparison is the thief of joy

Hello darling you!

How are you? What are your thoughts around this time of year?

It is Christmas Day and probably a few others along with me feel that they've eaten well. However, saying a phrase like that makes me inevitably think of so many people that do not feel that way.
- How paradoxical this world is and how difficult it is to make a real measure of anything because there is always someone who has it better or worse than me...

COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY.

That is a quote that has got stuck in my mind and one that I've let sink in my heart. How true it is! I don't consider myself a jealous person, and I can be happy of what other's have for themselves,but I think comparing ourselves to others is so deeply built-in us as humans. In me as well.

Soon it is again New Year, 2013. And we might think to ourselves that should there be any resolutions made for this new year? Without anyone asking we find ourselves making count of the year that has passed, how has it been? Maybe we are also faced with the resolutions that we failed to fulfill in the past year and feel the loss of faith in our own abilities. Another year begins and I'm still this size, another year begins and I still haven't broken bad habits, started something I promised...whatever those intentions may have been...

We know it but feel powerless. And we compare - and lose our joy.

Think about it. I know myself times when I've been completely happy and even joyful about where I am in life and about who I am right now. And then  I see someone and do the mistake of comparing myself to them in some way and there I've sold my joy away and find myself in resentment of life's share of cards. Why I can't I be that way? Why don't I have those opportunities? Why didn't I win the lottery?  When really we should ask ourselves WHY am I complaining? Why am I comparing? What does it tell about me and where I am in life?

Sadly enough, in school kids and teenagers are still all about comparing: grades, looks, clothing, everything... I remember that from when I was a kid and see the same happening now in my daughter's surrounding... She is more like this than I am... She has this and  I don't....  Parent's don't always have the best tools either when they put their children on the stage of comparison, look how well he is doing, why can't you?  And sadly enough, as adults we do no better: oh, look at the car they got, she has better salary, I want a house like that too... Looks like as adults we are just grown-up kids that haven't realised that one day we will die and the only life we have to compare to then is our own.

Are we present in living our own lives or trying to imitate some pittoresque ideal?
Why can't we find joy in our simple being? Instead of comparing why can't we simply cherish the personality of our own and that of our children, and seek ways of encouraging them to find their own joy? Joy in ourselves, in who we are right now.

If I compare myself now to the one I was ten years ago, I can be so proud of myself that I can't tell you enough! I don't know when I realized that comparing myself to others will not help me become me. Perhaps by another quote: Be yourself, all the other places are taken. But this social illness needs a life-long treatment in our society and media that makes us grow in a badly fertilized ground. It pushes us to thought-patterns that do not create the joy that is meant for us.

Comparison is the thief of joy. It is so true. This year, please don't compare yourself to anyone but yourself! Find your joy and don't let anyone steal it!  Cherish the place of your heart, who you have become and encourage yourself in some beautiful way in your journey of becoming the unique, beautiful person you are.


with love and warm thoughts,
Rina