What’s on my mind?

Here is a list of the things that come to my mind right before I post my actual status at FaceBook, right after reading its customary question: “what’s on your mind?”

·         I wish I knew. There are so many layers.

·         How should I know for sure? There’s so much going on! There’s work, and parenting, and marriage, poverty, the future of humankind, super strings theory, God, Obama, the menu for tomorrow’s lunch, Lost’s Finale, eating healthy… Damn! I’m getting restless. I’m sooo confused.

·         Why do you wanna know?

·         What does it all mean? The Dharma Initiative. The Others. The nuclear explosion. The two plane crashes. Leaving the island. Coming back to the island. The parallel reality. So many unanswered questions? (I wonder if there’s a PR strategy in there…)

·         If I put a link to this cool HP initiative in there would they think I’m a douchebag?

·         If I put a link to my new blog post would they think I’m a showoff?

·         None of your damn business.

·         If I posted what I’m really thinking would I have any friends left? Would I go to hell? Is there a hell? I wonder where it would be, and if I can make some improvements when I get there…

·         Why do you care?

·         Maybe I should put something more useful in there, instead of what I’m doing or thinking. Like a nice, smart quote from Da Vinci, or Einstein?!

·         Maybe I should be more personal so that my friends and family know what I’ve been up to, instead of all these intellectual, or self-development crap…

·         Trust me, you don’t wanna know.

·         Sex, sex, more sex. But I’m sure I wouldn’t get away with posting this at FB.

·         What do my friends really think when they read my status? I think I don’t wanna know.

·         Too many Brazilians here now. Maybe I should put a translated version, like Paulo Coelho?

·         Why do I bother?

·         Who am I really writing this to?

·         Nothing that matters anything to anyone but myself.

·         What’s the meaning of life? What’s reality? Am I really here?

·         F*@#! That’s my 5^th status update today. How do I shut down my mind?

·         Nah! I shouldn’t write that.

·         Uhm! This may be funny.

·         All right! If you may know…

Little Miss Sunshine Strikes Again

I will not wish you happy holidays.

I’d rather wish you a Belated (or Repeat) Eid Moubarak; a Joyful Dwali, a Happy Chanukah; a Merry Christmas; a Wonderful New Year, or whatever else matches your beliefs, or makes you happy.

For - as my dear friend - you know my friends belong to a multitude of countries and cultures that encompass the entire planet. My friends belong to all races and religions. And, yet, they see no distance, no color, no intolerance. My friends were born in enemy countries, and yet they sit together, laugh together, dream together. They kiss and hold each other in blissful ignorance of geopolitics. They make me proud every day. And hopeful.

So, now that we have all completed another trip around our beautiful and small yellow star, and get another chance at a do over, what I really wish you and all of us is that, one day, the whole of humankind acts just like my very precious group of friends.

We have just had one tough year and, God knows, we all deserve some piece of mind and happiness.
So, may 2010 bring you countless blessings of the sort that makes us laugh to the brink of tears and bellyaches.

Love, Dri.

Beyond the Social

One of my friends wrote at Twitter that, when it comes to social networks, there is a big difference between having something to say and having to say something.

This may seem obvious at first, but for a lot of people I know – myself included – it really doesn’t make a difference. And it shouldn’t.
Sure it is nice to have something relevant to post. It makes us proud of the contribution. And, paraphrasing Paulo Coelho (Yes, I know. My old friends would say I don’t exactly appreciate him from a literary quality point of view. But he is a nice dude.), we can use Twitter to spread Good.

However, when we post day-to-day silly stuff, we are not necessarily being needy, or egocentric. We just want the people we care about, and that may be hundreds or thousands of miles away from us, to have an idea of what we’ve been up to. It is far from ideal and only a resemblance of a relationship, but it is so much more than nothing.

If posting that I’ve been sick in bed will get my busy brother out of his impossible routine to stop and chat for a while, who cares this is irrelevant for more than 99.99% of mankind?
If writing that I will be in San Francisco 10 days from now will give my team the feeling we are always in touch, despite being scattered across two continents, so be it! It does not matter that it wasn’t meaningful or witty.
If looking at sporadic pictures is what it takes to see my nephews, nieces and the children of my dearly missed friends grow up, I will embrace it gratefully and gracefully.

So, we write to share. We write to cherish the ones we love.
We write to amuse, to woo, to impress, to shock, to warn, to wonder.
We write not only because we want our existences to mean something and leave figments of our hopeful and dreamy minds recorded, even if for brief posterity. We write because we want the people we know to keep knowing us while we change these daily little bits; as we learn from new experiences they cannot witness; as we have no choice but to hold and touch only their smiling frozen images with our souls.

Unfortunate

Nothing can make me happy today.
I’m filled with the absence of sunlight, excitement, motivation, health.
It is funny when, from time to time, we have to face a confluence of small mishaps: the cold viruses to be endured; a friend that has left; the supporter that’s gone to the dark side; the lips that you miss.
And if the sun was shining – even in 40 degrees weather – then perhaps I could feel more contented.
Circumstances like these impair my focus on the small daily blessings, like being alive and able to day-dream. For all can happen in one’s mind.
But it could be worse! We could be trying to close a quarter under impossible goals; or planning for a following quarter with major cuts in budget.
I often wonder what would be the fun in living an uneventful life, but in days like this, events have gone too far and, just sleeping for 24 hours, seem like an unexplored blessing.

Birthday

I haven't written for quite a while, though I have done it in my head a thousand times. It seems there is an abysm between my will and the blank pages - both real and virtual.

But today is my beloved's birthday and I dared write a small poem. My first one in English. And here it goes:

The years may come and go, but you remain
Forever trussed in my heart, or shall I say
Imprinted in my retina, the brightest light
Embossed in my skin, so that I’m branded
And I forever will revolve around you, dear
Like the earth that brings us one more year
Pulled towards the sun like faithful lover
The same sun that lights your plentiful smile
And is surely to stop for quite a while
The day you’re gone.

Bad News

There are certain things better left unsaid.
Because those things cannot get you any real sympathy.
People could only pity you, when you actually need them to be in your shoes, to be in your head, to feel with your heart. And this is never actually possible.
Those things are un-sexy. They can only pull people away.
They won’t try to run. They won’t tell you that deep down in their souls they just don’t want to be a part of it, because no one wants to acknowledge the possibility of tragedy in their lives.
They want to forget you are one of them, and that whatever is happening to you, could be happening to them.

Why would you share it, if not even you want to be a part of it?
If it feels as if you have started living in a parallel universe; a surreal world where what you love most can be lost.

And that’s the reason I won’t write about it here.
I won’t make it any more tangible than it already is.
Nobody else needs to know what I don’t want to acknowledge myself.
For it is too sad. It is such a waste.
And yet, it is life.
It happens everyday.
It happens to a lot of us.
You just hope it is not you.

Things I have not written about

Coldplay’s amazing concert on the 28th of March.

My trip to beautiful Istanbul and Gui’s trip to LA.

Waking up at 06:30 in the morning for two weeks to take Carolina to school. (If there is hell and I end up there, they will have me waking up at 06:30 every day.)

Closing quarters in the company during the economic downturn.

Being down and disappointed and, then again, being self-motivated for no reason but the blue skies in Dubai.

..................

But I do have to come back to write about Coldplay. Anything that makes me feel 17 instead of 37 is worth writing about.