Happiness

Happiness.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this word. Happiness. What is it? What does it mean? Is it real?

Happiness.

Do people even search for happiness nowadays? Do they take it for granted? Or do they think it’s a myth and it’s not real?

When I was a kid I was probably the happiest person in my family. I was always smiling and playing and being me. I always loved everyone and I loved to be liked by everyone. I loved my dreams and was pretty happy about having dreams. I felt smart and friendly and… Well, happy!

Being a teen, I still feel happy. Not like the happiest person in my family. Not in the same way I was when I was a kid. But still happy. I screw up often; I get mad pretty often; I am often insensitive. I sometimes let myself down and other people too. But in the end of the day I think about everything in my life and I feel happy. I’m an optimistic person. I’m a dreamer.  And I believe this is the right way to think and to live.

 But not everyone thinks the way I do.

I’m thinking about a grown up person I know. A close person.

That person lives a sad life. Not because life itself is sad but because that person doesn’t seek for happiness. That person settles and doesn’t wander through the world (whether it is a physical world or a psychological one). That person has people who love her, but it seems she only thinks about how many people don’t love her. Instead of thinking how many friends she has, she thinks about how many she doesn’t have.

The glass is never half full to her! It’s always half empty.

And all of this goes back to the age subject. Grownups think they’re older than they actually are. Why is that? Why do you think that way? There’s so much life for everyone. One single day of life it’s an eternity; one single hour of life it’s a lifetime! Don’t settle for the end of your life. There’s always so much more! It’s never too late.

It’s never too late to live.

It’s never too late for happiness.

Happiness!

One can’t live without it. But not everyone knows how to live with it.

Let’s all learn to be happy and optimistic and friendly and a person with life. Let’s make everyone around us happy because that’s the best step there is towards happiness itself. Let’s compliment and help and be a friend to someone.

Let’s be to others what we want others to be with us!

And let’s wander throughout the world, please! Let’s live life to the fullest so we can be as happy as it’s humanely possible and let’s do it with a genuine smile on our faces!

Grownups: please, don’t give up on your lives because that makes the rest of us sad.

Teens: don’t lose hope and don’t forget what you were like a few years ago.

Kids: just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be fine.

And everyone: just go back to be the kid you once were and do it with a smile on your face.

I am happy for you.

Dreams

I was asked to write about a day in my life that I will never forget; and since yesterday was World’s Book’s Day, I’m going to tell you about the day I had my first book published.

It was a Sunday. In the morning I went to church because it was Palm Sunday. The book ceremony was going to be early in the afternoon and we still had to set the place up. It was in a modern market in the centre of the city and all of my friends and family were going to be there so I was pretty nervous about it.

I had thought a lot about what I was going to say but I still had no clue what was right to say.

So after a quick lunch we arrived to the market and started putting everything in the right place. My sister and her friends were going to do a ballet dance in the beginning so they were practicing in a corner. My choir was going to sing in the end so they were setting the keyboard and warming up. The rest of the people were arriving and all of them wanted to talk to me and congratulate me and ask me if I was nervous or not.

I obviously was.

The truth is that my book is a little bit shocking, specially knowing that a 15-year-old girl wrote it. And I sometimes thought that people wouldn’t like it and were going to start thinking bad things about me – I didn’t want that to happen.  Through the entire book editing process I told myself that that was a good book and nothing else mattered besides my dream coming true. But that day it was all too real. Everyone was going to read my book, my thoughts, my characters and my story. I was really scared.

Bur the time came and the ceremony started with the ballet, and then with the editor talking and with my guest talking about me and the book.

My turn to talk came and I hadn’t a single word ready to say.

But in the audience everyone was smiling proudly at me. I felt amazing. So I just spoke like I usually do. I was myself and I said everything I was scared to say and I tried to inspire everyone that was in that place to see MY masterpiece. MY work.

In the end, everyone clapped, questions were asked, answers were given, photos were taken and books were bought and signed. I sang with my choir to finish the ceremony and I couldn’t be happier.

The message I want to pass with this is that you can make your dreams come true. And even if others say that it’s stupid and ridiculous, you should fight for it. Don’t be scared to show what you can do because you can do it. Most people that judge you can’t do it as well as you can.

You’re bigger than humanity and your dreams are bigger than this world. They should be, at least. So do it. And don’t wait. I wrote a book at fifteen, because I didn’t know if I could wait. None of us do. Nobody knows what’s waiting for us so hold on to your dreams. They’re strong and so are you.

I trust you.

Words

«Is there enough time? Is there a right place? Is there a perfect moment to say what I’ve been wanting to say all along?»

Is that what he thinks?

The boy lives in a world made of silence. In a world where words don’t reach out to him. Does he even hear us? I don’t know. Does he want to hear us? Probably not. Does he hear himself thinking? Does he hear his own thoughts?

Does he even have any thoughts?

I’ve been struggling to understand people who don’t talk. Not people who don’t talk about their feelings or a particular matter, but people who don’t talk at all. How can they keep all the words to themselves? How can they not share it with the world?

And how does that feel like?

I try to read him through the look in his eyes but I hardly can. His look is so soft and calm; it almost seems like he actually lives in another world – a peaceful one, so different from ours. I try to read his smile but there’s hardly one. I always thought that the absence of a smile looked like sadness but he’s the proof that it doesn’t. He rarely smiles but he rarely seems sad. In fact, he often looks quite happy or satisfied.

So, my question is how? How can he do that? Or why? Why does he do it?

«Is there enough time?»

Is he thinking about time? Is he saving his time by not wasting any of it on words?

«Is there a right place?»

Does he think that our world is not the right place to waste such a precious thing as words?

«Is there a perfect moment to say what I’ve been wanting to say all along?»

This is a hard one. Is he waiting for the right moment? Does he have something in particular to say to someone in particular and doesn’t want to talk about anything else and with anyone else until he says that one thing to that one person? Is he saving his breath for something more important than daily life?

And isn’t this the wisest thing you’ve ever heard? Doesn’t it make a lot of sense?

It does for me.

The boy lives in a world made of silence. A world where that powerful and dangerous weapon we call words does not exist. And no one can be hurt with it. A world where words don’t reach out to him. He is bigger than that weapon and he is more powerful than it too. Does he even hear us? I don’t know. Does he want to hear us? Probably not. Does he hear himself thinking?

And what in the world is he thinking? What in the world are we all thinking when silence rounds us like dust in a desert? What do we think when all the words fail and breath is the only thing that doesn’t leave us? What are the thoughts that we don’t even let ourselves hear it?

Those are such pertinent questions and I would love to know the answers. Maybe the boy knows them. I’ll ask him someday.

I hear you.

Lost

I am starting this blog to talk to you about life. Not just my life and not just society’s life. But all the lives I have come to observe. I really like to observe.

It’s amazing how one single person carries an unique story. That one person that sat by your side at the subway today is living an incredible story that you have never heard about. And that boy that was playing guitar on the sidewalk has a short but brand new story that may end today or tomorrow or in a hundred years.

Everyone we see, everyone we talk to, everyone we ignore, everyone we pass by is a silent narrator and has a completely different point of view from ours.

So I often try to imagine what other people are living. That’s when I start to make new stories up. I write short stories and I try to guess which person is living that. Because someone must be.

I had a friend that wanted to write a book entitled “Tales of a Lost Person – All the Stories of Lost People”. I always thought that was a million-dollar idea. I loved it. Thinking about it, he was the best person to write that story. I still believe he will, one day. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know who the lost people were. So I tried to see it. I looked at people and tried to see if they were lost or not.

I haven’t reached to a conclusion about it yet, but I’m considering the theory that everyone is a little bit lost. Starting with teens, that one only needs to look into their eyes to see that they are lost. Listen to their voices and it’s obvious that they need to be found and find themselves. That’s the big goal for teenagers. Going on to adults. I think adults divide themselves in three categories: the completely lost ones, the found ones and the fake found ones. These last ones pretend to be found because that way they have something to live for and their lives were not wasted. I still haven’t quite figured adults out but I think their main problem is that they think their lives are already over. They think they’re older than they actually are. And they lost hope because of that. A person should always think that life does not end. Life is forever.

So this is basically what I want to discover. The point of life. Other people’s stories. The millions of lives that walk on the street every day.

This is what I want my legacy to be.

So this is what I’m going to write about.

From now on, I observe more than I did before. I am going to find you and I am going to try to tell your story. Because your story is as important as mine and as every famous people on Earth. Your story matters.

I see you.