What makes our life meaningful and worth living? Serving others – remember to CARPE DIEM, la vie et le temps sont courts – Life and Time are short, and to fully Live in the present, with friends whom you can spend time and laugh with!
There are many songs that celebrate Friendships: Lean on me, I’ll be there for you, You’ve got a friend in me, That’s what Friends are for and the list goes on….
I just had a dream of a milk and newspaper delivery boy who told me “Le temps passe très vite, il faut aider les personnes” – Time flies, and we need to help people, telling me that after the daily distribution of milk and newspaper – the perfect combination of a perfect morning daily routine before work kicks off – he was going to the hospital to look after his friend. Very remarkable, and the dream touched my heart.
Because I am becoming each day more Asian – going towards the East of the globe, I am appreciating the daily rice given or prepared – rooted in Italy, the daily intake was pasta and lots of spaghetti for me! – I am starting to believe, by observing, interacting and naturally engaging with Asian cultural mix (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, India, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion Island) that Rice is the best “plat de resistance” – rich food that puts your stomach at peace and makes you go through the day, without feeling cramps of hunger. It is a strong and heavy meal, but which puts the foundation for a stable and firm food relationship.
And also because I am working in the development- humanitarian community and I am becoming more humble and “relatively” calm every day – still questioning and critically thinking and debating about what can be solved and improving methodologies to do so…. – I think that this food relationship can be also translated into friendships and love relationships. Friendships and True Firm Love are pure forms of endurance, patience and the “never give-up attitude” that is needed to go strong and firm in life, with ideas clear in our heads and our directions well-taken and well-carried out through the end.
Colleagues tell me that Development and Progress of communities and populations in the developing world is an historic processus, it is small or relatively big steps of advancement every day, maybe imperceptible, but they are there. Every day. Constantly. Shy, but firm. And we need to be able to see them. And appreciate every single drop of progress. The small things count, wise men say. And the Courage to see, to highlight, to explain and to cheer for the small improvement are the elements that give us the Hope to keep on living, every day. To see how the movie continues, and what comes next, I like to think of that.
I ‘d like to quote Thich Nhat Hanh, a very wise Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Peace activist, founder of the Plum Village Tradition, who said that
“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Here and Now, Feeling the Beauty of the moments and appreciating what we are going through in Life. Better if accompanied by daily rice who can help us build a resilience and firm heart, ide est Friends, with whom we can share laughter and cries, who can listen to us during whirwind of ocean waves and dancing emotions.
A firm heart is when you have your daily intake rice, id est, the trust that your close and distant friends are always with you and in your thoughts
I invite you to visit the Plum Village website, which is also new to me, where you can see that it has many mindfullness teachings, trainings, retreats, practices and books we can tap into, as ideas to lead more mindful lives, id est, living and enjoying every step of our life historical process on this planet Gaia.
Ciao!