I talked the other day with an old friend. We talked on messenger because he didn’t find the time to see each other in the real world. His job assignments become too time consuming and his schedule quite hectic. I know how it is. Been there, done that, had to manage my own company for 10 years… But he wasn’t like this before. When I used to have too many tasks and a rather hectic schedule he enjoyed quite a bohemian period. Time took a turn and now the situation is somehow reversed. But I remember with a lot of deep joy those times, 4-5 years ago when we spent nights and weeks on a rather hippie timeline.
During that period he had a lot of talking. About our goal in this life, about astrology and about healthy food. I must admit that I owe him some of my current passions like astrology, or some of my health habits like raw food and the road I’m walking right now was first pointed during those times. But now things have changed for him and he started to feel a little embarrassed with what I write on this blog. To make a long story short, he thinks I’m cheating. In his own words: “I’m posing as a fake saint”.
I thought a lot in the last few days about that. I really did. Also, during the last few days I had some turmoil into my personal life. I won’t go into details but there is a wind of change in some other areas of my life. Something must be destroyed to let other stuff growing. Don’t know what exactly started to go down and when it will completely disappear, but I know for sure it’s happening right now. Things have come to a point when friends are asking me: why don’t you apply what you write on your blog in your life too? And I thought about that question also…
People think that if I try to help other people I must feel like some kind of saint. Or at least to pretend I am. That my position is the position of a guru. If I give advice I must have some diploma on personal development and give strict and exact pieces of advices for any possible situation. Guess what: I’m not a saint. Not even a fake one. I’m just a person. And I’m sharing what I’ve learned through direct experience.
Writing about personal development doesn’t mean I graduated Oxford and now I know everything about it. Because no one can know everything about personal development. This is why it’s called “personal” in the first place: it’s different for each person. I don’t know everything about anything. In fact, I don’t know a lot of stuff. I only know that I decided to go on some path and then I adjust course along the way. That’s all I’m doing. Oh, and in between I find the time to share something about my journey. Maybe other people will find it useful.
The main problem in our discussion was about blogs being “shallow”. You can’t really broadcast serious messages through blogging. This is an American invention and it must be evil, right? Blogs are so limited compared to serious astrological writings or even with some other obscure writings only known by a limited number of “initiates”… You know, copied on xerox machines and passed from hand to hand under the table type… My blog is not a message, it’s just a medium. It’s the way I’m expressing my experiences and it’s my personal choice. I’m not going to change it just because an old friend with whom I had a lot in common several years ago consider it now shallow. And I won’t blame him for that either: we’re all free to think and do whatever we want to.
I write with a lot of positive touch on this blog, so some people might think that everything in my life is like that: pinky and clear. It’s not. I have problems like every other human being and I have better times and worse times. Some days are better than others, some don’t. Some days I find understanding and smiles around me, sometimes I find grumpiness and desire to revenge. Sometimes I receive gifts, sometimes I receive aggression and lack of understanding. But I’m always there, trying to learn. Sometimes I’m pushed over my limits and then I react, I defend myself. And the most difficult times are those when I have to defend against my closest ones.
But I’m there even if I defend myself. I’m not running from any of my problems and I’m trying to solve them somehow. Am I succeeding all the time? Hell, no! Am I succeeding a lot of time? I wish I did. Am I succeeding some times? Yes. Sometimes I work it out and then I’m happy for it. It might happen that I journal about that experience and a few days after even write a blog post about it. But that doesn’t mean the next day I won’t face another problem, another thing that I have to take care in my life and fail. Temporary fail, to be a little more precise. Because there is no failure, there is just learning.
Each painful experience makes me stronger if I face it directly. Even if it sounds like I’m loosing something during that experience, if faced honestly and with all my power, it will turned out that my loss was insignificant. Maybe it wasn’t a loss at all, just an illusion, or maybe it was just something that had to go anyway. But the main course is now reinforced and the road ahead much clear.
I rather monitor everything in my life, good or bad, and try to learn out of it, than to pretend I know everything. But I will stay there for what I believe in and do what I chose to do. I won’t gossip from aside, without taking action and put labels on each and every action of other people, just to give my self a little bit of comfort. I won’t conceptualize about “the mind”, “the attention”, ‘the others” without experiencing them. I stay there and train my focus, interact with others and observe my mind. But in action, not just in my thoughts.
Nothing happens without action. I actually feel dumb for writing something that obvious. Yet so difficult to understand.
Hi Dragos,
this encounter with your friend is an excellent example of how we react – we judge, give value to whatever comes to us according to our condition, physical and mental alike. Sharing is probably one of the most wonderful things in the world. The interpretation contains emotions and these can be whimsical. Unless we are genuinely focused on the message, we are bound to miss it. Words seem to have lost their strength/real meaning and our reactions have become more of a social code. The choice of what to share depends on who the potential receiver is.
P.S. Longtime friendship should,in my opinion , help us avoid misunderstanding.
Hello. And Bye. 🙂
Hey Bogdan,
Thanks for your kind thoughts 🙂
Hey Dragos,
It’s good you took it off your chest – but, as you say, it is not about you, it’s all about your friend (or the world). The thing that you are sharing your deepest thoughts, that you share your mistakes and learnings from your life it is not just great, but very courageous. I wish you strength and good luck in the challenges ahead of you!
No, man, no fake it, or you won’t get it 🙂 !
It’s ok to fake it untill you get it! My wife thinks so 😉
That is so true. I mean that moment about real friendship…
It’s a bit risky to have such a blog. And that’s just because people will start judging you. And they will believe you think of yourself as some kind of guru. It’s not like having a blog about technology or cooking or whatever. It’s about telling people how to look at their lives. And that can piss many off. Maybe this will be yet another moment where you see which are the true friends.
Regarding blogs in general, your friend is making a confusion. The blog is the *medium*. The medium is not deep or shallow. The message is deep or shallow. True, most blogs out there are not worth anything, but that doesn’t mean blogs by default are flawed.