Posted by Raul on November 23, 2009
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I love you and I want you are not the same, but both are like a savings account. It is so common to mix the meaning, we all do that. So many couples get together saying “I love you”, “I want to be with you”, “You make me feel happy”. So many couples distance from each other because things didn’t work out.
Here is what I think: Love is like a savings account, you have money there.
Every time you do something for your lover, a gesture, a sweet touch, giving a smile, deciding for what he/she prefer, dedicating time, etc, every time you put yourself “after” your loved one to his/her benefit is like if you deposit some money in that savings account. After many years that account keeps growing.
Every time you do something for yourself and not for your lover, “let’s do it my way”, forget the sweet touch, discharge your tensions on your loved one, etc, is like taking money from that savings account. After a short period of time there’ll be no money left.
The first “Every time you…” is I LOVE YOU, I want to make YOU happy and when I see YOU happy I’ll be happy. After several years there’ll be lots of love (money in that savings account) coming back to you.
The second “Every time you…” is I WANT YOU, you make ME happy. After a short period of time there’ll be no love (money in that savings account) coming back to you.
Now the problem is that many people confuse both I love and I want. They believe they are in love, when in reality they want. They get involved in a relationship because the other person makes THEM happy and not TO MAKE happy the other person.
Imagine what would happen if two people get into a relationship and both WANT instead of LOVE, soon there’ll be no money in that savings account, they both will be trying to get something from the other instead of giving, both expecting to receive from the other because the other makes THEM happy, so no one receive what they want. How common is that these days? Marriages that last three months! They definitely WANTED instead of LOVED.
Now if both LOVE and give, trying to make happy the other instead of themselves, getting their happiness when they see the other happy then they would be giving not expecting to receive so both receive more that they expected. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful relationship year after year?
Some people might ask: What if one LOVES and the other WANTS?
I believe it won’t work, but the one that WANTED would be mad and disappointed from the relationship for not getting what expected and would feel like love keeps hiding from him/her, while the one that LOVED would be sad but self assured that he/she tried his/her best.
Is it worth to LOVE instead of WANT?
I say YES! But everyone has to get their own answer for that. Some people would say “if that’s the case I prefer to WANT instead of LOVE so I don’t get hurt” but the thing is the relationships created in this case would be short lived and disappointing. I believe that would be a selfish type of person harvesting from what he/she seeds. Some others would say “I prefer to LOVE even if I could get hurt” and that is always a possibility but at least that person is playing his/her cards… a better human being in my opinion.
Some might say “But if I LOVE instead of WANT I might be abused” and yes that could happens but if they never take the risk they will never have the chance to find “true love”
Raul
Posted by Raul on November 20, 2009
I remember when I was twelve years old; it was a Sunday afternoon, I was watching TV in the living room while my parents where in the backyard chatting with my uncle who was visiting us.
On TV there was an old black and white boring movie and I was watching it just because I was bored too, seating on the couch, fighting not to fall asleep.
My uncle came into the house to use the bathroom and after that stopped for a couple of seconds and watched the movie with me, then said a joke related to the scene at that moment on TV. I can’t remember what the joke was, but I do remember laughing like crazy, then my uncle, without a word, left to the backyard where my parents were waiting to resume the chat.
It was a stupid joke I know, nothing to remember, but that simple situation, that short joke for just a couple of seconds changed my day. I wasn’t bored anymore.
When my son was born fourteen years later I remembered that moment with my uncle and took a decision, I would try hard to create jokes everyday for my son to make him laugh while he was growing, so he could remember many good times in his childhood.
One single stupid joke one single boring day saved my day and made a memory for a lifetime for me. So I tried to make stupid jokes everyday for my son to make him laugh, hoping with that to contribute to many good memories in his childhood.
Today he is twenty one. I don’t know if those years of burning my brain to create stupid jokes everyday had made a difference, but I do know that he is very good doing imitations of people and animals, he is very quick to throw a joke at any time, and he is always laughing. Maybe is a genetic thing, maybe he learned at school, who knows, what I know is that he seems to be a happy kid, we had a wonderful time together while he was growing, we did laugh so much everyday and still we do today.
With all this I’ve learned something in my life.
Sometimes just a word, a stupid joke, a simple touch, can make a difference to someone in life, like my uncle did in mine some thirty years ago, and with that, contributed to a better relationship between my son and me, and maybe a happier childhood for my son.
We can make a difference for others, all that it takes is to stop thinking about our problems for a couple of seconds and see how we can help the other person to lift his/her mood.
We will never know how important that could be in the other person’s life.
Raul
Posted by Raul on November 19, 2009
The short version:
I’m crazy!
The long version:
For some, still unknown reason, I was born very weak and spent the first seven years of my life mostly in bed, with an average of only three months on my feet, with high fever that led to seizures that looked very close to epilepsy and made me have hallucinations.
Series of ninety injections in three months (three times a day), repeated two or three times a year, kept me in an almost permanent state of being “high”
Because of this condition, I spent a good deal of time thinking and imagining things, based on my hallucinations and trying to figure out how it would be “out there” while laying in bed too weak to move.
By the age of five my father taught me how to read and write (in Spanish) so I could start going to school to first grade (there was no kindergarten at that time in that small town) and with it, the opportunity for me to write my thoughts and things from my imagination.
I remember lying in my bed trying to figure out how to create artificial gravity in space and coming to the conclusion of a giant rotating cylinder with everything inside attached to the inner walls, after my father explained me what centrifugal force was. But I didn’t know how to kick a ball with my feet!
When finally I got better (by the age of eight) and became able to go to school normally, and have the chance to participate, I found myself unable to do that, mostly because I couldn’t understand the behavior of other kids.
The solution to that problem became (or at least that’s what I thought) to start reading books about human behavior so to understand other kids and being able to act like them, to be part of them.
Wrong! The more I learned about human nature, the bigger the distance.
So the following seven years, and after trying more and more to be like other kids, finally when reaching my fifteenth birthday I decide that I was born to be “abnormal” and accepted that condition, hence Alien Ghost was born.
Then the reading of human psychology books became a joy instead of a task and the observations of people’s behavior turned into a hobby rather than a necessity to be able to participate.
So you see, Alien Ghost is mostly a reflection of my own personality and now, after many years on this planet, I’ve decided to start a blog as a way to put this thoughts and questions in writing for people to read.
So why Alien Ghost?
Alien is the reflection of feeling different, misadjusted, not being part of the group, the people around, the system. It is the one that doesn’t pertain even if is one of the same.
Ghost is the reflection of standing there but not being seen by others, being present but occult at plain view in the same room. It is the one that walks around without being perceived by others.
Alien Ghost is then the one that never felt part of the whole, the one that was always different and distant, the one that observes and analyses standing there but not being perceived by the rest, the others, the normal ones.
So a problem becomes a possibility, a difference becomes an advantage, the inability to participate turns into an opportunity to observe and analyze, and now the electronic age the communication channel to offer a lifetime of observations from a different angle and conclusions based on a different perception of the same common elements for everybody else.
Alien Ghost is a different, alternative vision, a different perspective of the same situations with a new perception.
And who knows, maybe I’ll find some people who share the same thoughts and we can become a “herd of abnormal ones” having fun looking at this world with different eyes.
Raul
Posted by Raul on November 18, 2009
Definitely computer technology is not my strongest point! It’s been several weeks of work just to get this blog up and running mostly because of the different aspects to deal with.
It is about finding the theme that applies better to what I want to show and the way I want to show it so it’ll reflect not only the content but also the “personality”
Also is about tinkering with little details like implementing a contact form for people to send me emails; I know it is just a pluggin that it is pretty much straight forward to install, but when you have no clue on what you are doing (like me) then a thousand mistakes can and will happen along the process, many times forcing you to delete everything and start all over again!
Then it is about implementing the different pages and their content, the kind and size of letter and the color you want to use, and every time something is changed, everything changes in the page and I can here myself saying “What?? How did that happened!?”
For many of you out there, especially young people, probably all of this stuff is really simple and straight forward, but for someone like me that got into a computer just a couple of years ago, and spent most of that time using the computer just to read emails and keep the family pictures, everything about starting a blog is new and sort of a giant task.
Talking about technology, I wrote all my notes, observations and short tales in Spanish from previous years in my computer so to keep them in a more manageable way and discarded the paper to save room; and to make sure everything was safe I made a copy in an external hard drive just in case, but some time ago my laptop crashed and required a change of hard drive, so all the writings there were lost.
No problem, I have a copy in that external hard drive!
After the laptop was repaired and running again I went to plug the external hard drive to copy all the writings back to my laptop and guess what, it didn’t turn on!
I tried the external hard drive in my son’s computer and nope, nothing happened… the external hard drive is crashed too!
So more than twenty years of writings; about 20 Gigabytes of words were lost in time and space!
I was depressed for about a week!
Well…I guess it can be taken as a motivation to learn this computer technology a little more…and have 10 external hard drives just in case!
Anyway, since the tinkering with the blog is mostly done, the time has come to start pouring some content so I hope you’ll enjoy what I’ll be posting the next couple of days.
Raul
Posted by Raul on November 17, 2009
Grab my jacket. It’s cold outside. Check the keys in my pocket, the cell phone and wallet and go out of the house. Morning walk; not something I do often, but today I have to get out! I have to leave this empty place!
Still some more minutes for the sun to rise above the horizon and give its shining light that’ll make difficult to see without getting blinded. Still some more minutes of morning light without the sun, so the mist and cold air can be taken as a feeling, as it is within me.
The streets are full with cars going in every direction, people walking in a hurry with their minds somewhere else.
How long it’s been? How many years? How many attempts to find the right one? How many encounters and short friendships that end up in diluted communication that finally die to never again hear from each other? I take a deep breath of this refreshing cold air.
Winter is approaching and soon snow will be here. My heart is cold! I can feel my tired body walking with no destination in mind. By moments I feel I could cry. Where are you? Why it’s so difficult to find someone, just one! So many people around, I’m walking among them, yet I’m walking alone! I look at their faces, strangers.
Cold air around my head is getting me a frozen face, I can’t smile anymore! A cup of coffee somewhere? Alone? How about a nice chat? Who will seat in front of me so we can see each other’s eyes and smile, and talk and feel warmth inside? I could cry right now!
Change direction, take an empty street, I want to be alone. I am alone! I want to have the freedom of letting some tears go out without other people looking at me. It’s difficult to breath, my chest and throat are tight, I can’t swallow without pain. I try to breath to relax but can’t. I reduce the pace of my walking to a stop, concentrate in breathing, look around, no one…I cry! My legs are weak, my body trembles, look down, look up, breath deep, close my eyes, relax. I start walking again. I head for home.
Home? It’ll be home if you were there; a place to go back everyday to find your smile, your arms, your company. This is not home, this is just my place; a big box where I can keep my stuff.
Where are you? Will I meet you someday? Will be you in the next encounter? Is there someone out there for me? Will I be alone forever? I’ll keep looking, what else can I do?
