THE MOVIES and THE ARTISTS: NOSTALGIA OF PAST FUTURE LIVES

"The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night 1888" by Vincent Van Gogh.

I always found this painting to be a perfect illustration of my idea of the Nostalgia of Past Future Lives. 

I have always thought that being a painter, a writer, an actor, a director, a sculptor, an artist, generally speaking, gives you the freedom of living, imagining, portraying so many lives, so many characters and an infinite palette of feelings and emotions. 

Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (Nostalgia) is also a masterpiece, showing the sad and tragic end of the artist, doomed to be consumed by his own obsessions.

The thin line between fiction and reality, between the reality enriched with the artistic emotion and the unseen world of the painter's brush or actor's gesture, demoted to indifference and lack of understanding, diminished so cruel by the reality of the static world, of the ordinary of life, that thin line trying to part two worlds, visible and invisible...

Let the poetry of the artistic expression vibrate in your mind, see the story as it unfolds before your eyes. 

And now see this picture in the greater picture of life and art. What would his life have been if he had only given up his exhausting search for answers? 

You can feel him going through his past lives, real and imaginary, you can feel him denying his possibility to find peace and beginning to embrace the fatality of the unavoidable end. 

Both the painting and the movie photograph recount stories born out of fictions of the artistic mind in which you most probably - and hopefully- will not find yourself into, taking into account the supreme challenge that both artists - Vincent Van Gogh and the Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov - the character of Nostalghia - who was traveling to Italy to research the life of 18th-century Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky, who lived there and committed suicide after his return to Russia - failed to overcome: the challenge of living. 

Beauty, eternal youth, adventure, forbidden liaisons, splendor, glory, fame..."Dorian Gray"

Keeping the balance between the dangerous world of arts, creation, transformation, duality, notoriety, and hunger for more and the normal and safe world of the reality of everyday life, family, modesty, and equilibrium is a challenge that can be won: Van Helsing and at the same time Hugh Jackman.

Choose nostalgia of your past future lives, choose to travel between real and unreal, choose to live adventurous and different every day, choose to impersonate or create various characters, if you feel like, if you earn to do it, yet, don't forget who you are and whom you love!

Don't forget to come back between us, mortals, and don't forget to enjoy the simplicity and beauty of life and people!

Don't forget to always remember your way back...

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

THE ROAD: THE INITIATION JOURNEY

There are moments in life when you feel that the ROAD attracts you, you feel somehow that it talks to you, it calls you. 

THE ROAD, that road who has been waiting for you for a long time, as you well know it, that road which you can hear whispering to you: '' I'm here, I am patient, you will arrive to me, sooner or later '', that specific road you can see flashes of, from time to time.

When you dream, you are free, you are unencumbered. 

Your imagination grants you this freedom, and that is the actual moment when the JOURNEY begins:

It will come a day when the perspective of your life well will change.

The day will come when your thirst for knowledge, for understanding, for freeing and fulfilling yourself will be strong enough for defeating the fear of the unknown, the fear of danger, the fear of not being powerful enough and astute enough in order to face all the challenges you will meet on the road, to face and overcome all the obstacles. 

The ROAD is a mystery, the road is hermetic for the uninitiated: 

This is exactly the reason for which you will never find out if you would have succeeded or not, as you cannot understand the ROAD before stepping on it. 

This is the true purpose of the INITIATION JOURNEY: to live your PERSONAL LEGEND, to turn yourself from the uninitiated into the initiated.  

You have no guarantee that you will succeed. 

You have no guarantee even that this is your true road.  

You have no guarantee that walking on your road you will not lose your way, that you will not be deceived or mislead from the right path and from the destination that destiny has chosen for you and that at the same time you have chosen.

You have no guarantee that your true path will not be lost forever in the labyrinth of the roads of the world.

If you don't take the first step though, you will never find out what could have happened if you had begun your initiation journey. 

You will have in front of you both before choosing to begin your journey and during the journey the possibility of choice:

YOUR CHOICES WILL BE THE ONES THAT WILL DEFINE YOU!

During your journey you will make mistakes, you will suffer, you will lose things that you are so attached to, in the present, you will be engaged in confrontations, confrontations for which you cannot be prepared enough, as you cannot know yet what, when and how will happen.

The INITIATION JOURNEY of every one of us is different from each other's. 

Your unwavering faith, the help that the Divinity grants you before you even ask for it, in His endless Generosity, Wisdom and Love, your faith and your love will be the water which will soothe your thirst, pain and dispair, your faith and your love will be the fire which will warm and protect you in the moments of loneliness and fear, your faith and your love will be your strongest weapons.

You will learn that you are much stronger than you believe, you will learn that the time to do what you are meant to do, the time to be what you always wanted to be, that time is right now!

Now is the time to begin THE JOURNEY and THE ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFE!

No one will be able to explain to you what you must do and how you can succeed before you have already taken the decision for yourself.

At the end of your journey, you will discover your PERSONAL LEGEND: " When you're on a journey to fulfill your Personal Legend, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it" - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

I cannot tell you, no one can tell you what the extraordinary transformations you will go through will be like, how much you will evolve, but the result will be in such manner that your former self will remain a distant memory, a memory you will be able to look at with clemency, tolerance and a slight nostalgic smile. All these things will happen. 

You will then understand that: " At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie" - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

APPRECIATE & BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE

What is your first thought when you get up in the morning?

Do you feel good about yourself?

Are you happy with your life? With your current situation?

Do you have random thoughts?

What do you think about?
Do you think about yesterday's events & people? Do you think about what actions you need to take today? Do you turn the TV on and watch the news? Do you drink your coffee or tea and just plan your day?

What about later on, during the day? Do you think about what you don't have & you wish you had?

What are your thoughts at night? How do you mentally end your day, before going to sleep?

Do you think about the past? Or the future?

Are your thoughts bright or dark?

Take a minute right now and reflect upon these questions:


DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE?

DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE, ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU?

HOW OFTEN?

ALL THESE THOUGHTS, ARE THEY THOUGHTS OF APPRECIATION?

DO YOU EVER TAKE THE TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR THE THINGS YOU ALREADY HAVE?

DO YOU EVER TAKE THE TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR GRATITUDE TO THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE & WHO LOVE YOU?

Be honest about your own answers.

Depending on your answers, try & see how it impacts your life, your state of well-being, of happiness, of fulfillment.

You may never know what tomorrow brings. We all hope for the better, of course.

You may be too focused on what you want, or worse, on what you don't want, and ignore what you have and the people you love.

Be here & now,

Be grateful for being alive. Be grateful for this day. For this very moment.

Enjoy every benefit of your present life.

Appreciate what you have. Appreciate the people you love. Share your appreciation.

Say to your loved ones how lucky & fortunate you are to have them in your life. Kiss them. Hug them. Caress them. Smile & be thankful.

Don't hold back your affection. Show it!

Start your day by taking inventory of the things you are grateful for!

It is sufficient for an efficient start, to identify at least one thing or person you are grateful for.

It may be surprisingly difficult at first, being accustomed to take everything for granted.

As you continue this exercise, though, the second, the third morning, you will be overwhelmed as to discover there are so many reasons for appreciation, that will put you in a state of well - being.

As you go through the day and you get angry or upset about so many reasons, try to remember the thing/person you are grateful for, and you'll feel better.

At night review your list, and go to sleep with a smile on your face.

You will find this amazing feeling of appreciation, of gratitude, of thankfulness, that will change your life.

This feeling will attract to it, as a magnet things, persons, events, contexts, that will boost it, and from this state of well-being, you will attract the whole list of things you have ever desired, because feeling good is the key to happiness & happiness is the key to everything you have ever wished to accomplish!

Let appreciation be your guide:)

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I (TRY TO ) MANAGE MYSELF AS MY WORD

There are so many domains in your life you want to improve.
Among them, I suppose I could find the following: Health, Financial Security, Leisure Time - Travel & Fun, Time for your Passions, Time for your Family, Love, Peace of Mind, Personal Fulfillment...

So, from time to time, you allow yourself to breathe &  take a break from all this crazy to-do list of your daily chores, and you think for a few minutes about WHAT & HOW YOUR LIFE YOU WOULD LOVE TO LOOK LIKE.

Then, what do you do?
You go back to your daily chores and then take after some time a few minutes to realize that your life doesn't look at all as you have imagined it.

And so on...

Ok...Let's try it again!

Take a deep breath, and write down a TO BE LIST!

Write down on this list the domains of interest in your life, write it down, how you would like every one of them  be.

The first item should be WHAT YOUR (MAJOR) PURPOSE IN LIFE IS.

It doesn't matter how silly you make think it sounds, or how unreasonable, it doesn't matter if you know how you are going to achieve it or not, it is of little importance if your purpose is to change the world for the better, to become the best in your chosen profession, or to help as many people as you can, or simply to have a perfect garden of roses.

Let yourself free to choose WHAT YOUR REALLY WANT!

The next items should be picked from your everyday life, such as:

I want to be healthy, or fit, or I want to lose weight, or... you know it.

Next: I want to pay more attention to some matters... you name it...

Complete your list.

Try to be as specific as you can about it.

Only after you have completed your list, write down, in huge letters, on the back of your list:


I MANAGE MYSELF AS MY WORD!

Promise yourself that you will take a step every single day, no exception, towards attaining the intended status you wrote down in every field, and write down that phrase next to the respective domain:

For example:

I want to be fit in the next 2 years and lose 10 kilos - I promise myself to work out 1 minute every day.

" Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others" - H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I would add something to the phrase above:

SO THAT YOU HAVE LITTLE TIME TO CRITICIZE YOURSELF, INSTEAD OF UNDERSTANDING & ENCOURAGING YOURSELF!

You will be TEMPTED TO BREAK YOUR OWN PROMISE.

This sentence will be the guarantee that you won't break it:


I MANAGE MYSELF AS MY WORD!

This means I never break my promises,  THAT'S WHO I AM!

It means I respect & follow the choices I made, the decisions I took.

It means every time I surprise myself being on the point of giving up & breaking my own promise, conceived by me, sworn by myself to myself, all I have to do is say these words:

I MANAGE MYSELF AS MY WORD!

AND THAT'S WHO I AM!

TRY IT!

YOU WILL DISCOVER THAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF AMAZING THINGS!

THE RESULTS WILL BE EXCEPTIONAL!

All you have to do is persevere.

Every day.

No exception.

Good luck!

Photo by Ugo Mendes Donelli on Unsplash