The unbeatable lightness of being

I have long wanted to borrow the famous title of this blog. But the circumstance that best describes that "being of lightness" has not come to light, as I would have wanted to. Over the last couple of days, I was thrown in a state of constant time change - from the past to the present and back to the past. Some past brings the jewel of that time and others the debris to be thrown away in the dustbin of history.

Having succeeded to depart once and for all from insignificance of past times - where I thought I made serious contribution to changing the order of things in a little part of the universe, I was summoned to face the challenges of the present. In less poetic language, the ordeal of buying and selling properties became the agenda of the day. First, was completion of the final purchase of a dream seaside flat in Cape Verde, which took hours in the bank. The financial scene has been hazardous for the weak-hearted because the stock market simply skidded down due to the plunging economy of Greece. And the Euro currency wavered. This was bad news, really!

After having succeeded to do away with a sizable life saving to own a dream property in the Atlantic, came the next challenge - that of selling two properties, both of which required a considerable amount of work to empty and renovate. May is a perfect season to sell properties in Sweden, when the trees have young leaves and spring flowers are at their brightest.

In the midst of solving such trivialities of common living came questions that relate to people in the nearest scope of the family. Few days ago, my grandson was christened on a bright beautiful spring day. A wonderful ceremony that radiated with so much love and affection. Matters of family and heart are always overwhelming. But there is always an opposite to happy moments when the heart feels once again some sorrow for those no longer around to share such happy moments.

Three years ago, specifically on the 8th of May I got an early message that my only brother died. I could not attend to his last rites and I am indebted to Satur, my first husband who was there to represent us during this difficult hour. My brother has five daughters, but unfortunately they were not around when he needed them most. This wound in my heart has not healed, because I cannot conceive in all rational thinking how children - daughters especially could be unfeeling towards a parent in his last hours of life.

A week later, my husband of 25 years died after a lingering cancer illness. This was a deeper stab in my heart and I didn't for once think that I would get through living. I saw my world collapsing with tons of debris over me. It felt okay then to let go as I have already lived a substantially good life. But somehow, I survived all the pains of losing and allowed myself a chance to pick up pieces, glue them as best I could and look at the world with a bit of lightness and optimism. And because I opened my heart to the sky, I felt the glow of sunshine enter my life and the shadows of the past slowly disappeared.

When I come closer to the 8th and 16th of May, I no longer feel the bitterness of losing, of knowing that I lost someone I loved dearly. In a span of three years a new life grew from within, just like the spring flowers edging out of the dead leaves of winter. Life is always there especially when we open up to welcome its renewal, season after season. And love never dies.#

The distance between the past and the present

I was in a time machine during the last many days, suddenly thrown back to the late 70s in particular. The dark days of martial law in the Philippines and how by some unexplainable circumstance I found myself assuming a very challenging but dangerous work as foreign correspondent for the Hongkong-based news weekly magazine Far Eastern Economic Review or FEER, a highly respected regional publication with unquestionable credibility in the media world.

Before being thrown into a new arena of struggle, I was dreaming of a foreign posting as foreign trade specialist in the Dept. of Trade, a position I fought hard and won hard via the usual examinations. But then, there was a hurdle to pass and it was getting the approval of the National Intelligence Authority or NISA, a powerful body with all the arsenal of Russia's KGB. As I have been a rebel student leader and therefore a "possible" subversive, that NISA blessing never came. On the other hand, I found myself in jail shortly after martial law was imposed. I didn't stay that long as a political detainee, but all those responsible for arresting me met horrible deaths within a period of a year.

Being a journalist during the long period of Marcos authoritarian rule was not just challenging and risky. There was a strong sense of purpose in digging for the truth, especially the abuses of the military in the countryside that were safely kept in convents and churches. Media gave much to the world without the sophistication of later day technologies such as the Google and other search engines that make life comfortable without leaving one's abode.

That the world was informed of the happenings in most parts of the world, and that many governments were dysfunctional and oppressive to its own, were tasks tackled with great dedication by people of the press.

What threw me back to this period were all the materials that came out of my storage rooms as I struggled to separate the meaningful from the meaningless collection of documents and personal mementos of the past. The separation process had been slow and tortuous because I could not find the measure of the past from the present. All of a sudden, the past became the present.

It is a philosophical question to ask if there is a distance between the past and the present and whether the past has its own force to return to the present and by what circumstance is totally unexpected.#

After winter... a new life

How many winters come to our lives, winters of varying strength that submerge our being into depths of unknown darkness and uncertainties. It is a beautiful season that sparkles with purity and brings about a feeling of struggle for rebirth, if only the will to overcome survives the test of endurance. But life has other winters that often try our utmost determination to dominate and win.

Life in the northern borders of Europe is governed by four seasons that epitomise the cycle of birth and death. After having survived a hard winter and the worst depression that comes with being trapped within oneself and one's own domain, there is that unmistakable feeling of dying and letting go life itself. What comes to each one is a re-examination of things done, an honest accounting of life made for a period of one year. Has it been fulfilling? What was it that was missed along the way in the madness of daily trivialities? Some things that had not been placed higher the order of priorities?

It has never occurred to me to re-examine how life has come and passed over a year. It was crowded with the usual tasks of a working life, of small family gatherings and celebrations which always bring the best in human emotions - that emotion of joy that there is no loneliness when one belongs to a family and a circle of good friends. Human interactions that come during these numerous occasions are always happy and re-assuring that in a world full of unpredictable events and unwanted catastrophes, one has the embrace of loved ones who share moments of joy and despair.

Not too long ago, I found myself in the deepest pit of despair after the loss of two loved ones. It is one thing to lose someone you love by mutual consent but another thing to lose against one's will. There is no way to fight against the designs of death whose arrival is never announced. Physical death is harder than the hardest winter because there is no hope that spring will bring back life that has left one's physical being. Such winters in life are much harder to bear.

I count the last fifteen months of the past year and early this year as the most dramatic in terms of whirlwind changes that catapulted me into life-changing decisions on how the next coming years and seasons are going to look like for me and the person I hope to be around in my life. After the loss and despair in the past, spring like the numerous small lilies sprouting under the debris of dead leaves has arrived. A heart deeply torn is mending slowly and the feeling is wonderful.

But there is plenty of re-ordering that has to be done. Over the years, my old home has been the sanctuary of everything that belonged to the family. I mean everything that came though various occasions of celebration that were safely tucked in places. They are distilled mementos of childhood and adulthood, of places visited, of people met along the way, of letters and photo albums to freeze moments of joy, books collected through time and the various roads taken that became faithful company when loneliness came at times and the mind hungered for challenge. It is not easy to part with things one has kept for such a long time.

It has been with such heavy heart deciding to let go so many wonderful mementos of the past. However, like the spring flowers struggling for life out of the debris of dead leaves, I must let go if spring has to come. There is mixed emotions of loss and anticipation, loss of things that were part of a great journey and anticipation that spring will arrive in a cleaner and fresher garden of life. For life to be born death must first take place. It is the cycle of life and we ride on with the that unbreakable will to dominate.#

Surviving stress

Stress is a huge psycho-social problem for many people living in developed countries like Sweden. The more I grapple with the particularities of the word in practical terms, the more I feel the weight of the word in actual life.

I didn't know the meaning of stress when I was living in the Philippines but when I look back at the life and death instances I have been in, stress as I understand now was a "walk in the park" in those days.

How do I deal with the periodic presence of stress that comes like an uninvited dinner guest? In my present workplace, I find it unavoidable to ignore stress - mostly physical stress owed to dealing with people who are sick and dying. Imagine how infectious the feeling is to be with old, sick, helpless and lonely people where no amount of music and cheering up can activate the heart; where the physical being has already given up on life and the only thing that remains is the hope of a final freedom from all pain and sufferings. This picture seen daily is excruciatingly stressful.

I go home at the end of the day feeling worn-out, my life exiting out of my body in a strange metamorphosis that is shapeless like a running river. I come home seeking a re-birth of my soul gone old and weary. How do I go through a transformation - like leaving dead skin by the doorstep and obtaining a fresh one in matters of minutes?

I find that the most effective antidote to stress is not any form of energy tablet or drink. It is something as abstract as love and affection, a sense of satisfaction that a good job was done, and most importantly that the people close to one's heart are happy in their own ways.

I came to an article today on how human touch works miracles against stress and against all forms of oppression one meets especially in the workplace. When I come home, I want to be showered with affection - to be caressed from head to foot, to feel the other person's warmth and longing. And then, that feeling of tiredness, of stress simply vanishes. Many go for luxury massage and spa treatment to get rid of that edgy, aging feeling. But, the simplest cure comes from the person who cares about you. Imagine how much it means even just to hold hands while you watch a not-so-sexy movie?

No, this is not being corny. In an egalitarian society like Sweden, the biggest social problem is loneliness. Too many people are living alone. There is no medicine for loneliness other than the company of another human being. Like the title of a recent French movie I saw, "Tillsammans är vi mindre ensam" ("Together, we are less alone."#

The other side of loving

The heart is the life-sustaining organ of the body and its most important function goes beyond its physiological reason for its being. It is the major locomotive that controls and regulates all forms of human emotions, of which love is the most powerful and all-encompassing. Without the heart one becomes heartless, take away love and the heart dies.

The topic of love is timeless. It is the Muse of all Muses. Everything in the world that is beautiful and worth living for is owed to the existence of love that lives in the heart. There is a symbiotic relationship between the heart and love and the delicate connection is held by a constant continuity called loving.

Loving is a precarious but exciting state of the heart. It is expressed in many hundred small things and deeds, some knowingly and others innocently. Some forms of loving are more desired than others depending upon the expectations placed on the emotion itself. Is it an absolute commitment fulfilled by acts of devotion and loyalty. Where is the limit? Who sets the limit of one's expectation. Is the limit mutually acceptable or does each one in the party of two have individual limits for manifesting acts of loving. Can one accept that one's limit is beyond the reach of the other person so that some measure of adjustment is needed.

The need to adjust limits and expectations often create disturbance in the state of loving. This is the other side of loving, the small challenges to face now and then when love slips into a state of sluggish comfort; when one forgets that love in all its whims and caprices is constantly seeking a confirmation of its presence. If one forgets a kiss before departing for work and at homecomings, it disrupts the harmony of loving and poses a question - silly as it seems, "Does he/she still loves me?" And if there is no reciprocal hugging at the end of the day, it feels like one came to a wrong home.

The home is indeed where the heart is - a common but still valuable cliche in love and in loving. It warms up the heart when one says to the other "You are my home, you have my heart and all the love it can muster". Hearing something like this erases instantly the battles one fights outside, the disappointments in the workplace, the grievances over perceived injustices and the nagging discontent over certain failures in the management of the planet Earth.

When the other person asks in a perplexed tone: "Why do we have to quarrel when there is so much love between us?" To this I answer with the certainty of knowing that spring comes after winter - no matter how long the snow and ice suppress the lilies from bursting out of the hard-frozen ground: "Because it is all part of loving".
(The picture is a painting of Gustav Klint's famous original "The Kiss".)

A different kind of poverty

In the Swedish Svenska Dagbladet today was an opinion column entitled "Swedish poverty has many faces" by Göran Skytte, which jolted my memory back to one of my graduate courses at the Stockholm University. We were then discussing the Swedish welfare state and what it has achieved over a 100- year period since it became the pillar of the social system. It was going to erase poverty and close the gap between the very rich and the very poor through an egalitarian system of wealth distribution.

This is through taxation in proportion to one's earning. The higher the wages and corporate profits, the more one pays to the tax authority. Welfarism consists of a social security system where the individual is state-protected from "cradle to coffin". It was going to erase poverty, including the word poverty from the Swedish dictionary of welfare state. This dream state was designed for a population then of around five million natural-born Swedes. It was not a huge unwieldy number of people to support with state generosity.

Today, the population make-up of Sweden has dramatically changed after the influx of refugee and asylum-seekers from Africa, the Middle East and the Balkan countries. Sweden opened its doors to people fleeing from war and accommodated as many it could take. The welfare state became over-burdened with social issues of integration, unemployment, religious fanaticism and a deteriorating economic situation for a majority of people living on the fringes of society.

This is what the social cancer the Swedish politicians call utanförskap or outsiders. They are mostly wards of the social system because they are economically poor. Despite the unemployment benefits, child subsidy, housing subsidy and other forms of state interventions - this new population group in Sweden are users rather than contributors in the welfare state system that is based on taxes. To be economically poor in a well-functioning welfare state is not the same poverty in comparison with those living in other parts of the world where one gets nothing from the state.

But the other kind of poverty we have ignored is the poverty of the soul, the spiritual bareness of the human self that is not easily discerned from outside. The material world has overwhelmed us with the tangible proof of success and prosperity that we are actually drowning from the weight of these things. When Mother Theresa took her Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she was alleged to have said: " This is a poor country". Wealth cannot be measured in the number of cars, big houses, luxury boats and material acquisitions. If one cannot spend a moment in prayer at the end of the day and if there is no soul that inhabits the physical self then we are indeed extremely poor. #

The other sisters in chains

Today more than any other time of the year, the world looks at the situation of women in certain cultures and countries. If half the women population has improved its position in society with the help of national legislations that recognise equality between men and women, the other half remains chained to medieval traditions where women existence is not even recognised.

What reminders have come out of the newspapers today? One is a collective call signed by well-known Swedish personalities urging the European Union to legislate harsher punishment committed against women in war-torn areas, such as sexual exploitation by peace-keeping soldiers in places like Bosnia, and the sexual violence committed by soldiers and militiamen against the women folk in places like Rwanda. It is now well-known that rape has become an instrument of torture in war zones. To stop sexual abuses of women in countries at war means that war itself has to be stopped. That in itself is a major agenda.

Putting aside the situation of women in war areas in Africa and the Middle East where sexual violence is a daily routine and focusing on women condition in peaceful modern societies, many women are victims of domestic violence - that is to say, violence in the hands of their nearest kin. The statistics on domestic violence is not going down. On the contrary, it has been steadily rising along with other social ailments related to unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse and the transplanting of medieval social and religious practices in European soil, where women are literally still in chains. How else would one describe a mask that shows only the eyes of the woman?

The other gender inequalities such as unequal wages between men and women, or less women leaders in the corporate world are daily fights to take up and chances are that, the social structures that create these barriers will eventually diminish. But the removal of chains imposed by religion and tradition is a harder challenge because it will question the men's superiority in these cultures. As for sexual violence in war areas, the agenda is stopping war itself. And that is the hardest challenge of all.#