Responsibility to your own children

At one time marriages were made just like that. It had to be done. Children were taken for granted. And then they grew up in bad marriages with bad relations. They watched and learned on them. Times have changed. One question remains, are people aware that with the decision to live together and have children comes the responsibility for raising that children? Are they ready for sacrifices in sake of good upbringing but not the type existing for decades...remaining in bad relationships called marriages allegedly for the children, but exactly the opposite? The responsibility to spare their children from their own love drama?

Are today’s parents aware how much their behavior influences the development and growth of their children and that children demand and have the right to be raised properly and made into “their own” persons? Are parents aware of that responsibility that it’s not just about the roof over their heads and school any more...it never was...do today those who made mistakes and those on who mistakes were made that upbringing is much more then just bread and books? Upbringing is also made up of the time children spend with you...a child even though it is little isn’t deff or blind to all of your behavioral patterns. Are parents aware that by not correcting their own past errors in behavior they transfer those to their children and their future life? Is the need to have a child, because that’s what is supposed to be done, stronger and more present in one’s consciousness then the knowledge that children are so much more. Responsibility. Not just a peace of a puzzle so people will say you have a perfect and fulfilled life  because you have a family but a conscious decision to have responsibility for your life. A person can’t affect everything, nor can they make sure that children are always happy, healthy and content even though they give them everything, (there comes a time when children have to mature and take more and more responsibility for themselves, when they grow up and when you need to know to let them go to be their own persons)...but people have to know what is in their power. You are not supposed to isolate them from the bad world but to teach them how to save themselves in such a world, how to behave in it... it’s not up to you to give hints but to teach them how, what and when should be done... for tomorrow when they become adults to know how to and be able to deal with life and not to have too many traumas because you were too busy with your own life and neglected them completely or destroyed them us persons... children are not labels, or medals to be bragged with when needed. A child isn’t just someone to have so they can help you when you grow old...a child is a human being, it’s own person...and you have to invest in that relationship... Big like for mothers and fathers who understand this!

THE WONDRFUL LOVE...

You know that wonderful, delightful feeling when your heart jumps for someone, when you can’t wait too see and touch them, when you can’t wait for your next meeting, when all of the time you spend together seems too little? When you run into each others arms, when you smile all the time when you’re together...when you can not see enough of the person you’re in love with? When you are walking alone on the street and have a grin on your face that makes you look like a total idiot? 

You know that feeling when it seems to you that you can’t and don’t want to live without that person and when you would leave all you are doing just to be with them even for while...and just a little while more and a little more...when all of the reasons for anything different disappear in that feeling, when years, time, hair color or anything don’t matter...that feeling when your heart flips...well, now that I’ve reminded you what love is, time to go to sleep!

WHEN ARE YOU ALLOWED TO CHANGE YOUR MIND?

When are you allowed to change your mind about something you are doing or want to do? Well, you can now...tomorrow...in a few days, years...on your deathbed... We are joking a bit but talking with one person...we talked about one of her colleagues questioning himself it there is any point in his own studying at that faculty...she told me yes, it’s normal for a person to question himself at the beginning and not at the end.  I just laughed. It was so cutely funny, and no matter how superficial it might seem it just a sign that everyone, and I mean everyone, have their own “limitations” regarding opinions and beliefs in some things (that can of course change).

The mind never stands still. It always questions and thinks of something. It’s in it’s nature, as wise people would say. Questioning happens every day. And that is normal. ...When ever they emerge they are their for a reason.

At any age, at any level, you can wish to step away from something, I won’t say give up because that is not giving up. Giving up isn’t stepping away from one direction and altering your way to some other direction (goal). It’s just changing direction or way. And as you can think about it at any time, you can also do it at any time. You have that right all your life. The only thing you need is the courage and belief in yourself. Because without faith in and love for one’s self, you will be troubled with doubt in your own actions. And if you start a change and overly question yourself...meaning you have to be determined. You may or may not have the support of your surroundings, but that must not be the reason to continue with or back down from your decision.

The point in all that questioning is to, from time to time, calibrate your need and desires, to see where you are and what to do next. The point is also in finding sense. Everything a person does, from time to time, has to go through a renewed process of figuring out why he started that and if he still sees himself in that the way it is. Otherwise, how would he know if he is happy, successful, satisfied and following his own path? That inner fealing is always the measure. Following your own path doesn’t mean walking with your head in a bag but on the contrary, being aware of why and for what. Your own motives and passions. Will and love. Questioning is good and necessary if you look at it as something normal and natural. They are not the point of the  journey but only an aid you use while on it. Also, you can remain deff to your own feelings, needs and desires. You may keep doing something automatically, thinking it’s too late to change... YOU CAN DO ANYTHING. YOU MAKE CHOICES AND DECISIONS NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU SOMETIMES THINK IT’S DEPENDENT ON OTHERS OR CIRCUMSTANCES. YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR OWN HANDS.        

PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST

PESSIMIST...SITS AND WAITS FOR SOMEONE TO FIND A SOLUTION FOR HIS PROBLEM. OPTIMIST COMES WITH A SOLUTION. PESSIMIST STILL SITS AND LOOKS FOR NEW PROBLEMS IN THE SOLUTION...

You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. As long as he prefers his problem with all it’s troubles to moving and trying, you can’t do anything. But one thing you mustn’t do. Allow him to drag you into it. Someone in the rain sees only a wet suit and shoes, and in the sun a heat stroke. Thought of taking an umbrella or sitting in the shade they will immediately sabotage. Because, wind will break the umbrella and he will be too sweaty to sit in the shade. Some people simply have to stay sitting and do nothing for as long as they themselves don’t realize that they have to get up and take a chance. You can’t pull someone out of a problem by force. 

Be his support and inspiration to move out of it and not food for his negativity. Stick to your cheerful side!

JEALOUSY

  ( this will be in a column in a slightly altered version and you have the honor to see it first, your Brigita)

We set there in our company and gramps started speaking “...boy was my wife jealous, and she was always like that. I couldn’t cope with her. For every woman I worked with I had to convince her I wasn’t involved with them, if any woman called she would immediately question me on who she was, and worst of all was when a woman I was seeing showed up at our doors, actually it was worse when her husband came to our doors. I ran through the window... My wife is such a...” In fact, gramps isn’t that bad. I love listening to him. He and his wife are something else. How they tell their stories, it’s to hilarious. I can understand gramps, it’s not easy when your wife doesn’t allow you to have a girlfriend or your husband a boyfriend. He says, oh how she ran that one out of the house...and she adds....if I had only managed to catch her I would have pulled all of her hair out. And they hold hands and laugh about it together. 

This time we won’t be talking about jealousy in relationships, or that in puberty, or the one that is a serious problem and can be called and illness. This time we will be speaking about the jealousy when people are married, when they are living together, and we will try to figure out why it is said that women are more jealous then men. 

When a man publicly brags that his wife is jealous...I always know that he is making her such and is giving her reason for that. And almost always that is not “real” jealousy he wishes for. And when you look at such characters you’ll always ask yourself “Why is she jealous? Of him?” You will realize they are not cool, not charmers, not lovers, but just “nerds” who finally have a “girlfriend” and are trying to make themselves more important. And when a man tells you in private he has a jealous wife, you almost always know it is like that. 

And now, how it came to that that women are more jealous and are they really? The answer couldn’t be more logical. When you look at women’s and men’s lives throughout history it is perfectly clear that their roles in a relationship have always been different and always ones of superiority-inferiority, seldom of equality. Women have always been financially dependent first of their fathers, then on their husbands, they only changed from one dependent-inferior role to another one. And men have always been the ones with jobs and money. With that they also had the power. Women almost always couldn’t say and let alone do something without men and be supported in that by their families and surroundings. Even today if a woman changes partners or cheats on her husband you will hear people calling her a whore, and automatically someone will say “what will her children say tomorrow what kind of mother they had”. Those much older generations of men will say that having a jealous wife was their accomplishment. As if that was making them worth more. And almost all of them cheated on their wives and without even trying to hide that. And you ask yourself if that woman, who bore him children (not necessarily but generally it was like that) and who weren’t able to return to their original family (because that would be shameful to her father, and her children would be  called derogatory names), really jealous? A woman that was materially dependent on that husband and who would have, if she had left him, either lose her child (because she had no means of supporting him or her) or they would have both be subjected to public shame, in my opinion wasn’t likely to have been infatuated by his sexual organ and love making abilities and with concern that another woman would steal that from her. Men in those times were of course aware of things we are writing about, and especially of the position of women in society, and not just that no one was judging them for acting that way, but they were being praised and had a higher status in their society. Imagine that, he has a wife at home who might even be handsome and beautiful, and he is cheating on her with some filthy women in bars...that was success. No one felt bad for the wife. Even their mothers told them it had to be that way. Only, what has that to do with jealousy? Whenever someone is in a superior position in a relationship, and that power is always about money, then that person often misuses that position because it’s not enough for him that she loves him but now she needs to be screaming for him, chasing away his mistresses from their doors and trying to kill herself for him because imagine...she loved him soooooo much. She didn’t you idiot! Sorry for the expression but... She didn’t love you that much, and it isn’t that she didn’t want to replace you or that she hadn’t wished for that...but she could not. She had to fight to have a roof over her had, to have something to eat, that her child isn’t called a bastard (this expression makes me sick), she stayed and fought for her place in your life cause she had nothing else! It’s not that she didn’t wish for it...there were those better then you. And maybe she cheated on you but you never found out and you never will, remember she is a woman same as those you cheated on her with. But she new she had to stay in it, she new she had to fight like a lioness to chase away any other because she had no where else to go, that was her home... that is not jealousy my dear...that is a fight for survival and staying. That is not jealousy...that is not love...that is called surviving. You might have cheated and might have been successful in it, and you might have humiliated and made a fool of her...but that doesn’t make you a big man, nor does it make you cool. It doesn’t make you a good lover, nor a good father. And least of all does it make you a good husband. These things happen even today. Times have changed but not enough and not everywhere have the people changed fully. Even today you will hear coming form those more primitive families taht a father advises his son not to be whipped but that he has to have something on the side. Even today you will hear that men’s cheating is approved of and women are still only whores. But a good thing in it is that women no longer take heed to that. On the contrary, today they are “schooled” to be prostitutes, ... today you can see them on front pages flashing their breasts and defying times and primitivism, and at the same time bragging about how good mothers they are. Today women wait on tables without shame and know they have to be exposed and foulmouthed to get change but they don’t care any more. EVEN TODAY THEY WILL BE JUDGED WHN THEY LEAVE BUT THEY STILL LEAVE AND NO MATTER HOW THEY SURVIVE, THEY DO SURVIVE. Today the pillars of shame have been replaced by magazines that ridicule those who are primitive, those who are hypocrites and those who mistreat under any excuse. Today everything is allowed but we are moving forward to not allowing such mistreatment and abuse of even those persons who are financially or in any way in an oppressed position compared to others. Oh yes, there are still many false moralists around. Most of all there are women who call those in the old fashioned way for having the courage to change their lives, but that is just because they did have it. 

Today there are much, much more good men who are not ashamed to be what they are, who are not afraid to show it and are not afraid to stand up to primitive surroundings and such expectations for them. Today there are much more people who look at life differently. Those who know that you aquire good reputation and who appreciate what they have. Yes, there are many people today who sit in little groups and comment on where the world has gone?...I’m afraid it’s where you have led it if too much hypocrisy, too much inequality, too many bans and too much imposing. That is why today people confront anyone and anything.    

Still, let’s return to our topic... when next you hear someone bragging about his wife being jealous, and they aren’t an old couple sitting and laughing about it together, think twice about what type of inferiority compared to him she has found herself, material, emotional, physical. And you almost always know that is not real jealousy and they are not cool. Cool guys are those who live their lives by their rules and next to whom a woman walks full of pride, well groomed and styled, and with a smile on her face. If someone is cheating on someone they are irrelevant  to the surroundings. Cool guys are those men who most of all give their wives (and children) good lives...and the rest...that’s their business...

EXPECTATIONS

(also, a section from the book that will be in press soon, your Brigita)

When you think about it, people have expectations from everything and everyone around them, but most of all of themselves and those they love... On the other hand, there are the expectations others have of us. It all starts with what your parents expect from you, then with what you expect of yourself, then with what you expect of others and what others expect of you. An entire vicious circle that has no positive purpose in life. Because a person has three choices, to live fulfilling one’s own expectations, to live fulfilling other people’s expectations, or to live without giving any due to expectations, but listening to one’s self and needs. Only the final choice brings happiness and satisfaction. 

Because, no matter how much you try to please others, you’ll never succeed. There will always be someone who is disappointed because he envisioned something differently, in your life. Which is insane. A human is an independent, unique creature, every one, and each of us has his own path in life. No matter how much similar circumstances in which we find ourselves are, each will do, feel and think about it differently. Neither a parent, a child, or a partner have a greater part in our life and deciding then ourselves, nor do we have in theirs. A person only wants to fulfill someone's expectations because of love and desire for approval.  On the other hand, if he has expectations of others and his happiness is dependent on their fulfillment, he is again in a position of  dependance on others. To love doesn’t mean to not expect. To live doesn’t mean to not listen to others, but giving someone the power to make decisions for you, or that your mood is dependent on their actions is unhealthy. Expectations won’t disappear because of this article but I believe it will help some people to think about it and to realize some connections, and to find the courage to live their lives by their own power and most of all with love and kindness to themselves and others, and also to realize that independence isn’t loneliness or alienation and isn’t a reason for losing someone’s affection and support. That can happen of course if we are talking about people who think they have more rights then you in your life and who love to control everything including things in your life but that shouldn’t concern you. They are only doing it because they love you and are acting protective of you. But, let’s get back to expectations. So, great expectations always bring great disappointments.

You have to keep your life in your own hands and you have to be ready for some things in your life. You have to learn that others have their opinion and you have to tolerate it no matter how opposite it is to yours, and also inspite your love for some people, you have to listen to yourself and follow your own path. Love must be above that. It mustn’t be conditioned with obedience nor with fulfillment of your or other people’s wishes. You have to take responsibility for your own happiness, and also accept that others have to do the same for them. To love someone means literally to love someone. Not to condition, not to push, not to control. What love for others looks like is the same as what love for you looks like. You have to be fair and honest to yourself also. Expecting this and that is completely useless. It only places the power outside you. If you want something, do it for yourself. If you want something from others, ask for it loud and clear. If something is bothering you, you have the right to say so. Others have the same right towards to you. Most important thing in discarding unhealthy expectations and even more unhealthy pressure they create is throwing away all of the other people’s wishes and dreams projected onto you. Remember, everyone has their own life and the possibility to use that gift as they wish from the moment they realize that. And your life is a gift to you, for you to do what YOU WISH, and you don’t give away your life to anyone to prove you love them. What’s most important in your life is your opinion, your feelings and your dreams. You have to cast aside imposed expectations, and live your life to the fullest!        

When the situation isn't perfect, maybe it has a perfect lesson for you.

Think about that...

A man can see best how much he pissed off his woman through his credit card. A woman never yells. The credit card is her book of complaints. What she doesn’t say...she spends. 
Who understands early...So, be good to your woman.

The point is not in someone else making you happy but if they are in your life they should not be making you unhappy! 

It’s not important what others think. Sometimes it’s not important what you think. 
Sometimes what’s important is what you are feeling.

Some create trends, others follow trends. 
Virtue is in those who don’t judge. They are those with great life experience and broad understandings.

The prince on a white horse is 60?

I was never the one to read fairy tales, much less to believe in such stories, however a part of me likes to believe in perfect relationships, perfect moments and perfect good in people. A little romantic might just be lurking in me somewhere...

I spent more of my childhood reading books and anything I cold lay my hands onto (needless to say I did all of my required reading for the next school year at the start of my summer break), painting and writing, then playing with dolls. I had them of course but I spent more time designing clothes for them rather then feeding and cooking for them. In fact...I never did that. Nor have I fantasized about my wedding, wedding dress or how my prince should look like. It’s all still too mushy for me... But I do believe in love. And for this topic I’m thinking about what would such a gentlemen have to look like. The prince, of course. What qualities would he need to posses to fulfill all the girl’s needs, desires and interests. And more I come to realize he should be more of a GMO (genetically modified organism) then a mere mortal. Seriously. And maybe it’s not just about what he should be like but also when should he arrive. And maybe there is not only one, but several of them, each for a certain age and phase of our lives. And now it’s getting too complicated. We all know that love is not something you discuss about, it’s something that just happens, without asking, without prior announcement, without rules, you just have to manage. Todays women live in a completely hectic life tempo compared to their forerunners. Our grandmothers might have toiled at home all day long but now we have to deal with facebook, twitter, instagram, colleagues, friends, relatives, ten hour flights across oceans and adjusting to day becoming night and night becoming day...and with all those comings and goings, meetings and partings, somehow we should also be cool moms who know the answer to everything, for whom everything is OK, and who has the time for everything... And then there is the prince...you don’t want him to be some horse who will come home form work and ask what’s there to eat,  or argue with you why your purse costs as much as it does and that you could have built an animal shelter with that, after all you know that yourself, as a modern woman you have a very developed consciousness of such things. So, he can not be primitive. On the other hand, many say that it’s easier when you are of the same generation because you can grow together...that’s all fine but with my own thinking on the meaning of life, marriage and fidelity I don’t need his. Therefor he must be mature and well lived to understand me and not duel with me. Third thing, the parents. With all due respect to the olden days and traditions but for goodness sake, who has the time to think about why his mother stayed in a loveless marriage or why is his father so aggressive...it’s OK to hear them from time to time, and occasionally visit each other but that’s that. Judges and jury...no thank you, either way. If it works it works, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t.  When we add it all up I believe that men like George Clooney are ideal for the role of prince. You in your forties, he in his sixties. He has lived through everything, payed of all alimonies (let’s be realistic), has proven himself to both himself and others, doesn’t buzz around and is not unfulfilled...just right to have all the time, possibility and patience for a modern woman. To please her, fulfill her wishes and desires, to do his best to pleasure her in bed, treat her like a lady and his precious. He finally calm and stabile, and you maybe ready to become a mother along with the career you are building. He ideal for support, and you for a playful girl with her life ahead of her. We’ll think about what if, old age and death later...that is something no one knows... So, the prince on a white horse comes in your thirties and forties...with his sixty something...and then, sometime in your fifties you’ll be ready for a role of Demi Moore and some young Ashton Kutcher. 

I’m such a romantic...