“..to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance..."

By the River Piedra I sat Down and Wept 

~ Paulo Coelho

By the river Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river—leaves, insects, the feathers of birds—is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

By the river Piedra I sat down and wept. The winter air chills the tears on my cheeks, and my tears fall into the cold waters that course past me.

Somewhere, this river joins another, then another, until far from my heart and sight all of them merge with the sea. May my tears run just as far, that my love might never know that one day I cried for him. May my tears run just as far, that I might forget the River Piedra, the monastery, the church in the Pyrenees, the mists, and the paths we walked together. I shall forget the roads, the mountains, and the fields of my dreamsthe dreams that will never come true.

I remember my "magic moment"that instant when a "yes" or a "no" can change one's life forever. It seems so long ago now. It is hard to believe that it was only last week that I had found my love once again, and then lost him.I am writing this story on the bank of the River Piedra. My hands are freezing, my legs are numb, and every minute I want to stop."Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old," he said.

Perhaps love makes us old before our time or young, if youth has passed. But how can I not recall those moments? 

That is why I write, to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance. 

So that when I finish telling myself the story, I can toss it into the Piedra. That's what the woman who has given me shelter told me to do. 

Only then, in the words of one of the saints, will the water extinguish what the flames have written.

All love stories are the same. 

And with love, there are no rules. Some may try to control their emotions and develop strategies for their behavior; others may turn to reading books of advice from "experts" on relationships but this is all folly. The heart decides, and what it decides is all that really matters.

All of us have had this experience. At some point, we have each said through our tears, "I'm suffering for a love that's not worth it." We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love is going unrecognized. We suffer because we are unable to impose our own rules.

"If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him. 

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

“Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that i would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.” 

Wait. This was the first lesson I learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways – and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don’t know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.

“Long since, the desert wind wiped away our footprints in the sand. But at every second of my existence, I remember what happened, and you still walk in my dreams and in my reality. Thank you for having crossed my path.” 

"Every day, God gives us the sun – and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived the moment, that it doesn’t exist – that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention in their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seems the same to us. But that moment exists – a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles."

"I’m going to fight for your love. There are some things in life that are worth fighting for to the end. You are worth it.”

"The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.

Love perseveres. It’s men who change.

“In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire.” 

“But he was wrong. Because I had fought with my heart and defeated it long ago. I was certainly not going to become passionate about something that was impossible. I knew my limits; I knew how much suffering i could bear.” 

“And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories.”

“It's risky, falling in love.”

"I know that," I answered. "I've been in love before. It's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours.

"But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love.”

"What a horrible way to put it," he said.” 

“You shouldn't have asked," I said. "Love doesn't ask many questions, because if we stop to think we become fearful. It's an inexplicable fear; it's difficult even to describe it. Maybe it's the fear of being scorned, of not being accepted, or of breaking the spell. It's ridiculous, but that's the way it is. That's why you don't ask-you act. As you've said many times, you have to take risks.” 

“Make whatever decision you wish but never forget one thing: all of you are much better than you believed. Take advantage of the chance that tragedy has given you; not everyone is capable of doing so” 

The Last Waltz

I take your hand as you lead me to the dance floor

I'm in your arms, I'm yours tonight

It may be wrong, but i don't know why

This feeling just seems so right

I look into your eyes, I can see your soul

I see my whole world in there

All I've ever lived for, all that's ever mattered

Tonight it's right here...

A silent tear touches my cheek

But you catch it with your hands so warm

My strength is drained, I feel so weak

But you hold me as we dance along

Time seems still, life is bliss

Alas fate has different plans

And all too soon this dream

This life has got to end

As the music dies and you let go

I feel like I'm falling apart

My heart goes numb, my tears won't stop

But time just wouldn't wait

Forever and ever, I'll always remember

This love, this feeling so true

I'll live this night all my life

This Last Waltz with You......

~ M

The Fallen Hero

She felt the wedding band on her finger

She stared at the hands of the grandfather clock

Alongside hung the battered old calendar

Marking the days as the war was fought

Beside her feet on the tattered rug

Lay the remains of that morning’s paper

Bearing that bittersweet piece of news

That all the fighting was finally over

Their daughter lay asleep in the room next door

She had only been three when her daddy left

And two years later, he was returning at last

Home for her birthday, his promise kept

A sharp knock suddenly broke her thoughts

Hands shaking she reached for the door

A cold gust hit her in the face

As she saw that dreaded reality come forth

They brought his casket in from the snow

Offering hugs and words to ease her sorrow

But they gave up and left soon enough

As she quietly wept for her fallen hero

A father, a husband gone forever

A family shattered, torn apart

A brother, a son turned to stone

Lay in that room with a bullet through his heart

No power, no money, no words of promise

Could return to life this soldier lost

No war was ever worth the price

No victory could justify the lives it cost

~M

Structured Procrastination

`. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” -       - Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949

"I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

The most perfect situation for structured procrastination that I ever had was when my wife and I served as Resident Fellows in Soto House, a Stanford dormitory. In the evening, faced with papers to grade, lectures to prepare, committee work to be done, I would leave our cottage next to the dorm and go over to the lounge and play ping-pong with the residents, or talk over things with them in their rooms, or just sit there and read the paper. I got a reputation for being a terrific Resident Fellow, and one of the rare profs on campus who spent time with undergraduates and got to know them. What a set up: play ping pong as a way of not doing more important things, and get a reputation as Mr. Chips.

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

At this point you may be asking, "How about the important tasks at the top of the list, that one never does?" Admittedly, there is a potential problem here.

The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't). Luckily, life abounds with such tasks. In universities the vast majority of tasks fall into this category, and I'm sure the same is true for most other large institutions. Take for example the item right at the top of my list right now. This is finishing an essay for a volume in the philosophy of language. It was supposed to be done eleven months ago. I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it. A couple of months ago, bothered by guilt, I wrote a letter to the editor saying how sorry I was to be so late and expressing my good intentions to get to work. Writing the letter was, of course, a way of not working on the article. It turned out that I really wasn't much further behind schedule than anyone else. And how important is this article anyway? Not so important that at some point something that seems more important won't come along. Then I'll get to work on it.

Another example is book order forms. I write this in June. In October, I will teach a class on Epistemology. The book order forms are already overdue at the book store. It is easy to take this as an important task with a pressing deadline (for you non-procrastinators, I will observe that deadlines really start to press a week or two after they pass.) I get almost daily reminders from the department secretary, students sometimes ask me what we will be reading, and the unfilled order form sits right in the middle of my desk, right under the wrapping from the sandwich I ate last Wednesday. This task is near the top of my list; it bothers me, and motivates me to do other useful but superficially less important things. But in fact, the book store is plenty busy with forms already filed by non-procrastinators. I can get mine in mid-Summer and things will be fine. I just need to order popular well-known books from efficient publishers. I will accept some other, apparently more important, task sometime between now and, say, August 1st. Then my psyche will feel comfortable about filling out the order forms as a way of not doing this new task.

The observant reader may feel at this point that structured procrastination requires a certain amount of self-deception, since one is in effect constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself. Exactly. One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that they are important and urgent. This is not a problem, because virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills also. And what could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?"

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?’
Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.’

The five regrets

by PAULO COELHO on JUNE 23, 2011

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.


Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.


http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2011/06/23/regrets/

"I fill my days with memories of him. I remember how he used to look at me, as if I was his most valuable treasure. Has he found a new treasure? I can't help but wonder if we will be able to find our way back to each other. The road seems so very long, and my head is crowded with such dark thoughts. I feel our bond grows weaker by the day and I'm powerless to stop it." - Dawson's Creek

Two people who belong together torn apart by circumstances beyond their control.

This would have been it.
Even if everything had worked out for us, if I’d had the chance to go to his university on exchange, we’d been together for a few months, and things had worked out perfectly, this would be the week when it would all have ended. 
When I would be standing there in front of his apartment, trying to be strong, saying goodbye, not knowing if and when I’ll ever see him again. 
And then getting on a 30 hour flight back home, wondering if my life will ever be the same anymore. Wondering if I’ll ever find someone who makes me feel, even for a moment, how I felt when I was with him. Wondering if all those gullible romantics are right, if two people who seem to belong together really do find a way back to each other.
or do they just go through life, thinking about one another every now and then... 

I don’t know where life will take me after this. And I haven’t the slightest idea how I’ll get there. 
But I do know that for the first time in a long time, I’ve come to realise that no matter how much had gone in my favour, at some point in time, this is how it would’ve been. This is where the next chapter in my life would begin, one that he wouldn’t be a part of.. That sooner or later the two of us would’ve ended up on opposite sides of the world. Different dreams, different priorities, and ultimately different life choices. 
The only thing we had in common was that we were crazy about each other. Three years and countless friendships and acquaintances later, I am yet to meet someone as annoying and irritating as him! Someone who couldn’t go a day without talking to me. The way he looked at me. And the connection we had, having someone know how I felt without even beginning to put it in words. Someone whose voice I woke up to every morning. And whose phone calls were the last thing before I went to sleep every night.

Its amazing how clearly you can remember every conversation, every joke, even every argument.

And now, as you prepare to take the next step in your life, that’s really all that’s left of it. Memories. Moments you can literally play out in your head.
You go outside and stand in your hallway, staring out at the rain at 3 am in the morning, and you close your eyes, and you can remember the entire conversation you had standing there on your balcony that rainy night three years ago.

Right there you know that you’ll never really forget about him. First love, the kind that happens only once, and changes your life forever. The kind you can never let go of, no matter what happens. That song, that movie, that restaurant, that will always take you back in time..

And that’s all there will ever be to your story...