LivinGology

A Story of Sadness OR Analyzing Reality

I recently saw a Lukas Moodysson's movie called Lilja 4-Ever. I didn't really get into the movie while watching it and it was only when I started thinking about it when the enormous amount of sadness it's charged with stroke me. It's a story about 2 poor children, one of which Lilja is forced to use her most intimate means to survive. For those who haven't seen it, I'm sorry, I just don't have the time to retell the whole story. But those who've seen it might find some of the impressions I'm sharing interesting...

Who are Lilja and Volodya?
What are their hopes and dreams for the future?

Lilja and Volodya are two children who try to live a happy life despite all difficulties. They talk to and about God, hoping things would get better just because they have been good. Lilja manages to keep her innocence until the very end of the story, symbolized by her turning into an angel and her eyes always childish. Both children have the feeling that the life they live is temporarily and try escaping from it by...fantasisying about death. Their relationships is based on pure childish love and friendship. Volodya, even though younger, feels like protecting Lilja. And he becomes her angel.

Lukas Moodysson wants his movie to change the world.
How does it make difference?

The movie assumes that the line between life and death is very thin.It requires a lot to get close to it but very little to cross it. And some of us are born right next to it, like Lilja and Volodya.
Most sad movies are based on true stories and so did Lilja 4-Ever. According to the movie, we live normal happy lives but are at the same time unaware that others around us do not. Do we know what our neighbour is doing right now? Are we ourselves doing the right thing? Is it our own choice? The movie shows reality withour make-up. Have you thought why it's so sad? Because we all know that what happened to Lilja and Volodya could happen to any of us. We all have our dreams, dignity and innocnece but someone could deprive us from that any minute. Or we could be that someone. Which one is more frightening? Has anything changed a lot since we were cavemen? How? The least developed individual defines the development of the whole humankind. So if this is our reality, are we not worse than cavemen now?

How does the movie represents Sweden?

1)Sweden is great! It is so far in its development that it is not in the eye of the beholder anymore and it's able to analyze and judge such problems from a neutral position.
2)Sweden sucks! There are sick people in Sweden too, even though the country is on the cutting edge of technological and humanitarian development.

Why Lilja 4-Ever?

This movie instills that there is no beginning and no end, no life and no death, no victim and no oppressor, we are all part of the same matter. By not respecting others, we do not respect ourselves, by killing others we kill ourselves.

Day and Night at Single Time

The photograph was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities' lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands. Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during day time and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

When it Hurts

I went out for a run this morning. It was a beautiful sunday morning so I decided to run more than usual. And so I did. Unfortunatelly, at one point my left leg started to hurt in the knee area. Knowing that pain somewhere is a signal that something is wrong, I slowed down, stopped and took a 5 minute break. While walking I was thinking: could it be the same with feelings? When someone hurts our feelings for some reason is it a signal that things are wrong? Usually we believe that negative feelings are intrinsically bind to love and it's normal to be hurt from time to time. If we use the running example, the most obvious decision would be to take some time away from the person that tends to hurt us, and this is what people usually do. Then they can 'run' together again. So far, so obvious. Let's assume that physical examples can be related to inner psychological processes. Does taking a break cure the reason for our pain or just its symptom? It's just the symptom and the reason for feeling the pain remains and even though supressed for a while can occur at any time again. So, if we get frequently hurt by someone that would mean that there are some basic discrepancies in our fundamental psychological structures. And taking some time away would just cure temporarily their manifestations, rather than the reasons. So, next time you go out and 'run' together with someone, look carefully for what hurts and what would be the reasons for that.

This is not a pipe..

This is how the author of the painting, Rene Magritte named it's piece of work. And he did not lie. Why? The pipe is a painting. And the painting of a pipe is not a pipe. Still not convinced? Try smoking the pipe from the painting...

Alternative Directions

I was listening to the BBC news today when I heard the actor Russell Crow saying something interesting. It was addressed to his new movie 'A Good Year'. "We shouldn't do what others want us to do, but do something conceptually fresh and new", he said. His words reminded me of the Henry Ford's famous quote: "If I had listened to my customers, I would have given them the fastest horse." Both the movie and the invention of the car were breakthroughs. So, does success necessarily mean breking the limits of our imagination? A famous Bulgarian saying states that one should do exactly the opposite of what others are doing if one wants to succeed. However, there are quite a lot of examples of people (like Leonardo Da Vinci and 99% of the greatest artists) who surpassed their times indeed, but remained unappreciated by their contemporaries. Perhaps it's all about having the right people, at the right places in the right time.... equipped with a brilliant idea of course.

Making water happy

Have you ever thought that you are able to make water happy? That would be the last thing to come to my mind until I read that article. It's about a Japanese water researcher who found out that water reacts to certain stimuli, like music, words and pictures by changing its crystals' structure. For example (in the picture), when they played Bach’s Air for the G String to the water its crystal changed, "giving the impression that they are dancing merrily". Ok, one may say, sound is physical energy, it's understandable to have such impact on water. But the experiment didn't stop here. They tried writing words on the water surface and the water responded. It gave nice cristals when they wrote 'Thank you' and gave no crystals at all to 'You fool'. It even reacted to images by giving crystals that made sense. It all applied to good quality pure water and did not work with distilled water. However, there were people (a priest) who could influence the death distilled water and even structurally change the crystals symmetry to shapes unknown to science before. Interesting, hm?
It all can well be explained by the quantum physics theory of ultimate coherence. In other words, it can be possible that we are all interconnected and are part of the same matter. Water and mind can be different fragments of the same thing. If we go further back in time we can find a similar explanation in the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters.
In any case, the results from the experiment are amazing. Just think of the implications. Somehow we are connected to nature. Somehow we can influence nature. And nature can understand and respond to us. Could it be possible that the tree in our back yard or the stone we just stumbled in have consciousness? Why not? Perhaps we just need to open our eyes and hearts a little bit wider for all these little wanders that have always been out there.

Life in Weeks

I did an interesting experiment yesterday.
I took a white sheet of paper and drew a line. At one end I represented the moment of my birth: at the other the likely point of my death. I estimated and marked in where I am now in my life on the scale of this line. I mediated on this for a few seconds. Furthermore, working on the basis of likely correlates, such as the average age of death of people closely related to you, my state of health, the conditions I live in etc I estimated roughly the year when I think I might die. Then I worked out how many years that was and converted that into the number of weeks that there are between then and now. 2352 weeks. You can try that yourself and be as amazed by
the result as I was. Life is really short.