2-cents

In these few short months, I have endured the death of a once-close friend, the loss of a coworker, the growth of a new friendship, the advancement of opportunity, the unnecessarily dramatic undertakings of relationships, and the perpetuated curious mixture of what embodies a perfect-less, asymmetrical life.

Do all that you want and love because life is limitless and any moment can permanently change the course of the rest of your day, week, month, year, or life.

Never wish away your life- by moments of anticipation for future events. Never lose sight of your youth. Never forget that love, happiness, and friendship are fleeting and you will never even sometimes realize or appreciate what you have until what or whom you have is no longer existent in your life- be it permanently or not. Lastly, never say never. :}

So live for yourself and possibly even tentatively, by yourself. Seek to love and cherish and value your own mind, body, and soul because the more you age, the less you live, and the less time you have to truly appreciate your own essence in this busy, relentless, robotic world. Do no lose sight of your senses, in every sense of that senseless word. (Re)discover the thirst you have for living life barring boundaries. Cherish the opportunity to travel and to learn and learn and LEARN and grow. Challenge your dispositions and welcome change. Incite a conversation between you and a stranger, you might learn something new or even make their day.

Live and let live. Live with balance, live with openness, do something different every single day of your life, drink some good ol' humble juice, help the elderly in need, be kind, and lock your pride in the closet. Stop living life like an automaton-technologically crippled, socially grappled, and behaviorally antagonistic, because you only live once, so make it harmoniously happy. :}Don't let people tell you what to do (hi), unless their advice is worth your 2-seconds.

And if not for me then for the people or strangers who care, love, and/or interact with you....SMILE.


It won't kill you.

Trust me. :]

Corazón

'‎"It's impossible," said pride.

"It's risky," said experience.

"It's pointless," said reason.

"Give it a try," whispered the heart.'

Intellectual pimp: the art of Journalism

Mr. John Swinton, the former New York Times Chief of Staff and the foremost journalist of his time gave a toast to an independent press at a New York banquet way back when....

“There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Other of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

“The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.

“We are intellectual prostitutes.”

John Swinton, New York 1890? date unknown.

His inebriated efforts may have been the last crimson taste of truth our mirage-blinded, barren-bitten, sandpaper-ridden mouths will ever indulge. Current writers- namely those who have superseded the art of amateur blog-writing (hi) and have instead secured a far more promising/lucrative career in a well-established journalistic institution (insert breath here)- would be ostracized, demonized, ousted, outKasted (CAROLINE!), blacklisted (COMMUNISM!), if they even so much as uttered their TRUE thoughts about the dirty politics of journalism and reporting.

Naturally, these reporters and writers won't ever bite the hand that feeds them ($$), while those who have set their reputation aside in the name of pride and valor are now jobless, "famished", or both.

In her piece, "How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed", Croatian journalist and novelist Slavenka Drakulic describes how journalists of Socialist times were monitored and restricted. Their voices were smothered and dissenters would not only be repudiated from their job, but they were also charged with heresy and were subsequently exiled from their mother-less land (these were some of the more generous consequences).

In 2007, Armenian-Turkish editor and journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by a Turkish nationalist. Dink made poignant attempts at advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and he advocated for human and minority rights in Turkey; but his quest for truth was short-lived because he refused to repress his opinions in his writings- he refused to conform to conventional journalistic practices in Turkey. His refusal cost him his life.

Attempts at honest journalism have generally failed. While some have the mere misfortune of getting laid-off, others have met a far more dire fate. Courageous and bold, Swinton's speech uncovers a bit of the truth, the filth, and the hypocrisy of news media.

Of course, at the hands of a sensationalist media, the public is bound to read and see and hear about the very things, thoughts, ideas, FACTS, and opinions political pundits and politicized machines want us to absorb.

Just to name a few...NBC is Democratic, FOX is Republican; their news-casting is undoubtedly biased, the presentation of their sensationalist media is indubitably apparent...and the beat goes on an on an on...

We all see it and acknowledge it, we all hate it and complain about it....but how do we change it? How do we prevent others, and even ourselves, from becoming intellectual prostitutes?

Step 1: speak your mind, incessantly.

~rayray

^ my pseudonym if I ever write for a prominent and legitimate? newspaper...but I guess now I can't use it anymore...

Fight

"Nothing in this world that's worth having comes easy"

62

A 62 year-old enigmatic stranger I recently met-- who owns a very successful Space engineering company in Sacramento-- told me that he regrets not doing a lot of things in his life...things that he is now simply "too old" to do. When I ever-so-foolishly exclaimed that he was never too old to do anything, he replied that he wished he had gotten married and had children (-_- ...I'm a real-good people person).

Wishing away his youth with years full of deep vexation and a perpetual (overly-obsessive?) aspiration to reach every career-related goal, this stranger recalled all of the grave instances in his successful life where he simply risked it all to reach his full potential. And reach his full potential he did...but at the price of being truly happy.

Thirty-some years later this introverted and lonely gentleman finds himself having a random and depressing conversation with a loquacious stranger, where he so willingly poured his heart out about his deepest regrets and about his resentment for not having pursued the finer, the human, non-temporal things in life.

...He warned me about the things that would come. He recited a series of statements I should live by, statements that didn't sound so cliche at the time:

1) Life happens (aka shit happens)

2) You can choose your friends but you cannot choose your relatives

3) There are only 3 stressful things you will encounter in your life: moving, divorce, and death in the family (I facetiously added "taxes" after he finished, but to my dismay, he did not find my comment amusing).

My 30+ minute conversation with this stranger had a curious effect on my perception of life. Life is so fickle- we are the actors...the trapeze artists trying to become experts at our own tight-rope balancing act...tip-toeing ballerinas, bloodied nails, stunted toes, paralyzed from the soul down? We wish away our lives by looking forward to that one vacation, that one event, that one opportunity ("...to seize everything you ever wanted-one moment"); but when we surpass that opportunity and that experience and when we have finally captured that moment, we will most likely look back at our youth in wonderment, or look back at it like that 62-year-old stranger: in regret and resentment- wishing that our magical life wasn't spent in waste, in wishing away our years...our youth, wishing that we did not in fact lose sight of our potential to be truly, unremittingly happy...

the world

looks pretty different when you see it through an entirely different lens.

The art of conversation

It's a treat to find out that people from different walks of life read my blog posts and comment on them, giving me their profound 2-cents.

Having a good conversation with a "random" stranger is probably the most intriguing forms of human contact. It makes me think that all that human beings really need is to be heard.

So listen to the people around you.

I frequently provoke conversations with people I don't know in an effort to invest in a magical verbal journey. Often times than not, the conversation leads to subjects pertaining to dogs, the failing economy, FIFA, and great movies. Other times, the conversation leads to the meaning of life, to religion, to happiness, sex, and to the other contested topics of our time.

Having a deep conversation with a human being is something I had taken granted for. Perhaps that is why I write blog posts- it is my desperate attempt to engage reader(s?) in a special, thought-provoking virtual dialogue that will evoke insight and enigma on both of our ends.

When I think about it, those who are deaf or mute must truly cherish their ability to communicate with other human beings; at least that is what my coworker who has a deaf sister shared with me. I suppose that those of us who have the ability to speak must take it for granted? Instead we invest in minute and perhaps meaningless conversations over facebook, twitter, and texting that prevents us from wholeheartedly communicating.

Indeed, this is the art of conversation...we have the special ability to speak what the tongues in our minds have been waiting to say.

So let's converse.

~rome

The end of the world as we know it

I refuse to lead a "normal" life.

That is most probably the most faulty, reckless thing I could ever possibly do.

"Normal" is defined by what society has created to be the picture-perfect road to living a substantial, dare-I-say mediocre life. "Normal" to me- roughly speaking/writing- means going to school, getting a job, getting married, having children, rearing them, dying.

Life should never be sedentary- regardless of the fact that we are maturing and "growing up". So why do we always move towards a very perplexing and pre-defined path throughout life?

The more people I meet from different parts of the world, the more I feel like life is bubbling and brewing, offering more adventures, much more mystery and intrigue. My experience invigorates me to meet more people, to do even bigger, selfless things in life, and to live a life that lacks pattern, routine, and the loss of youthful enthusiasm or spirit.

I asked a random group of strangers what they thought the meaning of life was, answers varied: to procreate, to find love, to garner success.

Why so limited? We should live it up and live it all. We should live life in the way that makes us truly happy. Then again I suppose, "happiness" is subjective.

Whatever excites us should be in the daily grind of our everyday lives. We should try to live every moment moving up and on, learning more things about ourselves as individuals, about our capabilities, about our future, about how we best interact with others.

My life moves in 3's. 3 years in Colorado, 3 back in Glendale, 3 in Berkeley, 3 in law school, so on and so forth. I'll probably have 3 kids (twins + 1), 3 different careers (lawyer, judge, president), and 3 husbands (just kidding).

But all of this doesn't matter anyway,

2010 here we come :)....

In other news, it's quite intriguing how Al Gore and Tipper decide to get a divorce after 40 years of marriage, which included Tipper's melt-down depression and their son's near-death car accident that shook the family up. After so many years, both decide to mutually call it quits.

Most people, and by most I am referring to Armenian conservative, elitist, post-soviet union married couples (who don't believe in divorce), critique this decision and say that the couple should merely stay in the marriage and embark on their own respective relationships since they already have devoted 40+ years of their lives to each other. Though I myself do not believe in divorce (only in dire and drastic situations), I would have to interpret this decision as Al and Tipper's determination to seek that which make them happy.

So here's to being happy. Here's to living a life that brings us smiles- the warm fuzzies. Here's to feeling magical.

~ro

p.s. I hope I receive a total of 3 comments. :)

To-do list for the past 8 weekends

COMPLETE

Sausalito, Emeryville, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Cupertino, San Francisco, Larkspur, Oakland, Calistoga, Napa Valley, and Sacramento.

Life can only get better when you travel.

Here's to backpacking, road-tripping, and getting lost.

~Romina

good things

It is a widely known belief that all good things come to an end.

Life, laughter, pleasure, love, friendship, schooling, careers, successes. These are all good things that have ends in and of themselves.

So how do we humans surpass the agony of defeat?

Besides adhering to the psyche of "shit happens", "you only live once", "karma's a ..", or "everything happens for a reason", as means of psychologically coping with the disastrous turn of events when "shit hits the fan", if we acknowledge that all good things come to an end, the only way to live up and on is to "carpe diem".

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary", says English teacher John Keating (played by Robin Williams) from the film Dead Poets Society.

And indeed that is all that will empower us. If you go into a calculus test knowing you're going to fail because you're ill-prepared, you study, memorize, cram, and own that test when it comes time to take it.

Indeed, life is like a calculus test. If all good things come to an end, we must acknowledge it, and fight it, until we own it. We are all but human, in control insofar as much as we can assert our own bodily lives. If we place our fingers on a hot stove, we automatically retract as a result of an unpleasant sensory experience. Initiated by the stimulation or malfunction of the peripheral/central nervous systems, physical pain causes human beings to react. Retraction means withdrawing ourselves from experiencing permanent pain, in this case- fingers that develop blisters or even more detrimental results.

But what happens when the painful experience is not physical?

How do people cope from emotional losses such as losing their jobs, loved ones, relationships, failing exams and essentially experiencing good things coming to an end?

Like the physical reaction of induced bodily pain, if we acknowledge the trials and tribulations we experience as daily norms in human life, then we are one step closer to living life in a happier and healthier manner. Unfortunately, our coping mechanism from such types of "pain" isn't quite as simple as removing a limb from the source of pain, like fingers from a hot stove.

Emotional and psychological experiences are sometimes or maybe even most times deeper than physical ones, and it is up to us to desensitize ourselves from ill-thoughts that will only produce a downward spiral of ever-growing sorrow, defeat, sadness, and hate.

What I mean to say in all this is, the only way to defeat "all good things coming to an end" is to acknowledge that this fact is universally true; but we must also refrain from living our lives in a pessimistic manner that keeps us hopeless, unmotivated, sad, or defeated. Instead, we must recognize this fact as a positive aspect of human nature- that if good things didn't come to an end, then we'd live an unaltered life of perfection, and where's the fun in that?

Regardless of what religion or belief you may or may not follow, this solution can be universal. But of course, such a "solution" is easier said than done. Life-changing experiences such as trauma cannot simply be dismissed or dealt with by merely acknowledging the fact that such bad things are expected to come so me must merely cope with it. This is the difficulty of human life.

As complex human beings, we have developed a biological coping mechanism towards entities that physically harm our bodies, yet we are far from mastering or even understanding what it is that will ameliorate the emotional and psychological pain or trauma we experience.

So what do we do, and how do we do it?

We all have our own ways of dealing with losses. Denial, sadness, hate, resentment, hope, passion, anger, motivation, inspiration, hopelessness, violence, love, defeat, pessimism, regret, guilt, and/or disbelief.

But what would happen if we merely desensitized ourselves from our experiences? What if we consciously retracted ourselves, like we did our finger from the stove, in ways that mentally, emotionally, and psychologically remove us from the source(s) of pain?

What if, in preparation of potential trauma that may or may not come our way, we react to other aforementioned losses through this process of desensitization?

Would that make us heartless creatures- or rather- happier, perhaps even healthier, human beings?

~aromalish