The Acomodador

The acomodador: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress.

It described exactly what happens in marriages in general and what had happened in my relationship with Esther in particular.

I could now write my article for that magazine. I went over to the computer and within half an hour I had written a first draft and was happy with the result. I wrote a story in the form of a dialogue, as if it were fiction, but which was, in fact, a conversation I had had in a hotel room in Amsterdam, after a day spent promoting my books and after the usual publishers’ supper and the statutory tour of the sights, etc.

In my article, the names of the characters and the situation in which they find themselves are omitted. In real life, Esther is in her nightdress and is looking out at the canal outside our window. She has not yet become a war correspondent, her eyes are still bright with joy, she loves her work, travels with me whenever she can, and life is still one big adventure. I am lying on the bed in silence; my mind is far away, worrying about the next day’s appointments.

"Last week, I interviewed a man who’s an expert in police interrogations. He told me that they get most of their information by using a technique they call ‘cold-hot.’ They always start with a very aggressive policeman who says he has no intention of sticking to the rules, who shouts and thumps the table. When he has scared the prisoner nearly witless, the ‘good cop’ comes in and tells his colleague to stop, offers the prisoner a cigarette, pretends to be his friend, and gets the information he wants.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about that.”

“Then he told me about something else that really frightened me. In 1971, a group of

researchers at Stanford University, in California, decided to create a simulated prison in order to study the psychology of interrogations. They selected twenty-four student volunteers and divided them into ‘guards’ and ‘criminals.’

“After just one week, they had to stop the experiment. The ‘guards’—girls and boys with normal decent values, from nice families—had become real monsters. The use of torture had become routine and the sexual abuse of ‘prisoners’ was seen as normal. The students who took part in the project, both ‘guards’ and ‘criminals,’ suffered major trauma and needed long-term medical help, and the experiment was never repeated.”

“Interesting.”

“What do you mean ‘interesting’? I’m talking about something of real importance: man’s capacity to do evil whenever he’s given the chance. I’m talking about my work, about the things I’ve learned!”

“That’s what I found interesting. Why are you getting so angry?”

“Angry? How could I possibly get angry with someone who isn’t paying the slightest bit

of attention to what I’m saying? How can I possibly be angry with someone who isn’t

even provoking me, who’s just lying there, staring into space?”

“How much did you have to drink tonight?”

“You don’t even know the answer to that, do you? I’ve been by your side all evening, and you’ve no idea whether I’ve had anything to drink or not! You only spoke to me when you wanted me to confirm something you had said or when you needed me to tell some flattering story about you!”

“Look, I’ve been working all day and I’m exhausted. Why don’t you come to bed and       sleep? We can talk in the morning.”

“Because I’ve been doing this for weeks and months, for the last two years in fact! I try to have a conversation, but you’re always tired, so we say, all right, we’ll go to sleep and talk tomorrow. But tomorrow there are always other things to do, another day of work and publishers’ suppers, so we say, all right, we’ll go to sleep and talk tomorrow. That’s how I’m spending my life, waiting for the day when I can have you by my side again, until I’ve had my fill; that’s all I ask, to create a world where I can always find refuge if I need it: not so far away that I can’t be seen to be having an independent life, and not so close that it looks as if I’m invading your universe.”

“What do you want me to do? Stop working? Give up everything we’ve struggled so hard to achieve and go off on a cruise to the Caribbean? Don’t you understand that I enjoy what I’m doing and haven’t the slightest intention of changing my life?”

“In your books, you talk about the importance of love, the need for adventure, the joy of fighting for your dreams. And who do I have before me now? Someone who doesn’t read what he writes. Someone who confuses love with convenience, adventure with taking unnecessary risks, joy with obligation. Where is the man I married, who used to listen to what I was saying?”

“Where is the woman I married?”

“You mean the one who always gave you support, encouragement, and affection? Her body is here, looking out at the Singel Canal in Amsterdam, and she will, I believe, stay with you for the rest of her life. But that woman’s soul is standing at the door ready to leave.”

“But why?”

“Because of those three wretched words: We’ll talk tomorrow. Isn’t that enough? If not, just consider that the woman you married was excited about life, full of ideas and joy and desires, and is now rapidly turning into a housewife.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Of course it is! It’s nonsense! A trifle, especially considering that we have everything we could possibly want. We’re very fortunate, we have money, we never discuss any little flings we might have, we never have jealous rages. Besides, there are millions of children in the world starving to death, there are wars, diseases, hurricanes, tragedies happening every second. So what can I possibly have to complain about?”

“Do you think we should have a baby?”

“That’s how all the couples I know resolve their problems—by having a baby! You’re the one who has always prized your freedom and put off having children for later on. Have you really changed your mind?”

“I think the time is right.”

“Well, in my opinion, you couldn’t be more wrong! I don’t want your child. I want a child by the man I knew, who had dreams, who was always by my side! If I ever do become pregnant it will be by someone who understands me, keeps me company, listens to me, who truly desires me!”

“You have been drinking. Look, I promise, we’ll talk tomorrow, but, please, come to bed now, I’m tired.”

“All right, we’ll talk tomorrow. And if my soul, which is standing at the door, does decide to leave, I doubt it will affect our lives very much.”

“Your soul won’t leave.”

“You used to know my soul very well, but you haven’t spoken to it for years, you don’t know how much it has changed, how desperately it’s begging you to listen. Even to banal topics of conversation, like experiments at American universities.”

“If your soul has changed so much, how come you’re the same?”

“Out of cowardice. Because I genuinely think that tomorrow we will talk. Because of everything we’ve built together and which I don’t want to see destroyed. Or for that worst of all possible reasons, because I’ve simply given up.”

“That’s just what you’ve been accusing me of doing.”

“You’re right. I looked at you, thinking it was you I was looking at, but the truth is I was looking at myself. Tonight I’m going to pray with all my might and all my faith and ask God not to let me spend the rest of my days like this.”

From Paulo Coelho's book The Zahir. 




It might be useful to know that if "I dont know," is the answer to every question you ask; "I know it," is the reply to every fact you tell; and "You know nothing," is the response at every comment you make ... you must know that you have encountered the acomodador!  

Relationship: Thine & Mine

“Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterward, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: Which of the two will wash his face?”

“That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face, of course.”

“No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me and thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you.”

I would like to have added: that’s what happened to Esther, and I’ve only just realized it, remembering now how the look in her eyes changed. I’d always absorbed her life and her energy, and that made me feel happy and confident, able to go forward. She, on the other hand, had looked at me and felt ugly, diminished, because, as the years passed, my career—the career that she had done so much to make a reality—had relegated our relationship to second place.

If I was to see her again, my face needed to be as clean as hers. Before I could find her, I must first find myself.

From The Zahir- Paulo Coelho

Forge Your Own Path

A novice went to Abbot Macarius seeking advice about the best way to please the Lord.

- Go to the cemetery and insult the dead – said Macarius.

The brother did as he was told. The following day, he returned to Macarius.

- Did they respond? – asked the abbot.

The novice said no, they didn’t.

- Then go to them and praise them.

The novice obeyed. That same afternoon, he returned to the abbot, who again wished to know whether the dead had responded.

- No – said the novice.

- In order to please the Lord, behave as they do – said Macarius.

“Pay no heed to the insults of men, nor to their praise; in this way, you shall forge your own path.”

Courtesy: Paulo Coelho Blog

New Space, New Time.

(Following is a combination of two posts that appeared in April at the Paulo Coelho's blog.Pray tell me if it doesn't make you want to get a pair of ballerinas right away! :) )

The American psychologist Martin Seligman’s foundational experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression.

A person should be able to walk away from an abusive relationship, for example, or voluntarily quit a stressful job.

A psychological condition known as learned helplessness, however, can cause a person to feel completely powerless to change his or her circumstances for the better.

The result of learned helplessness is often severe depression and extremely low self-esteem.

Learned helplessness can be seen as a mechanism some people employ in order to survive difficult or abusive circumstances.

An abused child or spouse may eventually learn to remain passive and compliant at the hands of his or her abuser, since efforts to fight back or escape appear futile.

Learned helplessness results from being trained to be locked into a system. The system may be a family, a community, a culture, a tradition, a profession or an institution.

Initially, a system develops for a specific purpose. But as a system evolves, it increasingly tends to organize around beliefs, perspectives, activities and taboos that serve the continuation of the system. Awareness of the original purpose fades and the system starts to function automatically. It calcifies.

Some experts suggest learned helplessness can be passed on through observation, as in the case of a daughter watching her abused mother passively obey her husband’s commands.

The daughter may begin to associate passivity and low self-esteem with the “normal” demands of married life, leading to a perpetuation of the learned helplessness cycle.

Child abuse by neglect can be a manifestation of learned helplessness: when parents believe they are incapable of stopping an infant’s crying, they may simply give up trying to do anything for the child.

Another example of learned helplessness in social settings involves loneliness and shyness. Those who are extremely shy, passive, anxious and depressed may learn helplessness to offer stable explanations for unpleasant social experiences.

A third example is aging, with the elderly learning to be helpless and concluding that they have no control over losing their friends and family members, losing their jobs and incomes, getting old, weak and so on.

I have no solution for Learned Helplessness.

But I know one thing:

Everything moves. And everything moves to a rhythm.

And everything that moves produces a sound; that is happening here and all over the world at this very moment.

Our ancestors noticed the same thing when they tried to escape from the cold in their caves: things moved and made noise.

The first human beings perhaps looked on this with awe, and then with devotion: they understood that this was the way that a Superior Being communicated with them.

They began to imitate the noises and movements around them, hoping to communicate with this Being: and dancing and music were born.

When we dance, we are free.

To put it better, our spirit can travel through the universe, while our body follows a rhythm that is not part of the routine.

 

In this way, we can laugh at our sufferings large or small, and deliver ourselves to a new experience without any fear.

While prayer and meditation take us to the sacred through silence and inner pondering, in dance we celebrate with others a kind of collective trance.

They can write whatever they want about dancing, but it is no use: you have to dance to find out what they are talking about.

Dance to the point of exhaustion, like mountain-climbers scaling some sacred peak.

Dance until, out of breath, our organism can receive oxygen in a way that it is not used to, and this ends up making us lose our identity, our relation with space and time.

Dance!

Patience, Persevrance

A Warrior of Light needs patience and speed at the same time.

The two biggest mistakes of a strategy are

• to act prematurely
• to let the opportunity pass by.

To avoid making these mistakes, the warrior copes with each situation as if it were unique, and applies no formulas, prescriptions or the opinions of others.

Caliph Moauiyat asked Omar Ben Al-Aas what was the secret of his great political skill:

“I have never gotten involved in any matter without first studying the way out;

“on the other hand, I have never become involved and wanted to get out right away,” was his answer.

- Paulo Coelho blog.

I Learnt It The Hard Way

How do you make peace with a negative past and with those who have wronged you? (Alex asked Paulo Coelho)

Coelho answers:

In order to move from the past to the present you need to accept your scars. But you need to do everything in your power in order to heal them so that the ghosts of your past will no longer barge in your present life.

It is a long and difficult process I grant you – but it’s a way out of guilt and hatred in my eyes.

......... But I am glad I did learn.

From, "The Alchemist"

“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.

“Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”

“But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.”

“Well, that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.”

“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”

“That makes sense. Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”

“Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?”

“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”

“You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?”

“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

“Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart.

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out indeed, to be threatening place.

“So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.”

Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

A Christmas Gift

In keeping true to his tradition over the years, Paulo Coelho has been kind enough in sending again this year a story as a Christmas gift to many of his readers. I am not a Christian by faith, yet I find the story immensely inspiring and captivating; for its the basic human goodness that it talks about: the basic goodness that is simply Divine and Godly!

The Pine Tree of St. Martin

As the parish priest of a little village called St Martin in the French Pyrenees was getting ready to celebrate Mass one Christmas Eve, he began to smell a wonderful fragrance. It was winter, and the flowers had disappeared a long time before, yet there was the pleasant smell of springtime floating through the air.

Intrigued, he decided to go outside and look where the smell was coming from and across a young boy sitting in front of the school door. Next to him was a golden Christmas tree.

"What a beautiful tree!" said the vicar to the boy, "It seems to have touched the sky, and it gives off such a delightful scent! It's made of pure gold! Where did you find it?"

The young man looked up at the priest, seemingly unhappy with what had been said.

"Truth is, the longer it took me to carry this home, the harder the leaves got and the heavier it felt. But it can't be real gold, and I'm scared of what my parent's reaction will be."

The young man continued his story.

"This morning, my mother gave me money to go to the city of Tarbes to buy a Christmas tree. When I was going through the village, I saw a lonely old woman who had no family to spend Christmas dinner with. I was certain I would be able to get a good discount on a tree, so I gave her some of the money I had for her to buy herself some dinner. As I continued through the town, I passed by the prison and saw an enormous line of people waiting to go inside to visit their loved ones. I overheard some of them say they did not even have enough money to buy a slice of Christmas fruit cake. I was so moved by these young people waiting in line and I decided I would share some of my money with them too. I gave most of it to them, keeping just a small amount for myself to buy some lunch. The florist I was going to visit was a friend of the family and I was sure that if I promised to work all next week for him, that he would give me the Christmas tree for free. When I reached the market, though, I found out that the florist I knew did not go to work that day. I tried as hard as I could to find someone who would lend me the money I needed to buy the Christmas tree somewhere else, but it was all in vain. Frustrated, I decided that having some lunch would help me clear my head and I walked over to the restaurant counter. As I approached the bar, a foreign-looking little boy asked me if I could spare some change because he hadn't eaten in two days. I remembered that at one time even Jesus may have gone hungry, and I handed over the little money I had left and began returning home. On my walk back, I broke off a brand from a pine tree and tried to decorate it as well as I could, since I didn't get the Christmas tree I was supposed to get. But as I continued to walk it just kept getting heavier and heavier and turning into metal, and it's far from being the Christmas tree that my mother is expecting me to come home with.

"My dear boy", said the priest, "the perfume that is emanating from this tree leaves no doubt whatsoever that it has been touched by heaven. Let me tell you the rest of its story."

The priest sat down next to the boy and continued, "As soon as you walked away from that lonely woman, she immediately asked the Virgin Mary, a mother like herself, to give you an unexpected blessing. The parents of the prisoners were convinced that they had come across an angel, and said prayers of thanks for the Christmas cakes they were now able to buy. The boy you met at the restaurant gave thanks to god for satiating his hunger. The Virgin, angels and Jesus heard the prayers of those who had been helped and when you broke off the brand from the pine tree, the Virgin bathed it in perfume. As you continued to walk, the angels touched the leaves and they turned to gold. Finally, when everything was complete Jesus looked upon the work and blessed. From now on, whoever touches this tree will have their sins forgiven and their wishes fulfilled."

The legend goes that the sacred pine tree is still there in St. Martin, and that its force is so great that all who help their brothers on Christmas Eve, however far they may be from the little village in the Pyrenees, are blessed by it.

(Inspired by a Hassidic tale)

Scars Make The Badges A Warrior Wears Proudly

With the year drawing to a close, many of us are indulging in some rather introspective moments. This December marking the end of the first decade of the mellinium, becomes all the more important when one looks at things as regards the road taken by the dreams and ambitions and where did it lead one to.

The following post at the Paulo Coelho blog seemed quite relevant.

The Black Tunnel

“I saw only a tunnel, with a man pointing a gun at me and telling me to get out of the car.”

I saw a tunnel too, except this one led to a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, the Glória Hotel. I looked at that hotel, expected the worse and thought to myself: “it’s not fair, I’m only 26 years old!” Fair or not, in the early morning of 27 May 1974 I stood before death and could not see what was happening beside me. Just the tunnel and the hotel. But my story does not matter, it serves only to say that I understand perfectly well what Sorin is telling me in a bar lost in the middle of the Carpatian Mountains.

Sorin Miscoci’s Calvary began on 28 March 2005, near Baghdad. He had been designated to spend a week there at the request of a Rumanian TV station and ended up being kidnapped for 55 days.

“Later on, when they freed me, the American security agents asked me how many people were there. And I told them: one. They laughed and said that just wasn’t possible. It was the psychologist who helped me, explaining that in situations like this, nothing in the surroundings has any importance. All you see is the focus of the crisis, what is threatening you, and you simply forget the rest.

Sorin has just got married to Andrea, who strokes his hand. We have been traveling together for three days and we will continue for another week. Cristina Topescu, an old friend who worked as a journalist in the same TV as Sorin, says that when the time came to mobilize the country, few colleagues came forward to speak to the President of the Republic, for fear of losing their jobs.

“I asked God for only one thing: to die with a bullet in the heart. I had already seen videos of prisoners being decapitated; I asked, begged to be shot,” adds Sorin.

Andrea gives him a kiss. He smiles, asks if I want to stay in that restaurant or if we should go to the only karaoke in Sibiu. I prefer to interrupt the conversation at that point – it was better to go and sing together.

On the way to the discotheque, I think about the black tunnel: without wanting to romanticize a dramatic situation, I fell that this happens to everyone. When we are faced with something that really threatens us, it is impossible to look around, although this is the correct and safer procedure. We can’t see clearly, use logic, gather information that can help us and those who try to get us out of that situation.

We reach the karaoke, drink some more, sing Elvis, Madonna and Ray Charles. Ours is an interesting group: Lacrima, who was abandoned by her mother when she was only two months old. Leonardo, who has just got over a depression that lasted two years. Cristina Topescu, who recently overcame difficult moments. Sorin and his 55 days in captivity, and Andrea, who almost lost the person she loved. And me, with scars all over my body and soul.

And even so we drank, sang and celebrated life. To have friends like these gives me more than hope, it makes me understand that the true survivors will never be victims to their torturers, because they manage to keep alive the most important thing in human beings: joy.

Rich And Rejuvenating

Something to make my morning all the more lovely along with the rich aroma of a good coffee, alhamdolillah. Thanks to Paulo Coelho's blog.


A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says “I was beaten,” he does not say “My men were beaten”.
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.

‘Men have forgotten this truth,’ said the fox. ‘But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.’

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.

The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry(29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.

Pushing The Rock

The following is such a lovely read that I couldn't help sharing it here.

Read. Relish. And refresh your faith :)

(Reproduced as found on Paulo Coelho's blog) 

a story sent by Nitin Mukundan K.P

A man was sleeping at night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light. An angel appeared, showed a large rock in front of his cabin and asked him to push against the rock with all his might.

This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock.

Nothing happened. And he decided to make it a matter of prayer.

“Lord I have labored long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even been able to budge that rock. What is wrong? Why am I failing?”

The angel appeared again :

“My friend, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. And now you come to me with your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so?”

“Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled, your back sinewy and brown, your hands are callused from constant pressure, and your legs have become massive and hard.

“Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have.

“You learned the importance of discipline and training,

” This you have done. Now it is my turn, my task.”

And the angel moved the rock, showing to the man a beautiful path ahead.