Farewell Letter by Paulo Coelho

It is a sad day for me, because one of my all time favorite writers has announced, that he is leaving writing for good.

Well, Paulo... 

Good luck in your new life! As you said yourself: 

"If you're brave enough to say good bye, life will reward you with a new hello."

_______________________________________________________________________

Can you remember that time in your childhood when you realized, that everything that has a beginning must have an end?

All my life I was a fool, to think that I have some thoughts of my own.

Now I know, that all of us are just a mere reflections in the river of life -

the same source from which our thoughts and ideas are drawn.

I don't know where I am going, but I have enjoyed getting there this far.

And I am grateful for all the support and love.

Even though I know it is time for me to move on, I acknowledge that I will miss the different shades of light, heartwarming conversations with close friends, and few blissful moments with my loved ones.

All I want to say is - if I would have the chance to make it better this time,

I would write less and enjoy life more. 
Spend some time watching sunsets and smoking pot with Indians.

Anyhow - I am thankful for what I did had, not for what I didn't.

My life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.
The Moment is here. No more tears to be written.

Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.
 If I would have this another chance, I would leave behind all this playing with threads of life and put more effort on encouragement to go beyond the surface.

I would stop avoiding being smart, as I know it is hard and takes a lot of effort, but now I understand that it is the only way to be in communication with the universe in an conscious way. Every day.

I understand that there is no way to make difficult things easy, some things are difficult and making them look easy is a confusing hypocrisy.

I don't know if there is an afterlife. I was shure that there is one, but now I feel, that I would rather have just a pinch of faith instead of my conviction.

I have always preached: "You have to take risks!"
It is time for me to get involved in the miracle of life and let the unexpected to happen.

Yours truly,

Paulo

Indiana Jones didn't kill Nazis!!!

Indiana Jones really should have just stayed as far away as possible from Nazis (pretty much a good lesson for anyone). Did he manage to do anything to them? Well, they did manage to kill themselves by pissing off God when they opened the Ark of the Covenant while Indiana shut his eyes and thought happy thoughts about museums and how creepy his students were. Did Indiana really need to be there for that? Plus, if he hadn't interfered, maybe they would have gone back to Germany and presented it to Hitler. Indiana Jones may have saved Hitler. And did Indiana really need to LEAD the Nazis to the temple where the Holy Grail was hidden? The evil Nazi-loving businessman aged himself to death by accident, and then the Holy Grail was lost forever while the old knight stared daggers at Indiana, thinking "Man, I've been waiting here for a thousand years for this?"

The Real Hero: God

What It Was Called: Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark/Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

What It Should Have Been Called: Indiana Jones and the Nazis Who Thought They Could Outsmart God

via: http://www.collegehumor.com

Old Jewish Men Have Valuable Advice for Miley Cyrus

The chanteuse Miley Cyrus, a subject of much controversy these past several weeks, mainly owing to her performance at the MTV "Video Music Awards" (among other things, she mimicked masturbation with an oversized foam finger, twerked, and, unforgivably, sexualized teddy bears), is unhappy, despite her temporal success, with some of the advice she has lately received.

In an interview with something called Hunger TV, she complained that unnamed senior corporate types are "out of touch" with the desires of today's youth. "With magazines, with movies, it's always weird when things are targeted for young people, yet they're driven by people that are, like, 40 years too old." She went on, "It can't be like this 70-year-old Jewish man that doesn't leave his desk all day, telling me what the clubs want to hear."

I was saddened by this comment, because she carries the name of one of the great heroes of Jewish history -- the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great, who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity -- and also because, in my experience, 70-year-old Jewish men (and 80-year-old Jewish men) are often sources of great wisdom and counsel. Cyrus's career, as Slate's John Dickerson recently suggestedon Twitter, is evidence of the moral, spiritual and creative exhaustion of much of American culture, and her comment made me think that she could stand to listen to some wise thoughts from old Jewish men.

I asked three friends -- Erica Brown, a widely respected Torah teacher in Washington; Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles; and Rabbi Andy Bachman, of Congregation Beth Elohim in New York -- to share with me some relevant quotations.

Wolpe offered these, from the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the late non-rabbi Saul Bellow. Heschel: "Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself." And Bellow: "You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half."

Brown offered this, from the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan: "To believe in God means to take for granted that it is man's destiny to rise above the brute and to eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation from human society." And this, from David Ben-Gurion: "Thought is a strenuous art -- few practice it, and then only at rare times."

Bachman suggested these words from Judah HaNasi: "Three things shorten a person's days and years: Being given a Torah scroll to read and refusing to read it, being given a cup of blessing to say grace and refusing to say it, and taking on airs of authority." Along the same lines, he suggested this from Simeon ben Eliazer: "If young people say to you, 'Build the Temple,' do not heed them. But if elders say to you, 'Destroy the Temple,' heed them. For building done by young people may be equivalent to destruction, while the destruction done by old people is equivalent to building."

Bachman went on to explain by e-mail the meaning embedded in this quote. "Miley might do well to look at the landscape of hubris-infused rock stars who tumble into self-destruction, usually out of a misunderstood sense of their own power and popularity (dangerous addictions in their own right that only get worse when drugs and alcohol get mixed in)."

I would offer Cyrus three more thoughts, from old Jews who have succeeded in her industry.

From Leonard Cohen: "The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show." Cohen also made this wise statement: "When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you."

Bob Dylan, in "Love Minus Zero, No Limit," sang, "In the dime stores and bus stations/ People talk of situations/ Read books, repeat quotations/ Draw conclusions on the wall/ Some speak of the future/ My love she speaks softly/ She knows there's no success like failure/ And that failure's no success at all."

Finally, apropos of the licentious misuse of bears, this, from Paul Simon: "Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it's true."

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist. Follow him on Twitter.)

via bloomberg.com

A night I will never forget...

I'm not kidding when I say: "This is going to be the best night of my life!"
Tonight, we’ve decided to take a step further.
Diana and I, we are going to conceive a child!
To be honest, I am quite excited.
Questions like: "Is this life all we have? Where do we come from before we are born?"
are circulating in my head.

...And also "Is this the right time?", "How will it affect our marriage?" and, no matter how profane it may sound "Do we have enough funds to raise a child?".

I keep reminding myself: we are all born with more time than money, and die with more money than time.

Actually, all of this week, since we had decided it was about to happen today, I was scared as hell.
I felt like a teenager hiding my fear from Diana - always trying to be the best I can, and then somehow always ending messing up and failing. 

I even caught myself thinking - what if this sense of being a failure grows stronger in my bounding with (in my mind he/she already existed) child?

At that exact moment when I was literary "stuck"...  
As Diana later described it: "went numb in the middle of cooking paella and stared blindly trough the kitchen window at the empty playground") 
 All I knew - hanging on these thoughts felt desperately alone. 
All of a sudden I felt pulled back into reality by two arms embracing around my chest and a warm arousing whisper in my ear. It was Diana. Somehow she new. Or felt, I don't know...
Here is what she said: 
"We live in a hard world where our basic needs cost money, and as we get older we become responsible for the basic needs of others. But be not afraid - one look at ocean or sky can give the conviction that there is some natural tendency toward the formation of structure in the physical world."

And all of a sudden I felt a relief... I don't know why, but I felt deep down inside, that I can always depend on Diana to tell me the answers to some of life's most controversial subjects. 
And that was the moment I understood: 
Making love cannot destroy love, 
it only makes more love.

<3

Guess who is 60% water? It is YOU.

Why care about water?

Because water is life!

How to take care of your environment everyday?

- Reduce the amount of chemicals that go in your wastewater
(Some of these chemicals, like WC cleaner, can easily be replaced with their friendlier eco versions, others are easy and fun to make on your own - for example, a replacement for an air freshener.)

- Take shower rather than bath! (You will save up to 63% of water)

- Don't leave tap opened while brushing your teeth!
One glass of water is more then enough both to get your mouth clean and wash the toothbrush.

- Think about how to save water while washing dishes, regardless wether you are using dishwashing machine, or  hand washing the dishes, don't forget to scrape solids into the trash!

- Don't EVER forget to close the tap.

- Print these rules and stick them in places your whole family will see. :)

Have a banana

If you think bananas are just for monkeys, think again.

1.  Bananas help overcome depression due high levels of tryptophan, 
which is converted into serotonin -- the happy-mood brain 
neurotransmitter
2.  Eat two bananas before a strenuous workout to pack an energy punch 
and sustain your blood sugar
3.  Protect against muscle cramps during workouts and night time leg 
cramps by eating a banana
4.  Counteract calcium loss during urination and build strong bones by 
supplementing with a banana
5.  Improve your mood and reduce PMS symptoms by eating a banana, 
which regulates blood sugar and produces stress-relieving relaxation
6.  Bananas reduce swelling, protect against type II diabetes, aid weight 
loss, strengthen the nervous system, and help with the production of 
white blood cells, all due to high levels of vitamin B-6
7.  Strengthen your blood and relieve anemia with the added iron from 
bananas
8.  High in potassium and low in salt, bananas are officially recognized by 
the FDA as being able to lower blood pressure, and protect against heart
attack and stroke

via http://foodmatters.tv/

Love of my life

Once, while visiting a friend who was living in London, 
I bought a T-shirt with a picture of Big Ben on it.
You know this tower, clock and the bell ... 
(Frankly, I could newer understand which one of them is "Ben", but it is a fact - no matter which you call Ben, they all are quite Big.)

So I got this funny T-shirt and it played a major role in my life...

Despite a previous bad relationship and general hesitance towards marriage in general, she managed to capture me. Perhaps capture isn’t even the right word, it wasn’t a sudden occurrence at all, but rather something that snuck up on me very gradually. Our love formed over time, in a gradual process like the forming of a mountain.

Our love didn’t just spring forth suddenly from nothing. 

At the first time we met it was blessing because we met at church and we found each other very attractive. 

Once, after the service, she asked me if the tower on my t-shirt is a religious building. 

I got confused... 

(How can it possibly be, that a person my age doesn't know what a Big Ben is? )

I joked back: "No. It's an Eiffel tower."

Diana suddenly run out of the church sobbing. I felt so terrible.  

Did I really hurt this girls feelings that bad with nothing but a silly joke?

After a short while, I understood that she is not coming back by herself, so I followed her out of the church. I found her sitting on freshly painted bench in the garden next to blooming bush of roses and crossly wiping her face with a paper napkin. 

This was the first time I witnessed how touchingly silly and fragile a woman can be. 

Maybe that was the Moment when I felt in love with her somewhat unconsciously, 

although after this it took a while for our bounding to become physical. 

God's grace! Our love didn’t just spring forth suddenly from nothing. 

Tiny particles, given over time consolidated to form this solid beautiful thing. 

So it was before the turning point, and even more after the turning point.

Now I was waiting for each sunday just to take a look at her knees. I didn't dare to look higher, as I knew that my imagination is challenged enough with her presence.

We had been friends for years. Separated by differing paths after high school. Suddenly I realized, we were always flirtatious, though before it seemed like nothing. It went on like this for a few months. 

I fought so hard to not force time to go faster. Sometimes I was wishing I could just mute the preacher and fast forward the service, so you could burn me with your farewell smile. In my mind I knew you were it; the one I was supposed to experience everything with for the first time. 
We spent countless hours together running around museums and surrounded by piles of books at the library. 
We slowly fell for each other while we drank that glass of wine, which seemed to fill itself every week more and more.

It did overflow. In our wedding.

p.s. Yes. We did go to see Big Ben in our honeymoon trip.

XXX

I am tankful to Diane for reminding me love exists.