Serendipity (Part 2)

Still in awe of good things that happen as “accidents” and my fascination with the way the universe arranges things to happen, I collected some interesting stuff that was created by “lucky coincidence”, enjoy:

- “And we owe our health to PENICILIN”: In 1928 an untidy Scottish biologist and pharmacologist named Alexander Fleming came back to his laboratory after spending August on Holiday with his family. Before he left he had been doing some research on staphylococci and he had left his cultures in his laboratory. On his return he discovered a mold that had grown in one of the cultures, this mold produced a substance able to kill bacteria and was named Penicillin. It was released March 7th, 1929 and has been used to cure several bacterial infections such as: syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis.

- “Accidentally high; LSD”: In 1938 a swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann was trying to obtain a respiratory and circulatory stimulant working on a fungus named Ergot and a Medicinal plant for Sandoz Laboratories (nowadays Novartis). He got LSD for the first time during this year but he set it aside until 5 years later (1943) when he decided to work again on it, this time he accidentally absorbed a small quantity through his fingertips and discovered its powerful effects… I think this guy must have had the greatest job ever, he was actually paid for getting high as he became director of Natural Products Department at Sandoz and had the pleasure of travelling to our beautiful Mexico to try and study “magic mushrooms” and Olioliuhqui seeds among others.

- “The marvellous CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES”: The addictive chocolate cookies were ironically developed by an american dietician named Ruth G. Wakefield. She was trying to make a different kind of dessert named Chocolate drop cookies but she ran out of regular baker’s chocolate and used instead broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate from Nestlé. The chocolate chip cookies were born and she eventually became business partner of Andrew Nestlé. I think I owe this lady about 40% of my extra fat.

- “One of my personal favorites: SILLY PUTTY”; I don’t know if you ever got to play with this as a kid but a guy named James Wright, an american engineer at General Electric during 1943 invented one of my favorite toys by accident. He was actually looking for a substitute of the natural rubber that was used in truck tires and soldiers’ boots during WWII and got a gooey compound instead. He got so disappointed that he took the gob and tossed it onto the floor, it bounced back and 7 years after that a toy seller named Peter Hodgson put it in an egg and presented it at the International Toy Fair in N.Y. the rest is history...

I really hope you enjoyed this short list; there are many other serendipitous developments that you can find following the link below. I could’ve gone on and on but I decided to post only those events that got my attention.

Just to mention some serendipitous events that may catch your attention: Viagra, Cellophane, X rays, Laughing gas, Corn Flakes and Safety glass among others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity

Serendipity (Part 1)

“The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident…” **

A couple of weeks ago I heard this news about a homeless man who wandered the streets of Ohio with a sign in his hands asking for a chance to be an announcer again, the guy had done some radio before but lost his whole life (family, job, friends) to drugs and alcohol and ended up on the streets. He got what he wanted and a CBS news reporter gave him a chance to do what we does best and show off his talent. The video got to the right person at CBS and now everybody is offering Ted Williams big contracts to work with him.

The point of sharing this story with you is comparing the past and the present of this guy; his life changed overnight and (at least on the outside) he went from the lowest point to stardom and even though some say things just happen and that it was just some lucky accident I can’t help but thinking of all the events that had to line up in order to change this guy’s life at the exact moment when he needed it the most. Was it just a happy coincidence? Is there such thing as a plan made and written for each one of us?
If you come to think of it, we’re immersed in this “coincidences” all the time and we involuntarily dance to a domino effect that combined with our own decisions shape our lives. Sometimes this chain of reactions brings us something we longed for, sometimes it brings things that are not so good at a first glance but it always brings something that we need.
I think there’s two sides of the coin to this story: the first one is all of the external events we can’t control, the circumstances we’re forced to face (the lemons life gives us) and the other one is the actions we choose to take. Regarding this, I was reading about serendipitous events through history (which I will comment on part 2) and I found two very interesting quotes:

“All things are ready if our minds are so” Shakespeare
“Chance favors only the prepared mind” Pasteur

If these quotes are right, they sum up that serendipitous events may only come to reality when we’re ready for them, otherwise they will just pass by unnoticed. So maybe we do have the last say and seredipitous events come to our life whenever we’re ready for them; maybe this guy I mentioned before was done with misfortune and learnt what he had to, he moved onto a new stage in his life in order to start learning what comes next. If this is so, then how are we supposed to know what we need to learn if we don’t know it yet?...

Most of the time my mind looks for closure when it comes to deep diving into this kind of things but about serendipity no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to draw a conclusion, all I know is that everything is possible, everything can happen, even the most unlikely and unexpected events…

** Definition taken from: thefreedictionary.com

Image taken from:http://mantoos.com/entertainment/ted-williams-homeless

Following @alejodorowski

Hace algunas semanas dejé que la tecnología entrara un poco más a mi vida y decidí abrir una cuenta de twitter. Para alguien que no ve televisión (únicamente dvd’s), no tiene una lap, iphone o blackberry y que normalmente se entera de las vivencias o historias de los demás a través del formato tradicional (los libros), el twitter era algo que la verdad nunca me imaginé llegar a experimentar… Mis amigos con más de 50 “tweets” en promedio y ya bien adaptados al tema de compartir cualquier detalle de su vida, me recibieron amablemente pero muy pocos se dieron a la tarea de realmente explicarme las herramientas esenciales: el “@” y el famoso gatito. Obviamente me frusté al darme cuenta de lo atrasada que estaba en esto del “trend topic: #uso del twitter”. Una vez medio conocidas las herramientas me dispuse a leer la bola de estupideces que la mayoría de la gente escribe en twitter.

Debo admitir que juzgué prematuramente y que di por sentado que todo lo que encontraría serían frases vacías y tontas como las de “nuestro orgullo más reciente la miss universo” (léase con tono sarcástico) @therealmissu: “Haciendo escala en Dubai…tengo mucho sueño!! Que tengan un buen día :)” pero me he llevado la grata sorpresa de que gente con cosas importantes qué decir también se habían abierto a la tecnología y se han tomado el tiempo de unir algo tan frío como la tecnología con algo tan cálido como los sentimientos.
Fue así que a través de mis amigos llegué a hacerme follower de temas de mi interés; admito que mi interés también incluye banalidades o placeres culposos como TMZ y Calle 13 pero descubrí varios twitteros a quienes vale la pena seguir. Definitivamente uno de mis favoritos es Alejandro Jodorowski. Confesaré que no estoy muy familiarizada con su obra y todo lo que sé de su vida es lo que Wiki dice y como todos saben: a wiki hay que creerle la mitad pero decidí hacerme follower de Jodorowski porque él escribió una de las frases que más han modificado mi forma de vida y percepción de las cosas, les voy a contar por qué: Hace algunos años ojeando un periódico me topé con una entrevista hecha a Alejandro Jodorowski, en ese momento sabía menos de lo poco que sé hoy sobre él pero el nombre me sonó así que la leí. Lo que más se me pegó fue lo siguiente: “Cesa de definirte, concédete todas las posibilidades de ser, cambia de camino cuantas veces sea necesario…” honestamente para alguien tan cerrada como yo, redefinirme cuantas veces fuera necesario estaba completamente prohibido porque no estaría cumpliendo con las normas con las que fui educada pero esa frase fue el detonante de probar el “a ver qué pasa si hago esto o si intento lo otro” y creo que algunas veces llegan a nosotros ciertas palabras o ideas que no habíamos considerado y que nos sacan de algún sufrimiento, palabras que necesitamos oír y que nos hacen darnos cuenta de que hay varias opciones allá afuera que no estábamos considerando. Como piezas de algún rompecabezas personal que nos hacían falta para armarlo o completar algún pensamiento. No sé si les haya pasado pero por muy fríos que sean no creo que logren escaparse de que ciertas palabras se queden tatuadas en su mente. Palabras que sin saberlo necesitaban oír y que llegan en las formas menos esperadas y en el momento más necesario en alguna canción, en la conversación de alguien, en un libro o en un periódico cualquiera como me pasó a mí...
Esa frase llegó a mí en un momento de mi vida en el que estaba harta de la estructura y del “tengo que”. Estaba sin trabajo y desconocía que podía tomar cualquier opción que yo quisiera, no se me ocurría liberar mi mente y obligarla a buscar cualquier otro camino que no fuera encontrar un trabajo justo de lo que había estudiado y que tuviera las características que todos esperaban de él y de mí.

Creo que lo más valioso fue que esa frase viniera de alguien que justamente se permitió hacer varias cosas y no solo una. Jodorowski escribe, hace películas y es compositor y en mi forma de ver las cosas, todos hemos querido hacer algunas otras cosas además de las cosas en las que nos hemos encasillado. Hemos crecido pensando que solo somos capaces de hacer una cosa exclusivamente para dedicarle tiempo y perfeccionarnos en esto. Tenemos esa idea de que las personas únicamente poseemos la capacidad de dedicarnos a un oficio pero todos tenemos mil facetas que ni siquiera nosotros conocemos y que muy pocas veces nos atrevemos a explorar. El problema es el miedo a dejarnos fluir. Tememos a la inestabilidad que representa “el cambio de camino” al que Jodorowski se refiere, preferimos vivir haciendo algo que no nos lleve a arriesgarnos a perder la comodidad de lo conocido o simplemente no sabemos que se vale cambiar a lo largo del camino.

Sinceramente no sé a quién se le ocurrió que debemos practicar para el resto de nuestras vidas aquello que tomamos como opción estudiar cuando tenemos 18 años, edad en la que no tenemos ni idea de todas las cosas con las que nos vamos a enfrentar y no tenemos un gramo de madurez pero irónicamente “el sistema” nos obliga a tomar este tipo de decisiones cuando menos aptos y más cobardes somos.

La única conclusión que puedo sacar de todo esto es que todo se vale en el momento en que sea necesario para nosotros. Creo que no me siento con el derecho de aconsejar a la gente o a obligarlos a tomar mis ideas pero creo que el hecho de escribir lo que pasa por mi cabeza y a dejarlo disponible ha ayudado a que tomen las ideas que les hacen “click”, las palabras que tal vez necesitaban oír para completar sus ideas o llenar los espacios de ese rompecabezas que estaba en espera de una pieza.
Me llevé gratas sorpresas en donde menos lo encontré.

La tecnología me ha permitido leer diario a Jodorowski y muchos otros que tienen qué decir y que se atreven a compartirlo. Gracias a los que se animan a hacerlo o a pensar en forma diferente porque es así como los cobardes y débiles obtenemos el valor para ser nosotros mismos y hacer lo que realmente queremos hacer. Gracias por leerme.

"Thou shall love thyself"

We’re all seeking perfection. We’re all seeking for something that meets our expectations and then we can make ours. In the same way, we’re looking forward to meet someone’s expectations so that someone can make us theirs and we can feel important…but how can we expect to be loved by someone else if we haven’t fallen in love with ourselves first?

Most of the times we’re too hard on us, I should know that… I’m my cruelest judge, and I have seen that many people do that to themselves too. I don’t know why is it that we hurt and criticize our own ideas, our own body and everything we can control in seek of the best we can get… please don’t misunderstand these words, looking for the best in ourselves is one thing that I really support but what I find so sad is that we really destroy our self-love by diminishing what we do or what we are.

Ever since we’re kids we’re taught to love and respect others, not to hurt or say anything cruel about someone, respect nature and animals but it seems like we’re not really taught how to love and respect ourselves. We are programmed with certain kind of rules that we need to live by; take the classic Ten Commandments for example, the Catholic Church took certain common sense rules and made them part of its basic life instructions: “Thou shall not lie, Thou shall not kill, Thou shall worship your God, honor your father and mother…” it really looks they have it all covered up by these rules and most of the good typical mothers around the world teach their kids that common sense included in these commandments (even if they aren’t Catholic), but it seems like we’ve all forgotten about honoring, respecting and not hurting ourselves. It’s always been about judging what we do to others but what about what we do to ourselves???
How do you teach a kid to be strong, confident and self-loving? How do you teach them that it is only their own opinion of themselves that counts? And not what the media or the society thinks? If we haven’t managed to grasp this “self-love” philosophy ourselves, how do we expect our offspring will get it? Especially with the media dedicated to spread false values.

If you look for the word “model” in a dictionary you’ll find something like this: “One serving as an example to be imitated or compared” no wonder why we feel the urge to be like the models our modern society has presented to us. Just by definition we know that a model is something that we need to be, that we need to learn from, the problem is that those models are exactly what we don’t need to be. Their surreal and false version of beauty is accomplished with the valuable help of Photoshop and starvation, tools obviously hidden from the youngest who have no idea that what they’re seeing goes against any doctor’s orders.

When this false perfection meets our low self-esteem we get stupid people who know nothing about real values and have not a clue of how beautiful and worthy they really are.
Maybe we can’t really be taught what is beautiful or not but we can surely be trained to respect and love ourselves, stand up for whatever people may reject about us and do for ourselves what we expect from others: love us.
The Bible might have forgotten to write “Thou shall love thyself” as a commandment but now, thousands of years later we know that certain “modern values” are not good at all and that we’re not forced to follow them. We are able to see that if it doesn’t make us a better person, then no value or opinion should be accepted by us.
We can have the courage to be opinionated and defend what we are. Nowadays more and more people are starting to open their eyes and making their own decisions, they’re not followers of some trend anymore. Fashion itself has become challenging to what used to be “accepted” so why can’t we challenge those vain values that are only hurtful and transitory?
I dare me and you to be comfortable with who we are even though it´s against what we see on tv. What do you say?

As images can speak louder than words, I'll leave you with this great ad part of the campaign for real beauty by Dove.

the biggest fear

Almost every day I wake up thinking about the things I fear the most. I’m not talking about the ones that you see on tv or any kind of gross reptiles or spiders; I mean the ones that come from within. Those things you’re afraid to think about yourself, those things you’re afraid people might think of you.
Personally, I have a very clear image of what I don’t want to become or the person I don’t want to be and every single day I try to eliminate any attitude or behavior that may take me close to what I’m afraid of being… But where does this fear begin? Why am I so afraid of becoming a certain type of person? In my eyes, what can be wrong about that personality that makes me avoid being nearly like that? I don’t know, and I don’t know if I should be speaking only for myself or if it is something that happens to everybody… I don’t know if it’s related to the education we get when we’re younger. We are taught to have 2 opinions towards everything: good or bad and we are programmed to reject everything that falls into the “bad” category even though sometimes the “bad” feels really good… In addition of being taught what is right or wrong, during our life we accumulate experiences that let us classify by ourselves what we like or don’t, what is good for us, what hurts us… Through emotions, feelings and values molded by our culture we learn to classify and seek what we think is good for us.
And even though sometimes we enjoy something that hurts us, we try to do as good as we can...

Has it ever happened to you that you dislike certain attitudes or characteristics in a person? Well I think that’s very common, we can’t totally like someone (because we all have pros and cons) but I’ve thought many times that the things we don’t like in a person, may be the things we don’t like about ourselves and sometimes we’re to blind to see that. We judge and classify someone into the “bad” category, we reject them without realizing that we might do so due to the unconscious rejection of the things we don’t like about ourselves. Those things we try everyday not to get closer to, what we don’t want to be yet we find so difficult to get rid of.

I think it is great knowing what we don’t like, what we don’t want to become. Other’s attitude and our relationships with them help us see the consequences of certain attitudes towards life and we can choose what we want or don’t in our lives, with the help of others we may become better or worse persons, it’s up to us.
As well as we reject people and things we don’t like, we have the choice to pick and include in our lives things we like about them. We can mold certain habits, conducts and even opinions into our lives; adapt them to our own style because it may take us to what we want to be. This is where I find very important not only knowing what we don’t want to be but what we are looking for in life and the kind of person we look up to. The category we’d like to be classified into. We always need to be ourselves; we need to mix really carefully what we see in others with whatever it is we want to be, without forgetting who we are and without being some poor copy of someone else. Good or bad, we always need to stay true to our thoughts, emotions and desires that our personality commands. Those we can’t share with anybody, those that are only ours. The combination of pros and cons we get as a personality, we can’t find in anyone else. We may find and share some of them with millions of people but the whole structure and mixture of emotions, habits, thoughts and other characteristics are exactly what differentiate us from the whole bunch and we’ll be denying them by trying to be like someone else.

Besides identifying our biggest fear, it is paramount identifying first our biggest goal and everything we need to do to get there. Fortunately or unfortunately it’s not always easy living up to those expectations we have of ourselves and it is not easy finding a path that will lead us there but I guess that’s what life’s all about: growing and evolving into a better version of ourselves.

"easy comes, easy goes"

Lately I’ve been thinking about the different types of relationships I’ve had in my life. There are the ones that have educated and nurtured me, there are the ones that have taught me how to treat people and how I don’t want to be treated and there are the ones that have showed me how things and people are not always what they look like.
We’ve heard many times that “not all that glitters is gold” and if humanity was a little more optimistic, there would exist a phrase that would make us see how positive and reassuring things can come out to be from situations we didn’t think were so fortunate.

Just like life can bring us plenty of good surprises, it can also bring us people we never even imagined we would keep around as friends. It’s happened to me a couple of times that the people I call “best friends” didn’t come easy in the first place, maybe we didn’t really like each other in the beginning and only time has given us the chance to really get to know each other and appreciate the nice persons that hide behind a misfortunate “first impression”.

I’m talking about this because last Saturday I went to this party (one of my best friends’ birthday) and while I was there toasting with champagne and dancing my ass off I got to thinking about how I met and became friends with each one of them, specially the birthday boy and I remembered that when we just met none of us imagined we would end up having so much fun and sharing so many moments.
I’ve talked to him about our not so good “first impression” many times and we’ve both agreed on how difficult it is to really see a person when you first meet them. Through years of friendship we’ve discovered good and bad things about each other but we’re still around and we still care about our friendship no matter our flaws and faults. We’re still together supporting each other and helping us grow and learn.
As a relationship that has taught me a lot, I can say that I’ve learnt sharing and loyalty from him but the most important thing I’ve learnt is that things we work hard for are the ones we value the most. What easy comes, easy goes and I’m glad to say that the friendships that have cost me the most to discover are the ones that will hardly fade away.

Thank you very much birthday boy for being our Angel and taking good care of us, thanks for everything you’ve taught us, this words are for you, your last gift of this year’s bunch of gifts. I really hope you enjoy them. Thank you for sticking around even though we didn’t have the greatest “first impression”. Thank you for letting us see the nice person that you are.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Para Carmen

Lo más maravilloso de la vida es que nunca sabemos realmente lo que tiene preparado para nosotros.
Algunas veces no tenemos idea de lo que va a suceder o qué es lo que nos espera: bueno o malo, qué tipo de gente tocará nuestras vidas o qué tipo de problemas o retos nos vamos a encontrar.
Si pensamos de manera negativa entonces lo que viene adelante no es más que problemas o experiencias amargas pero todo depende de cómo queramos tomarlo porque si cambiamos esa manera negativa de pensar a una positiva, entonces lo que nos espera no es más que algo bueno y útil: gente valiosa por conocer y eventos importantes que nos pueden dejar las lecciones más enriquecedoras.
Sé que hablar de una manera linda acerca de esto, lo hace sonar más sencillo de lo que parece pero realmente hay todo un proceso de aprendizaje atrás de esto… para algunos es fácil pensar positivamente pero para alguien a veces realista y a veces negativa como yo, no ha sido fácil regresar a ver todo positivamente y con ojos ingenuos como alguna vez lo vi.
Deshacerse de ese mal hábito de la negatividad cuesta mucho trabajo pero yo misma me he sorprendido de las cosas que he podido lograr una vez que pongo toda mi voluntad en ello; creo que si mi vida terminara hoy, en este mismo instante, me iría tranquila porque la he utilizado para aprender mucho y crecer. Mi vida me ha obligado a salir de mi “zona de confort” varias veces y tener que adaptarme a nuevas circunstancias, tener que hacer lo que puedo con lo que tengo y a tener fe en que pase lo que pase, voy a estar bien. Creo que de haber sido una persona obsesiva en varias áreas de mi vida, he pasado a ser una persona que ocasionalmente se da el gusto de relajarse y de soltar un poco el control y hacer eso, por muy fácil que parezca, me ha costado mucho trabajo.

No todo tiene que estar perfecto, no tengo que saber y aclarar todo, no tengo que luchar por causas que no me corresponden. He aprendido a que el tiempo resuelve las dudas que realmente merecen ser resueltas y a que las respuestas llegan por el medio y en el momento adecuado, también he aprendido a que debo luchar las batallas que realmente me retribuirán algo y no las que sólo me dejarán más lastimada.
Tampoco tengo que ser perfecta ni física ni mentalmente, creo que la gente que está a mi lado es porque me estima tal como soy…

Creo que una de las lecciones más importantes que he aprendido es que las cosas no deben ser perfectas para poder disfrutarse. Como lo he mencionado en otros posts, yo he tenido que aprender a hacer algo tan simple como “disfrutar” de la vida y esta lección de no buscar sólo lo perfecto para ser feliz es justamente la que me ha permitido aprender a disfrutar de muchas cosas. Por poner algunos ejemplos, me he dado cuenta de que no todo tiene que estar estructurado y organizado para tener un uso. No tengo que llevar la ropa o el maquillaje perfecto para salir en la noche y divertirme. No tengo que tener toda la semana planeada con horarios y citas para preparar algo maravilloso el viernes o el sábado, ésta era una de las manías que tenía y me he dado cuenta de que los momentos más divertidos son los que menos se han planeado y la más importante: no tengo que decir “no voy”, “no quiero” o “no me gusta” a algo que no conozco porque el hecho de ir, querer o probar algo diferente es lo que me ha dado el gusto de conocer cosas que me han gustado, que me han hecho bien y que he adoptado en mi estilo de vida.
La verdad no sé si las personas noten cuando les suceden este tipo de cambios en la vida, creo que normalmente notamos lo mal que estábamos cuando logramos dar ese paso grande y situarnos en una mejor posición para comparar. La verdad no tengo idea si alguna vez ustedes se hayan sentido así o si en algo se identifiquen con esto, es por esta razón que lo escribo en primera persona, porque simplemente no puedo generalizar sin saber cómo se sienten los demás o si han pasado por este tipo de cambios cuya importancia radica en que estén ahí y que nos hagan ser mejores personas, que nos hagan la vida más práctica, más sencilla. La vida ya trae pruebas demasiado complicadas como para que nosotros la compliquemos aún más.

El día de hoy este post está en español porque está dedicado a la memoria de mi madre cuyo aniversario luctuoso es justo hoy. Eso me hace pensar en la importancia que le damos a las fechas de los extremos de nuestras vidas: el día que nacemos y el día que morimos. Son tan importantes que aparecen debajo de nuestro nombre en la tumba y ahí se quedan por siempre pero yo creo que más que recordar el principio y el final debemos tomar en cuenta fechas que nos marcan aún más: las fechas en las que aprendemos lecciones fuertes, lecciones que nos hacen crecer o que nos hacen perder el control para después recuperarlo con más fuerza. Estas fechas son las que importan y desafortunadamente muy pocas veces las tomamos en cuenta ignorando que nos han cambiado la vida.

Lo más maravilloso de la vida es que hace 11 años no tenía idea de que justamente hoy estaría escribiendo esto, de que existirían los blogs y de que lo estaría compartiendo con ustedes, no tenía idea de lo que iba a ser mi vida todo este tiempo ni de lo que iba aprender o a quienes iba a conocer pero todo ha sido bueno y útil para mí así que estoy segura de que lo viene igual de bueno será.
Los quiero, gracias por leerme.