A perfect Easter

This time I went abroad without a specific purpose. Well, besides having a good time of course, but I suppose thats a general wish for trips (and for staying at home, for that matter). Lately, I have been searching for clarity, however, and maybe there was also an "unthought wish" that this trip could clear things up a bit. With the itinerary as it was, opportunities were open.

Frankly, I don't recall ever having a trip as unplanned as this. Fly to Venice Wednesday, stay there for a bit, be picked up by Riky Friday, and then go to Ljubljana. Fly back from Venice Tuesday again. Staying where, doing what? Doesn't matter. It was the company that was important. I'll describe the highlights:

It was raining throughout the trip. Every day, every hour, and while it was a bit annoying at times, now I don't really feel like it had any major impact on the quality of the trip. Venice was nice, obviously more wet than usual - it was the rain, though, that suddenly gave me a bit of resurrection, to use a big word. I know how to get the best out of a rainy day, and dressed in rain pants and jacket, boots, and with an umbrella, the rain was not stopping my tour of Venice. Silly as it sounds, that situation just made me feel fantastic - on top of the situation, capable... Strong and happy. :)

Austin, Ivana, and Riky with the
Ljubljana Castle in the background.

Another clarity moment was when I got into Riky's car, and we set out for Ljubljana. It was an amazing feeling - sitting there, with someone I had been looking so much forward to seeing, with no worries, just on an adventure. Shaping life as you want it, not just going with a boring flow. Wow! It was a bubbly, childish happiness somehow, carefree and energizing.

The next couple of days we spent with Austin and Ivana, and while I was suffering from a cold, I could have imagined no better place in the world to be. Well, besides the rain, but who really cares when there is a fireplace, warm tea, delicious food, and the best company? We spent the evenings out and Sunday afternoon driving through the beautiful Slovenian nature. These days were so unbelievingly relaxing... We slept there for just two nights, but I felt like I had been on at least a week of vacation when I left the flat Sunday afternoon.

I went to meet with Borut, and considering my lack of voice due to the cold, that was a wise choice: That man has so much to say, and I loved listening for an hour or so over a cappuccino in the top of the  "Skyscraper", with a view of Ljubljana. It was really a pleasure to see someone speak so passionately of what they do, obviously reminding me that my own work situation needs to change.

Amra was the next person on my list, conveniently working in the Ljubljana Castle history museum. Excellent chance to learn more about the background of Slovenia while spending some time with a good friend! We had dinner, then Ina the flatmate made pancakes, and I crashed on the couch and pretty much slept for 12 hours - exhausted from coughing. Back at the castle Monday, I had a private tour of post-WW2 Slovenian history, which gave me a useful understanding of the current culture. :)

Next, I met with Miha in the center, and he took me to his favorite pub-ish place by the river. They had this amazingly thick hot chocolate, which I have only found in Balkan countries - uhm! And again, I realised that I was sitting across from a man who has found his true calling. To see Miha talk about his work was very inspiring - it was like his expression changed when he described what he does, with a lot of passion shining subtly, yet clearly, from him. A completely different kind of person from Borut, they however both gave me the same feeling of desire to find something like that for myself.

Miha left me with an advice: "Stop worrying. Relax, you will find your place." So the rest of the evening I spent utterly carefree with a girl whom has come to mean a lot to me the last couple of years - Jasna. We had a delicious dinner and then went to a café for amazing cakes and cappuccinos, and then strolled through the rain to my couch of the night at Demjan's place.

On the way back to Venice airport, ridiculously early the next (snowy!!) morning, I reflected on the trip. It had been perfect. 6 nights in total only, but it felt like so much had happened, I met with so many and seen so much! A lot of new motivation to go home and then forward - energized and filled with love and a rare sense of clarity. Finally.

When taste motivates

Once in a while we get a taste of something sweet, something utterly delicious - and we want more. The taste might be the knowledge of a job, which would be perfect, or a potential partner, who could rock the world, or something else, which we realise could be amazing to have. 

But we get just a taste. 

Those windows serve as inspiration for dreams, at least for me. They make me realise what I want with or in my life (which as you know is otherwise a sore spot for me). A taste that makes me light up, makes my heart beat, makes me dream of what might be - those are the moments I'm talking about!

But they can be volatile, such moments.  

I can feel that I have different options for handling them. One is to be disappointed and resign from the pursuit of something similar, thinking "there will never be anything as good as..." or "I never get what I want". This is the side of me that is afraid to dream, 'cause what if I will never be able to make my dreams come true? I would be unhappy forever!!

Then there is the more optimistic side of me, which (luckily!) is the predominant. This side uses the taste as motivation, remembers the taste, and keeps looking for it. The world is HUGE, there is FOR SURE something or someone else out there to give you the same satisfaction. 

It might feel like a loss, being deprived of the taste, but really it is a gain - an opportunity to realise how you can improve what you currently have. It makes you realise what it is you're looking for. It reminds you not to settle for less. 

On the way to happiness or happiness on the way?

I had a thought the other day related to my current happiness-track. It requires a bit of background explanation to get to my point, I guess... 


When people ask me how I’m doing, a standard answer is (translated from the Danish “stille og roligt”) something along the lines of “nice and easy” or “slowly and quietly”. The people who know me well tend to know that this is however never actually the case… I’m always busy with a thousand things, and while I enjoy that, I must admit that I am also always expecting and looking forward to things slowing down a bit the next month or after a certain event. Of course, they never do.

I have a feeling that many people are in a similar situation as me, pushing themselves to an unreasonable stress level with the expectation of things slowing down around the next corner. And THEN they can be happy – they think. I think many people will realise that things do in fact NOT slow down, thus continuing the high pace till they burn out. Reaching the happiness goal they strived for? I think not.

Say they DID reach their goal, with things slowing down/a high income/the right job/(insert-personal-goal). Does this ensure happiness? Again, I think not.

I’m not saying reaching life goals does not make you happy. Obviously, without reaching any of our goals, life would be unsatisfying, unfair, and depressing. What I’m saying is that we need to enjoy the process as well – because “being on the way” is the only constant in our lives.

Now it’s becoming a bit abstract I guess, and hard for me to explain, but let me break it down. We will always be in a process-state. It is the only thing you can count on: everything changing. Your goals included! Regardless of whether you reach your goals or not, as time passes and things evolve, your idea of your destination changes as well, so you will always somehow be on the way towards the goal. The final destination in this regard is unreachable (till death, but considering the happiness aspect, that’s irrelevant in this regard (depending on one’s religious beliefs of course, but that’s again beyond my scope here!)).

The idea of a moving target brings me to my point – or one of them at least. :) If you forget to enjoy the process, your happiness experience will be limited to the moments of reaching whatever goal you were striving for. Limited because of the fact that new goals will follow, continuously rendering you unsatisfied with your current state. Even millionaires want to make more money, right?

Nothing wrong with striving for your dreams (in fact I think its crucial to dream), but without appreciating the beauty of the imperfect process for a seemingly perfect goal, your life might become a series of races towards an ever-moving finish line. We’re back at the “happiness is a perfect-moment-snapshot-concept”, acknowledging that perfection is imperfect.

So maybe make it a goal itself to enjoy the way to our other goals – treasure the process! :)

Why perfection isn't perfect

I just came back from a theater performance called "Darkness" (Mørke - se mere her!). I didn't quite know what to expect from the show, only that it would have a peculiar scenography and an innovative approach to telling a story about stress. 

So, it turns out to be a one man show, the stage is set as a simplistic apartment with a cupboard, a table, a chair, a flat screen TV, and white walls. The walls at times serve as a screen for projections of pictures and figures, which support the story; e.g. a projection of a calendar filling up with blocks of meetings or of the actor, when he has an out of body experience. The furniture is used as a setting for several different scenes, without actually changing the stage - very impressive how many different images they managed to create with those simple measures!

From http://www.nbt.dk/

The story is about a man who becomes stressed. His job brings him around the world to companies, where he gives presentations about how they should focus on success and opportunities instead of failure and problems. (If I could identify myself with this job? Hehe, erm... Yeah, a bit, a recent example being in England, delivering a training about optimism...)

Anyway... This guy talks about how you can get anything you want if you believe in your dreams. Break down your dream into realizable goals and go for it! Success is within reach! Obviously he tries to live by this mantra himself, but at some point he loses touch with reality, and develops a psychosis due to his stress. 

The irony is similar to what I described in my previous post about happiness. People striving for happiness, forgetting to enjoy the ride - forgetting that happiness is rather the process than the aim. 

What I need to say after the performance tonight is that success isn't to equal happiness. Perfection isn't necessarily perfect. 

Why am I saying this? Well, as you know, I like to reflect by writing, and I feel like there is a lesson for me (and you?) to learn here: We strive for success in the belief that it will bring happiness. As I am unable to see the future I can't say that this assumption is necessarily wrong, but it might not come true. The pursuit for success and happiness can make us unhappy, if we forget to keep in touch with ourselves and our values on the way. We run so fast to get to the goal, not realising that we might just be pushing it further away. 

It's the same with perfection. I feel like perfection is a balance - if something is too perfect, it stops being perfect! Yeah, I know this is a bit contradictory (just a little bit! ;)), but consider the fact that you can always do more, however maybe wasting your resources overworking the product (or whatever). You could have spent your energy on something else, something more important. As a perfectionist myself, I need to keep in mind that good is good enough. Thus, perfection is a balance between the thing or task (or whatever) you are focusing on and its surroundings. 

I am however also contradicting myself a bit here, previously claiming that happiness is a snapshot of perfection, existing only when ignoring the imperfections. Maybe that statement should be amended to appreciating the imperfections rather than ignoring them? Meaning that happiness exists in the situation where you come to terms with the imperfections, appreciating that they are part of what makes the picture perfect - part of what makes you happy? 

In that sense, imperfection creates the contrast to perfection, without which perfection could not exits. 

Thoughts about happiness

In the past two days, spending time with some of the most incredible people in the world (the LSS trainers <3), I have gained some insights, which I have been trying to grasp for a while. I hope this post can help me define what I was looking for and what I found.

I have the impression that some people are looking for happiness throughout their lives, in some cases maybe never reaching a feeling of being truly happy. They are painting a rosy picture of what it will take for them to be happy (possibly including the perfect spouse, beautiful children, (insert personal dream), etc.). I think this quest has something to do with perfectionism overall - always striving for something better. This means that in the search for happiness they prevent themselves from feeling happy. Ironic, huh...

For me, happiness is the ability to realise that everything is good, even when it might not exactly be true. But letting myself believe and feel that it is. Tonight I was happy. Everything inside me was at peace, I felt absolutely and truly satisfied with where I was right there and then. Breaking this down, happiness is about appreciating what you have in a certain moment, being able to shut any disturbances out.

Happiness is elusive, though. As soon as you start analysing it, the feeling will be gone. (Like the atom model: you cannot know both where the atom is and what its speed is, for those of you who are into that kind of analogies... ;)) The moment is fragile - you can only appreciate it when you have it, 'cause when you start thinking about why you are happy you will break the focus, and you cannot feel happy and analyse the feeling at the same time. Why not? Because happiness is a bit of perfection in a vacuum of time and space, and perfection cannot exist outside the vacuum moment. This also means that there can't be various degrees of happiness (since perfect is, well, perfect). Further, this means that the way you can measure happiness (if in some case you would like to talk about quantification) is by counting how often you feel happy, and not how happy you feel. Anyway...

Am I deceiving myself into feeling happy? Disregarding the negative (or just non-optimal) things around me? Hmm... Yes. And I treasure the ability to be able to do that. :)

Happiness is a state of mind. I believe in that now more than ever - despite the fact that I have had this text hanging on my wall for 8 years.

See, someone agrees! ;)

 Make sure to check out 

the subsequent blogpost - 

Why perfection isn't perfect!