This week I got a movie recommendation. I haven´t had the chance to watch the movie yet, but from what I´ve heard, it´s a typical story of two people coming from different backgrounds who don´t seem to have anything in common, yet they end up developing a very special friendship.

I have to say I always found this kind of stories really interesting; stories about unlikely yet meaningful friendships.

For example, I remember a teenage TV show from the nineties that I used to love, most of all for the seemingly random interactions between different characters, and for how they ended up becoming friends without even noticing (or sometimes reluctantly noticing). It was titled "My so-called life", and even though it only lasted one season, it left us a few scenes that I personally consider masterpieces.

This picture shows (in low resolution, apologies) a few of the characters:

I especially remember a conversation between the two boys from the picture, Brian Krakow (the blond one) and Rickie Vasquez (the dark haired one), where they spend a good few minutes supposedly talking to each other, but with each of them obsessing over a different topic, just as if they were talking to themselves in turns (how often in our lives do we do that as well?); initially it seems like they´re each doing their own thing, but eventually you realize somehow they´ve been listening and supporting each other... Sometimes, simply getting someone to listen to you and keep you company is what makes all the difference.

And sometimes, it´s surprising how much you may get to have in common with someone apparently very different from you, and how much you can get to learn, precisely from your differences. In my particular case, a few of those first "unlikely friendships" came into my life just by chance, but they opened my mind so much and I got so much out of them that at a certain point I started looking for them myself, if unconsciously.

So, what´s the benefit of having diverse friendships, from different environments, with different lifestyles and even different ages? Well, taking into account that humans very often learn by contrast, getting to know other perspectives and other ways to understand life is a great help towards expanding our own little world, and realizing that the way we do things is not the only possible way by any means, but just another option among many other equally valid ones. This gives us more flexibility and resources to face everyday challenges, and ultimately helps us to live a fuller life.

In reality, it all comes back to the same: the more we learn about ourselves and those around us, the more we understand, the less we judge, and the freer we become.

All of this without forgetting just how wonderful it is to have friends with whom you can share (Thanks!) 🙂

As I already mentioned a couple of years ago in another post, "friendship comes in all shapes and sizes".

One difference between countries that Spaniards see very clearly when moving to Ireland is the time variation. And I´m not talking about how in the Emerald Isle it´s an hour earlier than in the Iberian peninsula (though it is, we´re in the same time zone as the Canary Islands), but the time of the day when we usually do certain things.

For example, in Ireland, people usually have lunch and dinner much earlier than in Spain, and shops also close earlier, for the most part. My explanation for this is that in Spain, due to the good weather, life is much more outdoor-based, and we go to bed later, while in Ireland, people go back home much earlier in the day, especially during the winter, when days are much shorter, and it gets dark pretty early.

This is something worth remembering when visiting Ireland: even tourist attractions and museums (and coffee shops!) close really early compared to the Spanish standard, typically around five or six pm at most.

Except one night a year.

Culture Night. «La noche en blanco», which took place just this past Friday.

It´s an evening where museums and other places of interest are open until late, access is free (although some places require booking), and there are programmed cultural activities all over the country.

I´m a big fan of Culture Night, so last Friday, I made my way to Dublin city centre, ready to roam and snoop around a bunch of exciting places. This time I visited the City Hall, where I was able to listen to a lovely choir, the State Apartments of Dublin Castle where the viceroy used to live, back in the old times (it had never occurred to me that Ireland had a viceroy), and a Zen Buddhist centre in Temple Bar, where I took part in a zazen meditation.

And it was there, in the zen centre, where I heard the idea that inspired today´s headline. A Buddhist priest explained to us the basic principles of this branch of Buddhism, which has meditation as its core practice, and he placed a lot of emphasis on the premise that, for them, meditation doesn´t have any particular purpose: there´s nothing to achieve, nothing to aspire to, no chasing illumination. You meditate for no reason. You just sit down. That´s it.

For no reason.

Obviously, that´s not all; it´s just the starting point. In reality, there´s always a reason. For everything. That reason, that motivation, is what moves us to do what we do. But I think I understand what they mean: this kind of meditation is based on staying in contact with reality without blocking our senses (in fact, our eyes must remain open throughout, which confused me a bit) and confronting reality face to face, instead of trying to abstract ourselves and escape from it. But as soon as we set a goal for our meditation and create an expectation of the result we want to achieve, we´re moving away from the present reality.

I found this approach really interesting, and I also got to think about how society nowadays tells us that we must be productive all the time, that everything we do needs to have a reason behind, a purpose, a tangible benefit. Have you ever felt guilty of "wasting time"? - it used to happen to me a lot, and it still happens today. Some of us find it really difficult to slow down, and even harder to sit down and do nothing.

But when we finally get to do it, we begin to realize things.

I must admit that meditation is one of my pending items, and it´s been for many years. But who knows, maybe this time round, curiosity and the paradox of not having a goal will finally be what motivates me 😀

Would you like to start with me, just because, for no reason at all?

Happy Easter to all of those celebrating 🙂

A text message from a good friend the other day (thanks Ara!) brought me back to the way I used to spend Easter weekend as a teen and young adult: in a retreat at a convent called El Palancar.

La Pascua del Palancar was a retreat for young people organized by Franciscan brothers from the Betica province, from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday. The main theme was obviously religious, as it happened with most spiritual events back then, but there was more to it: it was a wonderful opportunity to switch off from the noise and haste of daily life (even if mobile phones didn´t exist yet!) and get more deeply connected to Life, Nature, our travel companions, and ultimately ourselves.

Now that I think of it, these were probably my first steps along the path of self-discovery and personal development.

During the three and a half days of the event, most of the activities were done in company, either in one big group or divided into smaller groups. But there was one, on the Saturday afternoon, which was different: they called it the desertand it was a time slot of about two hours for which they encouraged us to find a quiet place for contemplation and personal reflection. You can imagine how challenging that could be for some of the teenagers: two hours on their own, without talking to anybody!

I remember I always climbed up the rocks on the side of the hill, up to a place very similar to the one in the photo: from there I could see the convent down in the distance, surrounded by the characteristic landscape of Extremadura in the springtime. I was carrying a notebook, a pen, and a piece of paper with a few questions as a guide. But apart from that, nothing.

Silence. Nature. Time and space to allow everything I had inside to come out.

I loved that feeling.

And up there, in that little corner of the world, the two hours would go by, breathing, thinking, writing... Then at some point I would start hearing voices down in the distance, maybe also the strings of a guitar, and I would realize it was almost time to return to the world. I felt like Saint Peter in that passage from the Bible about the transfiguration, when he says to Jesus: Lord, it is good for us to be here, let´s put up a shelter, and Jesus explains that they can´t stay in contemplation at the top of the mountain, they need to go down again and continue with their mission on the ground.

Sometimes we get so sucked into this world we live in, that we lose contact with what matters most to us. But if every now and then we take a break to go up the mountain, then we will listen to our inner voice again, and it will guide us to get back on track. It´s been many years since I last went to El Palancar, and my "mountain" these days sometimes takes the shape of a beach, but the idea is the same: a little bit of time, solitude and silence, and the answer appears.

What about you? When was the last time you listened to your inner voice? And what would it say to you today, if you stopped to listen?

I recently read somewhere (sorry, I don´t remember where exactly) that in order to keep healthy relationships, you need to have uncomfortable conversations every once in a while. This applies to all kinds of relationships.

It makes sense, right? Disagreements and conflict are inherent to human beings, and it´s the way we manage them that makes the difference.

But, what happens when you´re so afraid of conflict that you try to avoid it at all costs?

Hello, my name is Bea, and I´m a conflict avoider.

I´ve spent many years tiptoeing through life in order not to bother anyone, not to create conflict. Many years acting as if certain problems did not exist, in the hope that they would sort themselves out.

So, you can imagine what happens, right? They DON´T sort themselves out, even though sometimes it looks like they do. To really solve a problem you have to bring it out into the light, you have to talk about it, otherwise the discomfort stays there, under the surface, until the day it inevitably comes out again.

So, what can we do then? Three things come to mind:

• Accept conflict as something natural: we each have our own needs, opinions and ways to do things, which sometimes clash with those of other people.

• Not take it personally: one thing that helps a lot is focusing on the problem itself, instead of what we perceive that the other person “is doing to us”.

• Find a good way to communicate, so that we can convey our needs and wants to the other person, and listen to theirs, in a respectful and non-violent way.

When my daughters were small, I used to play for them a song in Spanish by Miliki, the lyrics translate to something like “Talking is how people understand each other, and that way everything works better…” Nowadays I still sing it to them sometimes, and also to myself, as a reminder that none of us are mind readers, and that issues need to be talked about.

And you? Do you also avoid conflict? What uncomfortable conversation have you been trying to avoid?

Do you consider yourself to be a sensitive person?

I´ve been asking myself that question for a few days now… I don´t think I ever thought of it before.

They say that you learn something new every day, and the other day I learned, through a friend and colleague from my master´s degree (thanks Idoia!) that approximately 20% of the world population are estimated to be something denominated highly sensitive persons, or HSPs.

The nervous system of a highly sensitive person is more evolved than the average, which causes their brain to receive a much higher amount of sensory information. This is not an illness or a psychological disorder, it´s simply a personality trait. And like any other aspect of personality, becoming aware of it is really useful in order to understand ourselves better, in this case realizing that some people live their emotions in a different, and much more intense, way than others.

According to Dr. Elaine Aron, who coined the term HSP (translated into Spanish as personas altamente sensibles, or PAS), there are four basic characteristics that highly sensitive people manifest:

• Depth of processing (profundidad de pensamiento) - they have a tendency to process the information they receive very deeply and intensely, which leads them to spend a lot of time reflecting on things and going over them.
• Overstimulation (sobreestimulación) - given that they receive so many sensorial stimuli, they can get to the point of overstimulation, or sensitive saturation, especially when they have to process a lot of information in a short period of time.
• Emotional reactivity (reactividad emocional) - they live their emotions in a much more intense way, both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones, and they also have a great ability for empathy, being able to feel what others around them are feeling.
• Sensing the subtle (sensibilidad a las sutilezas) - their heightened sensitivity allows them to detect subtle changes that others may miss, such as small changes in the environment, or in other people´s moods.

On top of these four central characteristics, there are a number of complementary ones that many HSPs identify themselves with, and some of them are really interesting. I´m not going to list them all here, so as not to make this post too long; if this topic has piqued your curiosity (as it did mine), I encourage you to continue to investigate.

But there´s one particular aspect that I think is important to highlight here: many HSPs often get the feeling that they don´t fit in, that they´re the “the odd one out”, and they´re not going to be able to find others they can truly connect with… More often than not, their extra dose of sensitivity comes together with an extra dose of suffering, due to not understanding what´s happening to them, or why they´re different.

This is why I thought it was worth contributing to spreading the word on this topic. Because of that, and also because every time I read another article or watch another TED talk on HSPs, I find even more things that resonate with me 🙂

So, going back to the original question…

Do you consider yourself to be a sensitive person?