I live in a cage, and I have lived in it for a long time. How long? I don’t know. My memory is, as you know, not much to boast about. But that doesn’t mean that I am an idiot. I understand more than you think.

But it is obvious that you like to laugh at me when you make me repeat all those ridiculous words and phrases that you say to me. And when you have finished laughing, you claim that I am stupid because you are convinced that I can’t think up anything of my own.

But all the same, I have always liked it in my cage. I have been given food, and one ought to be grateful for that. But there are also other things that I have appreciated. And in the first instance I mean the pleasure I have had of being able to hear all the conversations that have been carried out around the fancy dining table. And they weren’t just any old conversations. Because I live in the home of a learned person, somebody who knows a lot.

As I have said, there are a lot of conversations that are carried on here in the house. And there have been many people who have come to visit. They have sat for hours and talked and argued about all manner of things. And that is good. Isn’t it? Just think how much I have been able to learn. I ought to be a happy parrot. Surely I ought to be?

I readily admit that it has been a delight to listen to the conversations that have been carried out. A true delight. But no longer. You see, over time I have become all the more disturbed by these conversations. Indeed, in the end, they became really intolerable.

Perhaps you are wondering: What do you mean by that, parrot?

There are three differences between me and you. The first is that I am sitting in a cage, and you are not. I will never be able to fly outside my cage. But you, on the other hand, can go where you want, because there is no fence that shuts you in.

The second difference is that I know that I am sitting in a cage. There is no doubt about that. But you, on the other hand, remain unaware of the cage that you yourselves are sitting in, the cage inside your heads. When you read this, you will certainly give a start as if you had been insulted. Yes, insulted in the same way that you insult me every time you laugh at me when I repeat all your little witticisms. 

The third difference is that I can refrain from repeating everything you say. Instead, inside my cage, when I want to, I can think of new thoughts, thoughts that wouldn’t always please you if you got to hear them. But you, you can’t think any new thoughts. Because all day long you simply repeat what you hear and read. Even the man in whose house I live, and who knows a tremendous amount, repeats everything he reads. Yes he does, without being aware of it. He repeats and repeats so that he almost turns blue in the face. 

Now you understand why I can’t stick this. All of you just repeat yourselves. And why do you do that? I’ll tell you, it is because you can’t do anything else when you sit there in your cage. 

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LIFE. Ernest Hemingway presence in La Havana, Cuba, is irrefutable for any wanderer. In La Bodeguita del Medio you can drink mojitos (rum with mint and sugar) that Hemingway would drink. In El Floridita, the tourist should drink a “Daiquiri”, the drink Hemingway liked. Moreover, I’m aware nowadays there is a special Hemingway drink: a considerable measure of rum, a finger of Toronja juice, a half green lemon squeezed, stirred and served very cold.

While you drink the special, you can watch on the wall some photographs of the writer with the actors Errol Flynn and Spencer Tracy. The places where Hemingway drank, ate or slept are a tourist station. For example, Hemingway stayed from 1932 to 1939 in room 511 in La Havana Vieja in the Ambos Mundos Hotel. That room is a museum.

The cultural visitor, looking for something else than a spot on the beach where to put his towel, will also go to the Hemingway museum in the Vigia Ranch 15 kilometres away from La Havana, in the neighbourhood of San Francisco de Paula. Hemingway bought the estate in 1940 and shared it with her 4th wife, Mary Welsh, his 4 dogs and with his 57 cats. Hemingway’s museum is in the same condition he left in 1960. Includes, apart from the descendants from the cats, 9000 books, 500 vinyl records, personal belongings, hunting trophies and his famous yacht “El Pilar”.

In 1932 a hurricane left the Hemingway’s yacht isolated. Gregorio Fuentes, a fisher born in The Canary Islands, rescued him. In 1936, he asked him to get in charge of his yacht and become his fishing guide. During 2nd world war, German submarines operated in the Cuba keys with the mission to torpedo down American merchant ships, which carried raw material to make armament in the United States. Hemingway and Gregorio Fuentes painted the yacht in black, then armed it with a machine gun and sailed away to hunt submarines. In the yacht, among others, was a radio operator from the North American embassy. From the El Pilar, they warned the American air force when they spotted a submarine.

Finally, the visitor will take a short trip to Cojimar, sailors’ village, 15 kilometres away from La Havana, the pier where they left El Pilar. Here the writer met fishers that used to fish with bottles of water, sugar and cookies, they would venture to the sea to fish with lines, and barehanded, some fish more significant than their boats. Gregorio Fuentes and Ernest Hemingway would sit in the bar La Terraza to observe the sea and drink mojitos.

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LIFE. “Like hundreds of visitors, I look out over the mighty ruin city of Machu Picchu in Peru. Below is the winding river Urubamba or Willcamayu, which in Quechua means “the sun’s river”. I sigh with amazement, as do hundreds of hundreds of tourists every day, at the sight of these high mountains and the most famous creation of Inca culture.

Although it is not so easy to get here, the number of tourists increases every year. In an hour and a half, a bus takes us early in the morning from Cusco to Ollantaytambo, where a train awaits to take us to Aguas Calientes, a tourist town among green mountains. From there, a bus takes us along a winding mountain road 700 meters up to the Machu Pichu entrance.”

In October 1943, poet Pablo Neruda was said to have visited Machu Picchu. According to him, the visit came to be a magical revelation that transformed him as a human and as a poet. In 1945, he published one of his best-known poems, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (“Machu Picchu’s Heights”).

How could Pablo Neruda get to the city of Machu Picchu, is a question that is asked spontaneously? Luis Nieto Degregori, one of the more critical writers in Cusco, has researched the story Pablo Neruda’s visit to Machu Picchu. His father, Luis Nieto Miranda, met Neruda in Cusco in 1943.

In a 2004 chronicle entitled “Neruda in Machu Picchu,” Luis Nieto Degregori claims that Neruda arrived in Cusco by train on the afternoon of October 26. With him was his wife Delia del Carril, the Peruvian writer Esteban Pavletich, as well as Uriel Garcia, writer and senator for Cusco.

Cusco, situated at 3,500 meters above sea level, was not the tourist Mecca of today. The city had only about 45,000 inhabitants, most of whom spoke Quechua that came to the Plaza de Armas chewing on coca leaves with their hats, colourful ponchos and llamas to sell agricultural products and handicrafts.

Cusco’s mayor appointed Neruda, the guest of honour in the city. During the visit, Neruda was hailed during a ceremony in Cusco’s theatre in the presence of representatives of cultural organisations, artists and workers from the area. Luis Nieto Miranda provided the welcome speech.

The Inca trail was an access road. Everyone who has passed it certifies that it is one of the most challenging paths on earth. The four-mile trail runs along steep mountain paths. The precolonial trail with high stone steps is maintained today by the guides. There are several archaeological centres and tunnels in the mountain. It takes four days and three nights to arrive, and you pass an altitude of 4,200 meters above sea level in cold air.

Neruda reads some of the poems. On All Saints’ Day, November 1, Neruda and his wife boarded the train to continue their journey to Chile. At the station, delegations from cultural organisations and trade unions dismissed them. Nieto Digregori claims that the local press did not inform about the poet’s visit to Machu Picchu. That trip must have taken place between Wednesday, October 27 and Saturday, October 30, 1943.

“On inaccessible paths and on ridge ridges, we came up to the lost city: Machu Picchu.” (Neruda, Condé Sur Iton, January 1972). “We got there on horseback. At that time, there was no road. From above, I could see the old stone buildings, surrounded by the high, green mountains of the Andes ”(Neruda, I confess I lived: memories, 1975).
Esteban Pavletich (1906-1981), a Peruvian writer, organised Neruda’s trip to Machu Picchu. Pavletich was 37 years old at this time and had the experience of climbing mountains after joining César Sandinos and Farabundo Martí’s guerrillas in Nicaragua in the late 1920s.

The mystery remains. How did Pablo Neruda come up to Machu Picchu? One way to get to Machu Picchu was via Aguas Calientes, where the train has been going since 1934. From there, the trip went up on foot or on horseback. That was probably the road Neruda took. But it was not until 1948 that the winding road from Aguas Calientes was opened up to Machu Picchu, the so-called Hiram Bingham’s road. And it was not until 1950 that Machu Picchu was opened to tourists.

The Inca trail was an access road. Everyone who has passed it certifies that it is one of the most challenging paths on earth. The four-mile trail runs along steep mountain paths. The precolonial trail with high stone steps is maintained today by the guides. There are several archaeological centres and tunnels in the mountain. It takes four days and three nights to arrive, and you pass an altitude of 4,200 meters above sea level in cold air.

This is heaven. Altitude sickness can cause headaches, dizziness, lack of appetite and difficulty sleeping and can have complicated consequences. You have to prepare physically, and it is important to drink a lot of tea of coca leaves. It is an adventurous route. The day we visited Machu Picchu it started to rain.

We took the bus down to Aguas Calientes, and before we drank a Pisco Sour, it started raining with lightning and thunderous thunder. From the terrace of the restaurant, we saw how American, German, Italian, French and Spanish tourists continued to pour into Machu Picchu. No one goes astray anymore; everyone is well informed with the help of map and GPS in their iPhones. All are equipped with rain cover, hat and boots.

The journey to Macchu Picchu is still an unpredictable adventure to this day, also for well-trained tourists who travel a safer route than the Inca Trail. Pablo Neruda was not an Indiana Jones. Neruda was an urban bohemian dandy. He wasn´t a rock climber.
Could Neruda really have made it to Machu Picchu during a four-day ride? I haven’t been able to confirm that.

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LIFE. Why do people start truly valuing what they love when things deteriorate or worse yet when they lose them entirely? People are more motivated to move away from something they dislike and not towards something better. Consequently, it makes them have a scarcity mindset and focus on the negative. This can be explained by years of evolution because we needed to look out for danger and adverse outcomes to survive for centuries.

However, things have changed; our limbic brain doesn’t have to rule any longer, and yet we let it control us in many ways. What people don’t fully realize is that it’s much simpler, more enjoyable, and productive to have an abundant mindset and create, not force, and take. With creativity and flow, more energy frees up for enhancement.

If we act out of fear, control, and desire to overpower, the energy it unleashes will eventually turn into a destructive force, which will inevitably lead to resistance and deterioration. Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening to our planet now. If we, as human beings, learned to perceive and act out of constructive, creative, and preservative energy, our existence would be fruitful, not destructive.

In other words, if we thought about the consequences of our actions and moved toward abundance, it would be beneficial for all. Unfortunately, we prefer comfort to common sense, selfishness to sharing, and to appreciate things once they are about to be lost.

When we value life, we start to appreciate all living things because they all begin to matter. Then we notice how our actions influence the world, and if we carefully thought about and attempted to feel through what the world is experiencing, we would not complete mindless activities.

And that’s how we develop in general. We grow and improve out of pain and trauma and not out love and contentment. We look for help when things are bad, not when they are good. Why are we driven by suffering so much? Drama attracts and entices people more than reality. Do you often hear people saying, “my life is so great that I’m thinking of ways to make it even better?”

I believe that things will start to change and shift when all of us look at how we live our own lives. Can we be content with what we have and learn to cherish it? The secret is to live out each moment consciously, to learn to find pleasure in small, everyday routine, and be content with yourself while completing tasks. It’s being not doing that makes us happy, being there for yourself and others, experiencing what it is to be human, and learning to appreciate life.

When we value life, we start to appreciate all living things because they all begin to matter. Then we notice how our actions influence the world, and if we carefully thought about and attempted to feel through what the world is experiencing, we would not complete mindless activities.

People need to start viewing mistakes as lessons so that humankind has a chance to take history seriously enough not to repeat it. And what history taught us is that jealousy, hate, anger, and forceful aggression only bring more resistance and destruction in the end.

We all need to ask ourselves, “Is what I am doing right now benefiting me and my environment?” Whether we want it or not, everything is interdependent and connected, and you can’t view yourself separately from the environment. Start with your way of life, what purpose do you serve in this world, and then decide whether your actions align with who you want to be.

The post What drives change? first appeared on Opulens.

FUTURE. How can you build a picture of the future that isn’t dependent on the past? First ask yourself, does the way I see myself correlate or interfere with that future?

What’s your picture of the future?

This question leads to several other ones.

How do you envision it?

What is your place in it?

Are you the same person or do you differ from your current self somehow?

What are you feeling in this future?

Does it align with your dream life or are they two separate entities?

You may think of these questions as irrelevant and not related to your current situation. However, without answers to them, you can’t move forward and expect a certain result. As Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, is called insanity.

You may have tried many times to lead a healthy lifestyle or change a defective habit but your attempts didn’t go far. It’s possible that you truly never saw your healthy self in that future, doing what’s needed. You could have kept trying the same methods without regard to different possibilities because it simply never occurred to you that you are capable of doing it differently. And that’s when your default future was created.  Don’t let the past define the future, use it as a learning experience, not as a measure of what’s to come.

When I realized that no matter how I picture my future, if I don’t change the way I see myself in it, I will keep crashing into my default view of it while my dreams will be somewhere else on a side. Once your view of yourself changes to reflect many possibilities of what can be, you can start changing your default future and your actions will align with it.

When our perception shifts, behavior follows. As I was creating a new vision of myself, I started doing what was needed to go along with that vision. Things started happening almost automatically, new circumstances began to unfold, new people and opportunities came about. Our minds miraculously create the reality we truly believe in.

How can you build a picture of the future that isn’t dependent on the past? First ask yourself, does the way I see myself correlate or interfere with that future?

If there are more inconsistencies in the way you see yourself now and how that self can create the desired future, things need to change in order for correlation to occur.

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HAPPINESS. Do you remember how carefree you felt as a child during the holiday time? The smell of the tree, family gatherings and presents brought so much joy and excitement. Have you ever noticed how easy it is for children to experience joy? Most of them are practically walking representations of joy. Do we lose this ability as we grow up and transform ourselves into“serious” adults?

Today I realized that I rarely allow myself to truly experience joy. I do experience momentary joy but it passes too quickly and I roll back into the “serious state”. The only time I can fully immerse myself in joy is when I play with my children, that’s when I rewind the clock to how I felt as a child and truly allow myself to let go. It seems that as I was growing up, I took on all the “seriousness” that comes with being an adult.

According to a Harvard study, “good genes are nice, but joy is better” when it comes to life satisfaction as we age. It’s easy to lose joy but much harder to gain it back. We tend to focus on the negative and dismiss the positive. Positive experiences happen more often than we notice, but we are so preoccupied with what’s wrong that we simply don’t recognize what’s right. I’m not a proponent of excessive positivity because it’s simply not realistic.

However, the ratio between the positive and the negative in our lives needs to change in order for us to tackle difficulties and stay resilient. According to long-term studies, the higher the ratio between your positive and negative emotions is, the more resilient you are in the face of difficulties, including health issues.

The research also shows that acknowledging and discussing positive experiences leads to improved psychological health and well-being. Additionally, sharing joy multiplies it!

Let’s power ourselves up with some real joy, the one we can recognize among other emotions and allow to take over. No matter how busy we are or what’s going on, we can take a moment and let ourselves experience some joyful moments. Who knows maybe we will make it a habit and it will turn into something extremely valuable with time?

Who can brag about their ability to be joyous?

The post Joy first appeared on Opulens.

LIFE. There can be many views of this question, including to simply live. I would answer – to fulfil dreams or realize plans. A few questions come to mind, fulfil how and realize what exactly? How is it determined what needs to be fulfilled in order to find meaning? Is it determined by a higher power, by the universe or by you before you were born?

The answer will depend on what you believe in. I’m a firm believer that we all come to this life with a set of tasks, unique to each and every one of us. The realization of which will ultimately bring meaning and purpose. We also get an arsenal of instruments that are supposed to help us with the tasks. Some have incredible physical endurance, some are philosophically inclined, some are really good at reasoning, some have amazing intuition and some feel close to nature.

We all have a set of tools at our disposal that are there so we can realize the tasks. The biggest dilemma comes from attempting to figure out what we are here to ultimately do. It may be as simple as learning how to use our unique set of tools to serve the purpose we all came here for.

How do we recognize those tools and put them to use? I believe they are our talents, what we are really good at and enjoy doing. They are what we can talk about for days, abilities that can make us stand out. It’s also up to us to develop these abilities so they start serving us.

All talents and abilities are important and valuable, but not all people allow themselves to follow their purpose and discover them. The key to finding meaning is freeing your mind from constraints and letting it uncover what your purpose is. What are your strong suits? What were you dreaming to become as a child?

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LIFE. We all know the irony behind movies such as Bedazzled and similar stories. The funny part is that most of these stories have the same moral or message, “be careful what you wish for”. So what is meant by wishing carefully?

Some may say why do we need to wish in any specific way, it’s supposed to be spontaneous. Let me tell you a story.

One man dreamt of a better life – he disliked the house he lived in, the clothes he wore, and mostly everything around him. He would always think that if he had a better house, a beautiful wife and more money, he would be happy.

One day, he miraculously met a wizard. The wizard said to the man, “since you have been asking for so long, I will make it happen for you.” At first, the man couldn’t believe his luck. Nevertheless, he got his thoughts together and wished for a nice, big house, a beautiful wife who would be good at cooking delicious meals and lots and lots of money.

When he woke up the next morning, everything came true. He lived in a beautiful, luxurious home, where he was presented with a delicious breakfast cooked by his lovely wife. On top of everything, he had a never-ending source of money. At first, it seemed like a life of his dreams but as time passed the man realized that nothing in his new life ever changed and he wasn’t even close to feeling happy.

Finally, he decided to call the wizard back and ask for happiness. The wizard came back and said that he already made all of the man’s wishes true, so he should just enjoy his happiness. The man replied that everything he has doesn’t bring him joy or happiness. Then the wizard explained, “you asked for a house but didn’t ask for warmth and cosiness of a home, you asked for a beautiful wife but not for love and understanding, you asked for money but not for joy, power, and freedom that can come with wealth”.

The man got excited and said, thank you, I understand everything, can I please have it now? The wizard said, since you know everything, now go and create it yourself and disappeared.

The moral of the story, always know your actual reasons for wishing something. The same happens with our wishes. When we wish something, we subconsciously give our brains a task, completion of which will be planned on the background. If the task isn’t specific enough, detailed enough or doesn’t contain enough visionary and energetic support, the completion will not lead to the result we are seeking.

In fact, it may turn into a completely different picture as happened with our character. The key here is to not only have an idea of what we want the end result to be but to visualize it in detail and create a feeling that matches what we desire.

In so many words, to build the result of our wish, visualize it and feel it through as if we already had it. Creative images feed our goals, plans and help create steps towards accomplishing our inner wishes. Our mind is like a monkey, it needs a pretty picture to be motivated enough to do the work.

Some people are better at visualizing their dream life than others. Most importantly, there is no magic behind it, just a great ability to think figuratively and make it a reality. The good news is that all of this can be learned. Who needs help developing their manifestation skills?

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Ett av föregående filmårs vackraste möten tecknades i bläckliknande cirklar, när forskare lyckas kommunicera med rymdvarelser i Arrival. Karolina Bergström ser en samtid där pratsamma utomjordingar trängs med bilden av det fientliga rymdmonstret.

I förra årets scifi-hit Arrival får en lingvist det komplicerade uppdraget att fungera som intergalaktisk tolk, då en skara mystiska rymdskepp landar samtidigt över hela jorden. I takt med att hon lär sig mer om rymdvarelsernas språk, börjar hennes egen verklighet också att påverkas av de nya kunskaperna. Samtidigt är det också hennes öppenhet och sårbarhet gentemot besökarna som slutligen möjliggör kommunikation dem emellan.

Sätten är många men målet ett – genom filmhistorien löper ett pärlband av exempel på hur människan föreställt sig kontakt och kommunikation med utomjordiska varelser. I Steven Spielbergs stilbildande Närkontakt av tredje graden sker kommunikationen genom en av utomjordingarna på förhand skickad musikslinga, där besökarna turligt nog kommer med goda avsikter. Likaså i 1997 års Contact, där Jodie Fosters rollkaraktär råkar på signaler från yttre rymden med noggranna instruktioner om byggnationen av en komplex rymdfärja, som tar sin enda resenär till en bokstavligt talat helt ny dimension. Och i Kubricks klassiska 2001 – ett rymdäventyr kan huvudkaraktären Dave Bowmans avslutande utomjordiska kontakt närmast beskrivas som ett existentiellt rymdäventyr i psykedelisk technicolor.

Men vad säger då filmer som Arrival om tiden vi lever i? Och kan filmer som denna bidra till att mota Olle i grind när det gäller samtidens “trumpifierade” misstro mot allt som kan betecknas som främmande?

När Orson Welles radiouppsättning av H.G Wells senare flerfaldigt filmatiserade scifi-roman Världarnas krig år 1938 skrämde slag på amerikanska radiolyssnare, var det med ett knippe illasinnade plåttripoder med världsherravälde som mål. Och filmhistorien är proppad med långt mer oresonliga rymdbesökare än exempel som åttiotalets gullifierade dvärgutomjording E.T. I fejkdokumentären The fourth kind beskrivs de utomjordiska varelserna i högsta grad som hotfulla nattliga besökare, och i den bioaktuella rymdthrillern Life muteras ett mikroskopiskt jordprov från Mars till ett skoningslöst sjöstjärnemonster med total förstörelse som mål.

I ett samhälle där högerextrema och främlingsfientliga krafter inte bara blivit legitima, utan också i allt högre utsträckning tillåts diktera agendan för mediernas omvärldsbevakning, är det kanske inte konstigt att vår bild av en okänd livsform ofta tangerar det skrämmande och invaderande likt marsmonstret i Life. Givetvis får vi heller inte underskatta det, om än flyktiga, underhållningsvärdet i blixtsnabba alien-monster eller fientliga rymdflottor à la Hollywood.

Men framställningar av liv på andra planeter som något potentiellt livsfarligt för också tankarna till de mörka krafter, som tacksamt utnyttjar vår rädsla för det främmande i syfte att resa murar kring den egna nationen. Det är lätt att skratta åt bombastiska USA-hyllningar som Independence day där attackerande utomjordingar får på nöten av en påhejad amerikansk militär – samtidigt hamnar skrattet lätt i halsen när liknande scenarier utspelar sig i nationens egna krig och gränsdragningar.

Nyligen skrev Donald Trump under ett lagförslag med målet att skicka en bemannad Nasa-expedition till Mars under 2030-talet. Bara framtiden kan utvisa hur den trumpska expeditionen kommer närma sig de livsformer man potentiellt kan stöta på – med total utrensning, koloniserande vapenmakt eller kommunikativ humanism. Tills vidare kan vi begrunda den sköra men vackra kommunikation, som i Arrival blir resultatet av lingvisten Louise Banks oändligt tålmodiga arbete för att till fullo förstå och respektera de till vår planet nyanlända varelserna.

Alla artiklar av Karolina Bergström

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