The success of love

The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done. — Mother Teresa

I like Mother Teresa, I feel a longing to learn more about her and her life. It’s a peaceful feeling to know that there are people out there that get it. That doesn’t close their eyes just because it’s convenient. I’ve been thinking about love lately, both at work and in my personal life. Love in different shapes and what it means. I wonder if Mother Teresa was right when she said this. I think so, and I think it can be understood on many levels. It’s the love in our actions that make them good or successfull, not the outcome. It’s never wrong to love, but it can be hard to love the right way. Especially romantic love can sometimes be dangerous to let out, to let flourish and grow. Because we know it will hurt us in the end. Maybe in those times, it’s a greater act of love to not love. But still, I have this idea inside of me, or more like…………a part of my soul, my being, the core and essence of  me…………that says that you have to let love flourish and grow, even though you know it will hurt you in the end. It gives me a lot of heartache, and I’m most likely wrong in my thinking. But when I love, I have to love. I have to love until I can’t anymore, until my heart is too hurt to go on. Only then I seem to be able to lock the love in my heart and move on.

The reason I’m writing this now, or thinking about this now, is because I am falling in love with someone I shouldn’t fall in love with. I know it will give me problems, I know it’s a love that is impossible. Not because it is unanswered, because it is answered to some degree at least, but because it really is impossible. But still I feel myself helplessly falling, helplessly holding on to the feeling of love to this beautiful person. How can I deny it? How can I push it away? When it feels so beautiful. So right, in the middle of all the wrong. But still, maybe sometimes you need to control yourself, think clear and be responsible. Because you know that is what’s best for both of you. And because you know that if you choose love, you have to deny important parts of yourself. Of course if you deny love, you also deny other parts of yourself. And I guess it’s between those two feelings I stand, right at the edge of a cliff. Should I turn away and run to a safe place, or jump off the cliff and see what happens? I have a voice, or a feeling, screaming inside of me. It runs through my blood, my heart. “Run!” It screams. “Run all you can towards the cliff and jump. Maybe love will catch you.”

The child in an alcoholic

I hade an experience at work today. I wanna call it a nice experience, although a little sad too. I had a meeting with a woman, a middle age alcoholic, has been for years. You know when you can see just by looking at people that they have a history of some kind of drug abuse. Lank and dry hair, the face grey and old (even though they are sometimes still young) the body tired, they eyes not quite there. And after long enough their brain starts to wither away, and even their emotions seem to change. I could see all this in this woman. She was skinny and small, and somehow she seemed like a little insecure girl. And while looking at her, listening to her talking, it was as if I could see her as a girl. How she must have been back then. I could see the little girl in her face. She was pretty. It was sad to think, how that little girls life ended up, and what became of her. It was sad to see, but also – it filled me with love for this woman. It reminded me, that she has not always been like this. She was a very cute little girl at one time. Maybe even happy? Or maybe her life started with suffering, breaking her down from the start. I don’t know, and I don’t know if I can help her. But right then, I felt a strong reminder that this woman is a beautiful soul that deserves my respect. It felt good.

“Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God“

Revolution was in the air!

Sigh, I wish I had more time to write here. I like it, to clear my head. But I work so much right now, and I’m so tired when I get home. And I have so much to write that I don’t know where to start. So many people I meet during the days, so many different lives. And so many unjust and frustrating things, that I feel powerless over. Some good things going on too.

Today a couple of friends and me started talking about the song “I wish I was a punkrocker” by Sandi Thom. They started talking about how we should dress up like hippies, and I don’t know, have like a girls night. I love this song, and it makes me wanna do something. It makes me wanna be like some people were back in the days, when people seemed to react to injustice and make their voice heard. So I said, lets do that! Let’s dress up like hippies and go out and protest about one of the many things that are wrong in the society today. In our city today. They laughed, and said sure and joked about it. But I was serious. Oh how I wish that I could find people that didn’t just complain about injust stuff, but who also wanted to do something. My boss sometimes talks about when he was young, and how they were active in society, spoke their mind when they saw something wrong. “We were out on the barricades!”, he says. I feel so jealous, like I was born in the wrong age. Like Sandi sings:

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In seventy-seven and sixty-nine revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

moving again….

I’m sitting here trying to count….I think I have moved around 30 times since I finished high school, and I still haven’t turned 30 years. A few of those have been moving back to mom between the moves (she’s also moved a couple of times so it’s still been new places). The name of my blog means deeply rooted, and as you can see, that’s not really me. I’ve liked the freedom, but also missed the feeling of belonging somewhere. So lately I’ve been trying to work on being more rooted. But, last weekend I moved again, after living 6 months in the same place. This time I didn’t move far, just to a bigger city close to the small town where I work. I’ve had my first own apartment for 6 months now and that was nice, but I dunno…it just felt too isolated. Nothing to do during the weekends, and the people I know there all have families and stuff. Plus, it felt too big to have a whole apartment all to myself. I’m not used to having that much space, I’m used to sharing rooms and not having enough space for all my stuff. In the apartment I had to try so hard to fill the space.

Now I’m renting a room in a house. I know the family that has the house, and they are really nice. The room is a little cut off from the rest of the house so I get privacy, but still I’m not totally alone. And it’s smaller, perfect to fit me and my stuff. As long as it’s just me, as long as I don’t have a partner or a family, I think I prefer this. I don’t feel at home in a big apartment, there’s too much space, and I feel trapped in a too small apartment all by myself. So renting a room in a big house (belonging to a family with 6 children) suits me perfectly right now. It’s small, but still big. I can be alone, and still have company. On top of that it’s also pretty central but still in a quiet area a bit outside. Perfect   I’m renting out my apartment for a while, so I still have my furniture there, I just brought my clothes, some books and other things that I felt I needed. The essentials. As I finished unpacking today and stopped to look at my little new room with my essential things, I felt pleased. I felt I could fill this space enough to make it feel like home. Sometimes having less is more.

Some inspiring travel blogs, and No Impact Man

I’ve founds some cool blogs that I wanted to share:

No Impact Man – This is definetly a blog I will be following, I’m touched and impressed by his effort to actually do something to change the planet. I really liked this article . To read more on the background to the blog and, what I would call, the movement, read here.

Matador Network – cool online travel magazine and network for us who love to travel. Lots of interesting articles and links to other blogs. It’s divided into different pages with different angles to traveling. My favorites are Spirit - Brave New Traveler (Exploring the inner journey through the outer world), and Change (Green travel, activism, be the change around the world). One interesting article I found was “10-volunteer opportunities for free travel”.

I’ve also added another blog to my blogroll Free Travel Go! although I still haven’t found a free way to travel, this site gives a few ideas on how to travel cheaper. It also led me to the other blogs I found and liked.

I hope you enjoy them!

Into the wild

I don’t often do this, at least not on my blog, but I really feel I need to recommend a movie I saw: “Into the wild”. One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. For so many reasons. So inspiring, thoughtful, happy and heartbreakingly sad. And based on a true story, I like that, even though they tend to make the movie versions more Hollywood and dramatic.

I sometimes see movies that go straight to my heart and changes me in some way. The way I see myself, the world or people around me. “Into the wild” was one of those movies. A must see. How I wish I could meet a man like Chris McCandless.

The trailer doesn’t make it justice but here it is

Some quotes from the film:

“I’m going to paraphrase Thoreau here… rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.”

“Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”

“The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.”

“Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one.”

[written into book] “Happiness only real when shared.”

Oh, and I’ve stolen the header to my blog from the movie

a week and a life later

Back home. It’s only been a week but I feel like a new person. This is why I love traveling so much. All the impressions, the people, the places, the stories; it affects me so much. I feel like I step out of my own life, and for a while I get to live another life. It makes me see my life from a different view. From the outside. From a bigger perspective. This holiday has been spiritual and thoughtful. And a lot of fun too of course. I made new friends, laughed, danced and enjoyed the sun. But it’s the spiritual and thoughtful part that stays with me now when I’m home again. I really needed this. I was having a hard time with some things in my personal life before I left, and I didn’t know how to solve those things. During this week I saw it all so much clearer and now I feel like I know what to do to improve things. And like I have the strength to do it. I really feel like I have had life-changing experiences this week. Maybe you think that sounds silly, I mean I’ve only been to Berlin and it was only for a week. Maybe it was that I traveled alone. Or maybe it was the things I did. Or maybe the people I got to know. I know there was one night in particular, when I had the oportunity to listen to a lecture by a former NASA employee. It was on the universe, stars and God. You know how sometimes, some things just hit you? Go straight to the heart. Changes your way of looking at life.

Another thing I love about traveling is how it feels like I’m coming home when I go away. See, I have this feeling that even though I’m Swedish, the whole world is my home, and everyone in this world are my people. Sure, Sweden feels more like home in the way that this is what I am most familiar with, the place I know best and the place I grew up in. But the world is so much bigger than Sweden, and I love getting to know different parts of it. Different parts of my home. It makes me feel more complete. I know we have countries and borders. But the world wasn’t created with borders, it’s something we humans have created. Maybe because we have a need to feel safe, to feel like we belong somewhere. I love that we have different cultures and traditions. That we are different. But I dream of a world without borders, where we can move and live where we want. And where we are all one people. Sometimes I forget, that there is more out there. More than my apartment, my work, my town, my family and friends. All those things are important to me, but sometimes I feel like I lose myself, when I forget that we are all part of something bigger. I know I’ve only been away one week, but it was enough to remind me of the world. It’s been intense, a lot of new friends and a lot of impressions. It feels good to be back again, but also sad. I wish I could live my life on the road with just a backpack. I wish I didn’t have all these things. Sometimes. I wish I could just leave it all and walk out into the world. Maybe someday I will.

Wow, going on a holiday is hard…

…even if it is for just one week. I’m leaving for Berlin tomorrow, but I’ve been trying to push it away all week. Or not trying to, there just hasn’t been energy or time to think about it, I’ve been so busy with work and preparing everything for me to be gone one week. My imagination has been running wild about all things that could go wrong and suddenly happen in the lifes of people that sort of depend on me. Obviously I’m a control freak. I mean, it’s just one week and there are plenty of other people at the office that can sort things out if anything happens in any of my cases. But still, it was hard to go home today and leave it behind. I still can’t believe I’m going tomorrow. But I can feel my thoughts slowly redirect and turn towards my trip and leave work behind. It will be good. It’s well needed. I think I might even spoil myself with a new camera tomorrow before I leave…

So yeah, holidays and no internet for a week. But when I get back I will hopefully have lots of fun things to write about See y’all in a week!

Being Human

“Where do i belong? Where do i fit? Who are my people? Where do my loyalties lie? We all chose our tribe. Its that need to belong, to live within boundaries. ‘Cause it’s scary on the outside. On the fringes. Some labels are forced on us. They mark us, set us apart ’til we’re like ghosts just drifting through other peoples lives. But only if we let the labels hold. You can piss your whole life away trying out who you might be. It’s when you worked out who you are, that you can really start to live.”

Mitchell, the vampire in the BBC show “Being Human”. I love that show, both a little deep and real funny.

Finally I can see an end to the holidays!

Ok so I know that sounds a little weird, and you’re probably thinking “man, this girl needs to get a life”. Well yes, I probably do, but I didn’t mean my own holiday. Let me start from the beginning.

I’m not sure exactly how it is in other countries, but the little experience I have about the world has told me that here in Sweden we have a lot of vacation days. An average of 5 weeks a year I’d say, but the older you are the more you get so some of my co-workers have 6 weeks. And even if you save a week or two for the fall or for Christmas, you can still imagine how it is when everyone wants to take most of those weeks off sometime during the short summer we have here. It’s like the whole country stops working properly, and it’s totally accepted cause it’s the summer holidays. And that’s holy. Our office has been pretty empty these last few weeks. And not only our office. The hospitals, the police, the school (well, ok that one’s obvious) and other government offices are just not working like they do the rest of the year. Most of the time the person you need to speak with is on his or her holiday, just when you need to speak with them the most. And the most frustrating thing about the summer holidays is that our clients/patients just don’t get that it’s summer and that they shouldn’t feel bad or need help during the holidays. No, they continue to have just as many problems as they do the rest of the year. If not more. Especially children it seems, who are off from school and left with their broken families. So, for us that are left working while our co-workers are relaxing in a hammock somewhere the work sometime seem even heavier, lonelier and more complicated than it usually is.

I should say that not everyone agrees with me on this. A lot of my co-workers loves working on the summer. They say it’s more quiet. And I guess some days are. And maybe I’m just feeling like this because this is my first summer working as a social worker, and since I’m new I don’t have as much holidays as the others. Plus, I have a couple of families that are really struggling this summer, and I’m starting to get a little tired of hearing “well I’m just the summer temp so I’m not sure what to do” or “we’ll take care of it as soon as the summer is over”. But today I finally started to see the end of this! My boss, our assistant/spider in the web andanother couple of co-workers got back from their holidays today. Not that I don’t want my co-workers to have and enjoy their vacation, please don’t get me wrong on this. It’s just nice that some of them are back. Especially my boss, since he has been like my mentor here. It felt good to get to talk through some of my cases and stuff that has happened during the summer. From a couple of my previous blogs you can tell that it’s been quite heavy for me. But today, it definetly feels better.

Oh, and next week it’s my turn to have some holiday Just a week, but still, it is well needed.