Day one, Spanish and English

Prefiero llamarme tejedora, tejedora de ideas o pensamientos. As I was thinking about creating a blog, I was wondering what the theme should be…el tema, y en seguida quería que este blog mío fuera bilingüe, o sea, en castellano y en inglés, así mi mundo sería más grande. The world opens up when there is more than one language.

We were in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, this summer and I was in two worlds at once. There was the “gringo” world, retired Americans, some richer than us, people I would not have the opportunity to hang with in my own country, but there, I was accepted. Then there were the Mexicans, the local people with whom I could also relate because I spoke their language and in my other life, mi otra vida, I had been married to one. It was cool.

Pero, regresando al tema, getting back to what I want to write about, HAPPINESS o FELICIDAD…what is happiness? How do we attain it? Jonathan Haidt wrote a book called The Happiness Theory, and he says we are all born with a “set point” for happiness, o sea, uno nace con su capacidad de sentir felicidad ya fija y las circunstancias no necesariamente cambian eso. Once an optimist, always an optimist? I am optimistic and have always been that way, even though my life was filled with unhappy events for many years….well, not exactly unhappy events, but rather more like not being accepted for who I was, being criticized for my thoughts or beliefs, but…let’s not go there. No vayamos allá. No hay que pensar en el pasado, un pasado ya muy pasado.

¿Merecemos la felicidad? Don Miguel Ruiz dice que estamos aquí (en la Tierra) para disfrutar de la vida. We are here to enjoy life and if we are impeccable with our word, don’t take things personally, don’t make assumtions and always do our best, we will be happy. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? I’ve been working on living these four agreements of Don Miguel, and it’s not easy. The trick is to increase your awareness of your actions and words, but life happens fast sometimes, bueno, casi siempre pasa rápido y ya cuando me doy cuenta de lo que he dicho, pues, ya es tarde, ya lo dije. Oops! Well, next time I’ll be more careful, but it’s a slow process, don’t kid yourself. And I’ve learned that you can’t separate the agreements, all four are connected. You can’t be good at one, but not good at another. If you make an assumption, you then tend to say something based on that assumption which turns out not to be impeccable and you take it personally, and then of course you’re not doing your best. I’ve seen this happen in myself. El camino a la Ilustración (Enlightenment) es largo y lleno de impedimentos, ¿no es cierto? Pero seguimos, paso a paso, step by step, sometimes baby steps.

So, I’d love to have a dialog about happiness, en castellano o en inglés, o en los dos idiomas. Write and tell me your thoughts.

Soy Lorena.
11/11/06