Category: Conscience

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Then they came for ME!

On By aconstanttlearnerIn benjamin-netanyahu, bullies, Compassion, Conscience, Control, Deception, dehumanization, Democracy, donald-trump, Ethics, exposure, False Prophets, Freedom, Greed, International Law, iran, Power, Rule of Law, Uncategorized, war-crimes, world-dominationLeave a comment

I am so angry today at the world at large but particularly angry with the people of the United States. Where are the millions of voices crying out with outrage and utter contempt for the actions conducted by their president who tramples on without any kind of impunity or accountability? Is America blind? Is America deaf? Where are America’s historically self-praised backbone and moral compass? Whatever happened to the constitutional principles of individual liberty and rule of law refined and polished by the hellish fires of a devastating civil war and hundreds of thousands of deaths? Can the American people truly go on about their daily lives every morning when they look in the mirror and see a human being who is allowing their elected representative to blatantly and unapologetically disregard centuries of lawmaking and law-abiding by countless nations which are trying desperately to preserve not individual but the world’s best interests? Teamwork has always made the dream work. When we are in it for ourselves and ourselves alone, we will invariably sell our souls to the highest bidder; we will throw the innocent to the lions, and we will turn a blind eye to the unthinkable: humanity turning on itself for the dominance, greed and comfort of a handful. America, you have become the very monster that you despise! A monster humanity can cope with, for as nations see it approaching, they can best equip themselves for battle and for victory. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, however, is a much harder evil to identify and eradicate.

Where are the marches on the streets of America against Trump and his minions’ infernal devastation and pulverisation of the very pillars that humanity has stood and built on for hundreds of years? If Trump & Co. can disregard and mock hard-won treaties amongst nations and laws established to preserve world peace and prevent tyranny, who is to say any leader in any other democratic country will not follow suit in the future? Trump is setting an incredibly precarious precedent in the word. It is one thing to have the likes of Putin start an illegal war and potentially bully his way through Eastern Europe. It is quite a different beast to witness the democratic leader of the most military able country in the world target nation after nation as a primal display of might and dominance. We left the violent ways of Neolithic tribes behind a long time ago or so I thought!

Where are the self-inflated and self-proclaimed INFLUENCERS (we careful what you wish for) of today? Are the younger generations so blinded by their own egos and pursuits that they cannot see they are missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to use their unique platforms as springboards to bring to account a bully whose actions are shaking to the core the very foundations of civilisation? Influencers, if you have such power over the youth of today, surely you have the tools to shape the world you wish to live in tomorrow. No point in mastering the art of skincare and weight training if you have no sustainable civilisation to thrive on. The time to denounce an evil and seek change is NOW!

I watch the news every day and I am in absolute disbelief at the lack of a public reaction by the thousands of influential public figures and celebrities in the USA. What good is it for a nation to be the most powerful nation in the world if such power is solely used to kill, maim and breed hatred; to turn us all against each other? Some power that is! That kind of power does not belong amid humanity but within the gates of hell. A man who can DEMAND a Nobel prize (did you ever hear of anything so arrogant and childish?) and in the same breath make up all kinds of hollow arguments to justify bombing and murdering thousands of people; blowing up into insignificance hundreds of children whose only fault is to aspire to an education that can provide them their rightful place in the world. Or are Americans more deserving of such rights and liberties than anyone else in the planet? And let’s please not forget what history has taught us repeatedly. This kind of drastic and apocalyptic actions which go unpunished have repercussions which will last for decades to come. Indeed, much of what is going on in Iran today was shaped by the actions taken by some Western countries such as the UK who in the early 1950s sought to control Iran’s oil supply. It is hypocritical and big-headed of certain world leaders to vilify certain nations’ attitudes when they are fully aware that history demonstrates their own countries’ leaders had a big hand in shaping what many of these countries are today. The human cost of this attack on Iran dismissed as collateral damage is blood-curling enough, but don’t even get me started on the environmental cost that Israel’s actions in the last week will bring for decades to come; targeting an oil storage facility in Tehran and in doing so ensuring that water supplies are compromised, not to mention the air that Iranians and their neighbours will breathe for generations. Dear world leaders who think you are so intelligent and mighty, it is blatantly clear you did not think this one through, for you are only shooting yourselves in the foot when you decide to poison the skies and water resources of the world. You self-centred fools! The likes of Trump and Putin may be long gone by the time their own flesh and blood will eventually suffer the consequences of their selfish and thoughtless actions but suffer them they will too.

Furthermore, is it possible this has nothing to do with righting a wrong and everything to do with economic interests such as controlling one of the richest oil nations in the world? Isn’t it a dead giveaway to see the leader of the most powerful nation siding with a deceiving master of genocide, Benjamin Netanyahu? But of course, Trump was intent on going all guns blazing (pardon the pun) and unchallenged from the get-go, and so he partnered with the one and only world leader who is mad enough, selfish and egotistical enough, as is he, to pursue a lethal campaign which is undoubtedly illegal and abhorrent to the rest of the democratic world. Wolves in sheep clothing, we see you!

I was watching Jesse Jackson’s memorial on the news two days ago. A number of very moving and insightful speeches were delivered. I particularly enjoyed the words of Reverend Al Sharpton who said the problem is not Trump but the inaction of Americans who know better than to go about their daily business when they know in their heart that the time to fight for the lofty principles their constitution stands on is NOW, not tomorrow when there will be more destruction and death; not tomorrow when we finally wake up from our slumber and comfort and have the guts to acknowledge that countries like Spain have shown in bundles the true courage needed to stand up to a Goliath, even when his might and power point to the fact that we only stand to lose. Military prowess and superiority do not come close to the power of nations that come united against immorality, illegality and frankly criminality. Has the world not just witnessed another Putin invading another land just because he can and he wants the world to fear and revere his power? Trump is already talking about targeting Cuba next. Hello, is anyone actually listening to his incessant verbal diarrhoea, promising one minute to bring peace to the world and not starting any more wars, and creating a magnitude 9 earthquake across the whole of the Middle East the next, turning neighbour against neighbour, and murdering innocent children and adults alike without even batting an eyelid?

I do not wish for a civil war in America but frankly, I simply cannot neither comprehend nor stomach the silence, submission, and shameful lack of action on the part of the good American people. We have had snippets of some individuals here and there standing up to Trump, but bearing in mind the gravity of the situation the world is in today and the war crimes carried out with impunity, one would hope the majority of America would be crying out in the streets ‘Enough is enough’ and doing everything in their power to stop this utter madness and this self-proclaimed saviour at its helm. American people, if you are crying out, we cannot hear you in the rest of the world. Please cry louder! One person’s actions can alter the fate of the world. History assures us so.

I leave you with one of my favourite poems by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

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Do YOU!

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Authenticity, Character, Conscience, Dignity, sailing, Sex2 Comments

Disclaimer: This is not written in the elaborate, well-thought-out style to which you are accustomed. The writing may falter, but if authenticity is what you like and enjoy, stay tuned. There’s plenty coming!

Goodness! So much for me writing in diary form from now on. Where did I disappear to? How ridiculous! Who am I trying to kid? Gym four times a week, working in the family business part-time, housekeeping, meals, mothering to the kids who both still live at home. On the odd occasion when I have some time to spare, my brain goes to mash and my muses decide to take a nap. I feel so guilty about not making time to write that now even that guilty feeling is hampering my feeble efforts to put pen to paper. As the muscles in my body have begun to develop and become obvious (better late than never, right?), my brain muscle is floppy and reluctant to go into workout mode. Why can’t I do both? I am almost fifty-six, not seventy-six! It is scary shit when you feel the beginning of that decline in your abilities. People always say time flies, but it is never more apparent how fleeting our lives are than when your body’s faculties start to fail.

Anyhow, enough of that depressing stuff. It is Saturday today and one of my kids happens to be on her way to Berlin and the other in the UK. My husband is arriving here today. I am in the Balearic Islands, alone. Doesn’t happen often, so I intend to make the most of it. After 30 years of marriage and twenty-seven of intense parenting, I really look forward to being alone. I look forward to sleeping alone; to not feel that pressure to have sex unless I feel like it; to not have to succumb to the expectations of another. I have relatives who think it is important to keep the other one happy, if you know what I mean. To them I say, f**k that! There is no greater sex than the one that is mutually desired, sought and enjoyed in equal measure. I would rather have those occasions every now and then than fall into routine, dutiful, predictable, and almost mechanical sex. The eternal insurmountable disparity between how men and women perceive what a sexual relationship should be. Who is right and who is wrong? Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn. I know what makes me whole and happy and I am not about to give up decades of brave souls fighting for women’s equality and liberation so that I can keep someone by my side. If they know what is good for them, they’ll stay. If they walk, it is their loss and most certainly my gain as I continue to do ME and retain my integrity, dignity, and joy. Geez, how did I end up talking about sex? It is as good a subject as any, I guess. Well, it is a better subject than most. After all, sex as well as money, or rather greed, makes the world go round and round and round and up and down, up and down. Lol!

It is a bit too windy to go out on the boat today and there is a red alert for a DANA; a Spanish term for a weather phenomenon characterized by a cold, isolated depression at high altitudes. It’s also known as a “cold drop” and is associated with heavy rainfall and potential flooding in Spain and the western Mediterranean. Last Dana in 2024 killed 234 people in Valencia. It was horrific! Right now, the storm is covering a large area in the North of Spain. I am not 100% it will hit the Balearic Islands, but I have been out at sea here when the weather was on the turn and it is not a fun experience. Boat rolling up and down as if going on an endless roller-coaster. No thanks! This links back to what makes me happy. Men like to show off, race each other at sea displaying their small-dick syndrome for all to see. It is all about who has the strongest conviction that they are Kings (of the sea or otherwise) if only for those few minutes they are thrusting their engines to the max. It makes for an extremely uncomfortable passage for the rest of us mere mortals, but their misconceived divinely given right to be adored and admired must be preserved and defended at all costs. Hey Ho, there is always another sunny day on these islands, so no need to fret. I am grateful that I and those whom I love are alive and as well as can be; I have food and drink on my table and my conscience is at peace. I don’t need thrills in my life, and I most certainly don’t need to prove to anyone that my life is worthier or better than theirs. I am just eternally grateful that I still have a life, and I am the only captain at its helm. Happy sailing!

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Bring me back to life – Part 1

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Betrayal, Challenges, adversity, Character, Conscience, courage, Criticism, Death, Disappointment, Empathy, Grief, Hate, Healing, honesty, Human nature, introspection, Judgement', Karma, life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Old Age, Pain, parenthood, pride, Relationships, Sibling rivalry15 Comments

My regular readers must be wondering why I have taken so long to write again. The answer is unbearably painful in its simplicity and permanence: I lost both my parents over four months ago. My mum died on Christmas Day and my father less than 48 hours after. My father was eighty-seven and had various illnesses but was doing OK. He deteriorated rapidly on the last two weeks before his death. I am so grateful his frailest state was short-lived and that he only had to spend one week in a nursing home. I am even more grateful that he did not endure those achingly lonely moments without my mother for very long. In the foggy midst of his Alzheimer’s, we were blessed with endearing moments of lucidity, like the time when three of my four siblings had moved him to the nursing home and the next day, looking out of the window in his forebodingly spare and lifeless room, he said to my husband and I: ‘This is not such a bad place to live, is it?’. Even in his most vulnerable moment, he was father first and foremost, ensuring our pain was lessened by his make-believe reassurance. It was a sobering and humbling moment; one I will never forget. My father led by example until his last breath. He was far from perfect, but he never demanded or expected anything from us he had not practised himself first. He has set the bar really high for us, in life and in death. His unwavering sense of duty, responsibility, and leadership to his family lives now within me and I hope I can be to my kids half the inspirational figure he has been to me.

Entrenched on my memory like a knife to the heart is also that agonising moment when my siblings took him to the nursing home whilst I remained at home with my mum in readiness for her life-threatening surgery the next day to remove a malignant tumour in her liver. My siblings were so incredibly overwhelmed by the unbearable task at hand that in their haste to make my father’s transition from his home to the nursing home, they neglected to allow my mum to say goodbye to my dad. My heart teared further apart when I looked in my mother’s eyes and saw the unforgiving sadness as she realised that she might never see her lifetime companion of over 65 years again. As it turned out, the surgery was in vain; the tumour was inoperable and two days after surgery she developed a perforated intestine which killed her. She was 80 years old. Three months before her death my mum began experiencing excruciating pain on her right-hand side, below her rib cage. Initially, after countless tests, the doctors told her that she had an infection in her gall bladder, but it gradually emerged that that was only the beginning of the end. Three days before her death, we all had hope that she would recover, and she would live on to tell the tale. Three days before her death, her and I laughed together, joked together, hoped together.

It all happened so fast, and it did not help matters that those three of my four siblings turned against me towards the very end like hyenas hunting as a merciless pack. They deeply resented me for living abroad and in their words ‘having abandoned my family’, which was all the more devastating to hear bearing in mind my husband and I took my parents with us on holidays all over the world around 17 times, which none of those three siblings ever did, not even once. Asides that, I am aware that it is primarily during those times when my family and I visited my hometown in Spain that the whole family gathered together for lunch or an outing. As far as I am aware, my parents never got taken out by those three siblings all that much outside of those times when we were visiting. I will never recover from witnessing and suffering first-hand the monster within that can surface in people when they are undergoing immense pressure or pain. I became the punch bag for all three, specially one of them and the verbal and written punches did not stop coming until I was breathless, almost lifeless on the floor. The pain of losing the love, trust, and belief in my integrity of my three siblings was far greater at the time than the pain of losing both my parents unexpectedly in the space of 48 hours. That gives an idea of the intensity and shock, the hatred I was exposed to by those who should have been the most supportive at such a time, in such tragic circumstances. Even today, almost five months later, I cannot comprehend how love can turn into such hate in such a short space of time. The only explanation my mind entertains is that it was never love to begin with, and that realisation pierces me all the more, even today, probably forever.

I spent 9 days with both my parents prior to my mum’s surgery. I would be with them from 8:30 am til 11:00 pm. I would then go to a nearby hotel to get some rest and fuel up the tank to be at my best for the next day. No point in staying each night with them, I figured, and be exhausted from the beginning of the day ending up having them look after me. It made absolute sense to me and yet that is one of the issues my siblings took up with me, even though every time they had stayed the night, they whined about how that position was unsustainable and how we needed to get extra paid help to look after my parents during the nights. What was not sustainable or acceptable for them to keep doing, soon became their choice of punishment for me for my intermittent absence of 32 years. They looked for any excuse to criticise me, bully me and badmouth me to my mother who was already dying. The viciousness of their insults grew all the more aggressive and unforgivable the day I finally left to go back to the UK. To this day, I am still devastated that three of my siblings with whom I have always had a great relationship; whom I loved unconditionally could throw me to the gallows at the first hurdle, no trial, no innocent til proven guilty; just pure hatred and pain projected onto me as if I was the cause of my parents’ illness and tragic end.

Living in a different country to that I grew up in til the age of twenty, has always been incredibly challenging for me, because I have no family here in the UK other than my husband and kids. I come from a large family in Spain, and so the last 33 years I have missed so many incredibly happy times back home, some sad, not many. The truth is, however, I have a full life in the UK; a life that makes me happy; I have a family, a business, a home. I know my parents wanted me to be happy, fulfilled, and at peace. I know they never resented me for not being there. If anything, I am convinced they have always been so incredibly proud that I was courageous enough to travel at a youthful age and brave enough to give up everything and everyone I knew to move to another country for love. Throughout those 33 years, I have tried to see them as much as I could; I have tried to keep the balance right between raising a family to the best of my ability thousands of miles away; nurturing a marriage which has been very challenging at times and helping make a business successful, but also keeping in touch with all my family back in Spain. It is a very delicate balance but, in my heart, I know with certainty and confidence that my parents would have wished for me to put my own family first, specially since I had four other siblings who lived so close to them. It is a much more complex issue than what I recount here but for the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that. I could write a book on this sorrow episode of my life and who knows, when the time is right, maybe I will.

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A river of tears

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Anxiety, Butterfly, Challenges, adversity, Character, Conscience, courage, Death, Dread, Fear, Freedom, Fulfilment, honesty, life, Life's Choices, Morals, Negativity, Pain, Philosophy, purpose, Rebellion, Sacrifice, self fulfilment, Self love, self-discovery, Selfishness, Selflessness, Spirit, Stoicism, Strength, The meaning of life20 Comments

She sat there feeling defeated, sipping her coffee whilst listening to Massimo Viazzo’s ‘River Flows in you’. The irony of the title of that piece, she thought, her mind filled with visions of a life that flowed like a river: weightless, spontaneous, vibrant, free. Her spirit, however, laid so arid, almost inert gasping for droplets of hope that would then merge and cause her existence to effortlessly flow into a vast sea of yet unopened doors and passageways she felt inexplicably drawn to. By the age of 20, Esperanza had already travelled to USA, UK, Australia, and most of Europe. What happened to me? she thought. At what point in my life did I begin to regress; did I allow my hopes to be rudely replaced by all my fears?

Tears running down her face, sobbing, unable to hold it all in any longer. Maybe ‘Cry me a river’ would have been more apt, she laughed begrudgingly, maybe the purpose of all these tears is to empty out til there is nothing left. Maybe then and only then, she consoled herself, I will experience an epiphany provoked by the avalanche of the mountain of all my tears drowning out my sorrows, and the impact will be of such magnitude that it will force me to finally metamorphose into the butterfly that laid dormant all these years. Hope by name, Hope by nature. Hope was undeniably all she had left.

The problem was that when hope visited, it never came into Esperanza’s consciousness alone. She always arrived holding a mixed bag of responsibilities, a good conscience, a sense of loyalty and all the other laudable attributes we admire on others but know fully well stop us from living the life we really feel we were born to live. What an impossible mix of emotions she had been dealt. How does one live knowing they are sacrificing their dream for a peaceful conscience, when it is that very dream that helps us push on, take another step, breathe life and positivity into those under our care? How does one ingest a poisoned chalice being fully aware that the very act of salvation is irrevocably and simultaneously mired in condemnation?

The conundrum of whether life is an act of selflessness or selfishness kept her awake at night and riddled with anxiety in the day. Her mind told her one thing but oh how her robust beating heart told her quite another. She knew complete peace and stillness would only come when she breathed her final breath. And yet there was far too much joie de vivre in her to surrender into her fate just yet. This agonising battle of what’s right and what is meant was ironically the fuel that fired her soul; a quest for the hidden treasure she was determined to fulfill til she found an answer; even if it turned out it wasn’t the answer she had hoped for all along. Taking on that unthinkable gamble is what gave meaning and purpose to her life but it was also what was killing her restless spirit one bellicose day at a time.