The Wisdom of Wolves by Jim and Jamie Dutcher

 

 “Each and every wolf has a story to share. Can we be trusted to listen?”

 Marc Bekoff

 Every member of a pack of wolves is valued by the others and recognized as a unique individual who makes a special contribution to the group. Their bonds are deep.  Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years living in a tent beside a pack of wolves by the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. The Wisdom of Wolves shares their knowledge and experience of living side by side with the Sawtooth pack of wolves, taking us into an emotional journey of countless surprises.

 Jim and Jamie Dutcher describe the wolves’ compassionate nature; they admire their curious courageous spirit. Wolves care well for the most vulnerable in the pack, and they do what it takes to keep everybody safe.  Jim and Jamie examined their relationships and paid special attention to the ways wolves communicate. They also learned how wolves keep each other in check to maintain harmony in the group.

  The authors give each wolf a name and describe their fascinating personalities. Besides, they explain how wolves interact with other species.

  When a person kills an old wolf, the survival of the group as a whole is threatened because old wolves have invaluable knowledge and experience that help the pack. Furthermore, the loss of any member of the group causes deep pain among the wolves. The Wisdom of Wolves elucidates how they grieve.

  The book was published by National Geographic. Both Jim and Jamie Dutcher raise public awareness about the true nature of wolves by writing books, making documentaries and giving talks in educational settings.

 

 The authors debunk the myth of the so-called lone wolf: “We often hear the term of the ‘lone wolf’ in reference to a person who acts alone, cares for no one, and craves no companionship. Sadly, like so many negative things falsely connected to wolves, the term has now come to mean a loner who wishes to do us harm. Such a state is an aberration among humans, and it’s equally rare among wolves.”

  It is important to clarify the concept to avoid misunderstandings and confusion. The truth is that a lone wolf in nature is a temporary phenomenon. Biologists call him a disperser. In reality “the lone wolf in nature is a wolf in its third year or so who has decided to leave its birth pack and strike out in search of new territory and a mate. What does a lone wolf want? It wants to stop being a lone wolf. It wants togetherness, to be part of something bigger.” It is not the aberration that the misused term alludes to.

  The term “lone wolf” should not be used to describe people that have no compassion and empathy for others because it perpetuates an attitude of ignorance toward wolves. It tarnishes the reputation of wolves and is dangerous. Another relevant fact to highlight here is that when the ecosystems where wolves thrive are respected, wolves don’t attack cattle.

   During the fourth year of their project, Jim and Jamie encountered all kinds of threats. They received anonymous letters in their mailbox asking them “to get rid of those wolves or we will." Authorities put pressure on them to make sure they would move out of their wolf camp. They were persecuted in different ways.

 “Somebody posted signs near our camp warning us to be gone or ‘wind up in the Custer County jail.’ Even a former governor weighted in, saying our project was nothing more than ‘wolf propaganda’ and should not be allowed to exist. Jamie and I were painfully aware that we were responsible for the lives of these wolves, but our ability to keep them safe seemed increasingly beyond our control.”

  In view of the stress they faced, Jim went out for a walk to sort things out. During his walk, the leader of the pack, Kamots, stayed close to him. He would disappear into the trees, and then he would emerge again, trotting and exploring the territory, until something amazing happened.

 As Jim sat and talked to himself, wondering what to do, Kamots approached him.

 “In a gesture I’d never seen before, he raised his paw up to me. I put out my hand and pressed it against his paw, and we sat there like that for a minute in silence. I felt as though he was assuring me that if we held up our end, he would hold up his. We should continue to deal with the human world, and in his calm, strong, confident way, he would keep his pack stable and safe. He was that kind of leader.”

 

The wolves gave Jim and Jamie a very special gift: the gift of trust between species, and through this gift they learned a lot about life, love, and compassion. You can visit their website to learn more about their work:

If you enjoyed this post, you will probably welcome my writing on these books:

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Untamed

Unforgotten

Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall

   

“Knowledge is the only sword that can cut through harm being done in ignorance.” Sara Dykman, author of Bicycling with Butterflies.

  Jane Goodall was the first person to discover that chimpanzees make tools and use them; when she later wrote about their emotions, personalities and intelligence, she was criticized. Just like humans, chimps have emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, frustration and grief. 

 Thanks to her childhood teacher-- her family dog, Rusty—Jane Goodall had learned at a very early age that animals have individual personalities.  

 

Jane Goodall loved animals since she was little. She spent hours watching them and learning about them. Her connection with animals was deep.

  

One day in winter, when she was lying sick in bed, a British robin came to her windowsill; to encourage his visits, she left crumbs every day for the robin. In the spring the robin returned with a mate, and the birds made a nest in a bookshelf in her bedroom.

   Anita Silvey wrote Untamed for children, but it turned out to be a mesmerizing read for people of all ages. In an engaging conversational style she provides details about Jane Goodall’s life story, anecdotes, facts, maps and delightful photos. It is a book that can be shared and celebrated with an entire family, because it connects generations of people through experiences from the past, which are linked to historical events.  

 Untamed also contains an uplifting foreword by Jane Goodall, opening the minds of children to new perspectives and hopeful horizons.

  Jane empowers children to make a difference in the world.

  Anita Silvey’s book recounts how and why Jane Goodall traveled to Africa in her twenties, and how she got in touch with the mentor who would support her work through her years in Africa. His name was Louis Leakey.

  When Jane first settled in Gombe, Africa, to explore the lives of the chimps, her mother was with her. In a secluded place in a forest, away from people, where they had to dig a hole for a latrine, Jane found the magical site she had dreamed of in her childhood. Jane’s description of the place was idyllic; she wrote to her family about it:

 “It is so beautiful, with the crystal clear blue lake, the tiny white pebbles on the beach, the sparkling ice cold mountain stream, the palm nut trees, the comical baboons.”

  Anita Silvey explains the risks, dangers, and discoveries of Jane's adventures, making the book intriguing and unique. Untamed also details how the study of animals has evolved over the years, including amazing information about the challenges Jane encountered back then.

 “She devoted more hours to observation and recording than anyone in the area of chimpanzee research. And she did so through illnesses such as malaria, horrible weather, and rough living conditions.”

  

I did not know that chimps draw and paint, but some of them do. This is a photo of chimp Congo. He began to draw when he was two years old, and two years later he completed more than 200 abstract compositions.

    

Jane Goodall continues to work tirelessly to protect forests, prairies, oceans and the lives of animals and people. She also inspires children and people of all ages to do the same.

 Jane’s organizations include Roots and Shoots, Jane Goodall’s Institute and TACARE.

Feel free to check these sites:

https://www.rootsandshoots.org/

https://www.janegoodall.org/

https://tacare.org/about-us/

 I am humbled by Jane Goodall’s wisdom and courage; here’s an interview with Jane Goodall.

 Here’s another thought-provoking conversation with Jane Goodall published by Vox.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22585935/jane-goodall-chimpanzees-animal-intelligence-human-nature

To learn more about Anita Silvey’s works, you can visit her website:

https://www.anitasilvey.com/

National Geographic Kids is the publisher of “Untamed”:

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/

A message from Jane Goodall

Happy Mother's Day

To My Mother  (poem)


In my childhood years you planted curious seeds,
fountains of wonder
that continue to grow and evolve
into blossoms of hope today.

If I had to express my gratitude
I'd paint all your talents
on the canvas of life.

The older  I get the more I comprehend
your fortitude.

Your support is a humble presence,
and your light shines
inside me
like an eternal blessing
that will live on in our daughter's heart forever.

Sylvia and Aki (children's book)

  “Sylvia and Aki” by Winifred Conkling is the true story of two American girls of different cultural backgrounds who grew up in the 1940s in the United States of America.

     The narrative is attuned to their joys, fears, dreams and loving families, and it reveals how their happy childhoods were disrupted by the evils of segregation, discrimination and social injustice. Unexpected challenges and hardship threatened the well-being of their families and their future.

  There is an afterword that gleans relevant historical facts and relates them to the lives of the characters. We can learn a lot from history; literature offers us unique opportunities to do so.

   I highly recommend “Sylvia and Aki”. It is a book that invites us to honor friendship, learn about history and spend quality time with our children.

"The Japanese Lover" by Isabel Allende

There are many love stories in this novel by Isabel Allende, but it was not the title that attracted me to it. The hook was the first chapter. It narrates the story of Irina, a young woman from Moldova who is hired to work at Lark House, an imaginary nursing home located in California.

  Irina bonds with the residents of Lark House because she is kind, sensitive and caring. After an unexpected turn of events, Irina is also hired to work a few hours a week for Alma, one of the residents.

  Both Irina and Alma harbor secrets that hold the suspense of the novel till the end.

 Even though they had different backgrounds, Alma and Irina had something in common: they’d both migrated to America under difficult circumstances.  Alma had moved to the United States from Poland at age seven when her Jewish parents, terrified by the rise of Nazism, sent her to live with her uncle and aunt in America. During her childhood she met Ichimei, a family friend with whom she fell in love.

   The story is narrated from an omniscient point of view. The present and past moments of their lives alternate and the writer paints the intimate landscapes of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. We also get to know the Japanese lover through the letters that he wrote to Alma.

 This novel encouraged me to learn more about American history. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese government in 1941 President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. On the West Coast of the United States of America thousands of American citizens of Japanese background were detained and sent to concentration camps for no other reason than their race. Their bank accounts and possessions were confiscated by the government.

“The Japanese had to quickly sell off whatever they owned at knockdown prices, and to close their businesses. They soon discovered that their bank accounts had been frozen; they were ruined.”

“By August, more than a hundred and twenty thousand men, women and children would be evacuated, old people snatched from hospitals, babies from orphanages, and mental patients from asylums. They would be interned in ten concentration camps in isolated areas of the interior, while cities would be left with phantom neighborhoods full of empty homes and desolate streets, where abandoned pets and the confused spirit of the ancestors who had arrived in America with the immigrants wandered aimlessly.”

 I think this is a relevant reminder of how hate speeches fueled by fanaticism, racism and economic hardship do have consequences. Nevertheless, those consequences were presented under the veil of censorship.

“It was a temporary solution and would be carried out in a humane fashion. This was the official line, but meanwhile the hate speech spread. ‘A snake is always a snake, wherever it lays its eggs. A Japanese-American born of Japanese parents, brought up in a Japanese tradition, living in an atmosphere transplanted from Japan, inevitably and with only rare exceptions grows up as Japanese and not American. They are all enemies.’ It was enough to have a great-grandfather born in Japan to be seen as a snake.”

  Another important subject that this novel touches is that of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. This cruel horrifying “business” is one of the most profitable in the world, and it makes me wonder why it has not been eradicated yet. Is it because there are many “customers” out there who are willing to pay for sex slaves? Is it because society is too busy slut-shaming victims instead of helping them?

    This novel is about love, friendship and trust, and what I enjoyed the most about it is that the author merged the political and social aspects of it with the personal lives of the characters. The end is bittersweet, a reflection on the timelessness and endurance of love.

Brave New World

 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a satire about a society in which people are labeled and classified into groups or castes. They are conditioned to behave a certain way since they are born. Anybody who dares to think original thoughts or to crave solitude is considered dangerous and weird. These people are treated like misfits and are deported to a distant island.

  In Brave New World everybody is supposed to be happy, but this happiness is not true happiness. It is loveless and synthetic. It is based on the consumption of goods. Human beings are deprived of love and compassion, and those who dare to do something differently are treated with contempt and sent away.

  People are  encouraged to consume a drug called “Soma” to feel good and “happy” all the time.  In this male dominated society sexual promiscuity is the norm. Yet the sexual act is meaningless.
   Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Word is the description of a conformist society in which art and science are considered threats to their stability and their so-called “freedom”. They have to be muzzled to satisfy the interests of the status quo. Literature, for example, is of no interest to people because they fear that it will make them feel sad, so they shy away from it just as they reject anything that is thought-provoking. Literature carries the risk of awakening the possibility of dealing with original thoughts.

 Even though the individuals in Brave New World believe they are free they are all expected to behave in predictable ways.  Anything that is considered unconventional or that strays from standard patterns of behavior is treated with distrust, and so the root of the irony is that this world is neither brave nor new.

 Interestingly, George Orwell expressed his concerns about banned books in his popular novel 1984.  Aldous Huxley, on the other hand, portrayed a society in which there was no need to censor books anymore because people did not care about literature altogether: since a very early age they were conditioned to believe that literature  was boring, depressing or a threat to their stability.

 Soon after the publication of 1984, Huxley wrote a letter to George Orwell. I will share a fragment of this letter:

“My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and those ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.

“The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude or by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World.  The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.”

Home

 "A modern astronomical view says that everything in the universe is moving uniformly away from everything else in all directions into space, so there is no center point in the cosmos at all. We live with no fixed reference point. From one perspective, this understanding produces the desolate feeling that there is no home. But from another perspective, this realization shows us directly that every point is home. We are free; we do not need to fix on a single center for refuge, for safety. This is love, this is happiness, where our refuge is unbounded, and we are always at home."
 Sharon Salzberg (From her book "Loving-kindness")

O Pioneers

O you daughters of the West!

O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!

Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,

Pioneers! O pioneers

Walt Whitman

 O Pioneers is about the life  of immigrants who settled down on the plains of Nebraska in the late 1800’s. Willa Cather deals with many fascinating themes that make this novel a timeless story:  love, friendship, social prejudices and the relationship of the immigrants with their new environment. (I fell in love with My Antonia three years ago and I didn't know I would love O Pioneers just as much).

 The heroine of this novel is Alexandra Bergson, a woman ahead of her times.  Before her father passed away, when she was still a teenager, he entreated Alexandra to be responsible for the land. Therefore, the financial future of her family fell upon her shoulders.

 Eking out a living in Nebraska meant making the land productive and sustainable.  Unlike her mother, who was unable to adjust to the demands of the new place, Alexandra found ways to make the land prosperous, enabling her siblings to make a living on their farms.  
 Alexandra had three younger brothers, and she was able to surpass her siblings in terms of financial accomplishments. However, she was not free of the gender inequalities that shaped the prejudices and behaviors.

   Willa Cather is skillful at showing how women were judged differently from men, and some of these judgments continue to resonate.  I will analyze these aspects of the story because I think they tend to be overlooked by the critics.

 Alexandra was confident and practical, but she did not have time or energy to devote to love. Her brothers were  ashamed of the fact that she was still single at age forty. On the other hand, her friend Marie was married. She fell in love with Frank and married him hastily, but she later found herself in an unhealthy relationship.

 Marie was outspoken, spontaneous and affectionate whereas her husband was possessive and short-tempered. He drank too much alcohol and often bullied her. This marital mismatch led Marie to withdraw from him and to fall in love with another man: Emil (Alexandra’s youngest brother).  

 Alexandra was too pragmatic to sense that Emil and Marie were in love with each other.  She was interested in her male friend Carl Linstrum, but her brothers Lou and Oscar opposed a potential love relationship with him because they were convinced that Carl was only attracted to her money. Besides, they hinted at the idea that a man would not care for a single woman once she is in her forties. Through this conflict Willa Cather shows how the male characters feel they have a right to her money and to opine about her personal affairs. They also imply that as  women age, society does not expect them to get married. 

Did the same idea apply to men? No; it is made clear in the novel that Carl was expected to marry somebody younger. Hence, this idea carries the innuendo that a woman is a kind of love object that only serves the purpose of marriage when she is young.

 I will share some extracts of their conversations to support my statements.

“Lou turned to his brother. ‘This is what comes of letting a woman meddle in business,’ he said bitterly. ‘We ought to have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her. We thought you had good sense, Alexandra. We never thought you’d do anything foolish.

“Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles. ‘Listen, Lou. Don’t talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your own hands years ago. I suppose you mean before you left home. But how could you take hold of what wasn’t there? I’ve got most of what I have now since we divided the property; I’ve built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with you.

“Oscar spoke up solemnly. ‘The property of a family really belongs to the men of the family, no matter about the title.”

“Everybody’s laughing to see you get took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he’s nearly five years younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Alexandra, you are forty years old!”

 ‘I only meant’, said Oscar, ‘that she is old enough to know better, and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it long ago, and not making a fool of herself now.’

Another reason why I believe Alexandra was ahead of her times was her understanding of Ivar.  Ivar was a sensitive compassionate man who probably had a mental condition that made him vulnerable. People did not understand him, so they criticized him and shunned him. Alexandra, on the other hand, knew that Ivar was in need of empathy:

“As Ivar talked, his gloom lifted. Alexandra had found that she could often break his fasts and long penances by talking to him and letting him pour out the thoughts that troubled him.”

  Alexandra stood up for him whenever people tried to have him sent to an asylum. She continued to let him work for her despite the rumors against him. She disregarded what other people said and endeavored to support him instead of getting rid of him.

 After something bad happened, Alexandra found out that Marie and Emil had been in love with each other, and she was very disappointed with Marie. Interestingly, she blames Marie for the love triangle, another sign of how the social dynamics played against women by making them guilty of situations that do not only involve the female sex. (After all, her brother Emil had never been blind to the fact that Marie was indeed a married woman).

 “She blamed Marie bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who loved her?  That was the strangest thing of all. Was there then, something wrong in being warmhearted and impulsive like that? Alexandra hated to think so.”

 Later in the story Carl would make her see that it had not been Marie’s fault. Yet there's still a tinge of blame in his statement:
 "It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra. I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs...they are too full of love, too full of life."

 Even though Alexandra and Marie were so different, they had something in common: their love for the land. This feeling for the land was a source of comfort and hope. Willa Cather describes this deep connection in her poetic prose:

“The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

  The metaphor of love seemed to be inscribed in the landscapes around them:

“There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.”

Have you read this literary classic? Share your thoughts.

Doris Lessing 's "Love, again"

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

Rumi

Love, again is populated by artists and intense personalities. From the very beginning I was so hooked to these characters that I needed to know what would happen to them.

 Sarah Durham and Stephen become good friends. Sarah is a writer who works in a theater in London. Stephen is madly in love with a woman called Julie Vairon. Julie is dead, though. She died one hundred years ago. She had been a gifted musician, an artist and a writer; she had also been a kind of outcast who loved to dance in the woods.

 Julie Vairon is  the main character of the play Sarah and Stephen are working on together. Sarah is a woman in her sixties who had not cared about romantic love for two decades, and, all of a sudden, she falls in love with Bill, the young actor who plays the role of Julie Vairon’s first lover. 
  Sarah had lost her husband in her late thirties. She had to raise her two kids by herself, so she had always been too busy to date men. 
  We are then invited into the intimate territory of Sarah’s thoughts, fantasies and emotions.
  While I read this novel I came across many interesting revelations about society, and I found myself saying, "Finally somebody dares to assert what I have been observing and thinking for many years". 

  Sarah did not know she was capable of being in love this way. She wondered how these exhilarating sensations had evaded her for two decades and is somewhat shocked at feeling what she feels. There is a mutual attraction between Sarah and Bill but their relationship never flourishes, and I am left wondering if her feelings had more to do with lust than with love.

 The frustration of not accomplishing a true love relationship with Bill transforms into something else. Just like Julie Vairon, Sarah Durham falls in love a second time. Doris Lessing dredges up the obscure realities and inconveniences of falling in love. She will make you burn in flames of passion and desire, and will later splash you with icy water. 
 After she falls in love, Sarah Durham is caught up in a swamp of grief. She yearns for her lost youth and falls into the prejudice of thinking that she will never be cherished and desired the way she had been when she was young. For many years she had been too occupied with life responsibilities to be bothered with the physical changes that had been happening over time. We witness the stages of her grief.  
  Now she also examines her life under a new light of introspection. Her quest for love leads her to ponder over her relationship with her brother, mother,  father. She is also flooded with memories of past lovers. 

   Everybody adores Julie Vairon. Her life is a mirror of their heartbreaks. Sarah and Stephen are two heart-broken souls “living in their own deserts”. They understand Julie Vairon’s misery from their own personal experiences and they are deeply touched by her music. Amid their despair, they share moments of solace and comfort in literature and philosophy.

  Yes, Julie Vairon is dead, but her spirit is alive through her art, music and words. It is the shadow of these characters’ love stories.  
  Sarah and Stephen are fond of each other.  They miss each other, but their friendship is crippled by misunderstandings, fears and doubts. The fact that Sarah is a woman and Stephen is a man plays a role in the dynamics of their communication. Yet their sincerity  had brought them together. I have never come across a writer who deals with these matters so openly.

  Doris Lessing made me feel that Sarah and Stephen are my intimate friends. I kept mulling over their inner conflicts and troubles after I finished reading this novel.

  I would have given this novel a different kind of ending -- a happier, hopeful one.
  It is clear to me that Doris Lessing had more faith in the arts than in the act of falling in love.

  If human relationships intrigue you and keep you awake at night, this novel will captivate you. If, on the other hand, you prefer fairy tales, you may be better off reading something else.

  Doris Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list  of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2001 she was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement  in British literature.

The Invention of Morel

 After being accused of a crime he did not commit, a man flees to an island by boat. This man is a writer. He documents his experiences in a diary.
 This mysterious island has a museum, a church and a swimming pool.

 Living on this island is an experience of survival and discoveries. This is a place that hides many secrets. The sea catches him by surprise if he is not attentive to the tides. Surviving is a daily challenge. He navigates the vicissitudes of freedom, uncertainty and solitude.

 There are other human beings on this island, but they appear to be detached from him. One day he falls in love with a woman who contemplates the sunset every day. The woman ignores the narrator. Sometimes she reads a book. Sometimes a man with a beard is by her side, conversing with her. This man's name is Morel. Is she in love with Morel?
 Is this woman a real woman? Is the narrator truly in love with this woman, or is he obsessed with her?

 One cannot help but wonder, along with the narrator, if the other people on the island are aware of the writer's existence. Are they planning to catch him? Do their conversations have anything to do with his life?

Suspense, intrigue and magical realism intertwine throughout the novella to encourage our imagination to play with the vivid settings of this enigmatic island, and as we follow the writer's story, the limits between fantasy and reality become blurred.
 We are invited to accept our creativity as the soul of our own existence or as a projection of somebody's desires.

  The Invention of Morel is a novella written by Adolfo Bioy Casares(1914-1999), an Argentinian author who won several awards, including The French Legion of Honor (1981), The Diamond Konex Award of Literature (1994) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1991).

Passion

I mentioned the word passion on my previous post.

What is passion?

 I believe passion is the essence of any kind of art. In my writing life passion is the intense desire to create something with words. It is attached to discipline. Discipline is what helps you to attain your goals.

  My main goal is to read and write something meaningful. Let me be clear on this:  my passion is not to convince people to read what I write.

 Working on your creative passion brightens the shore of your island. It invites you to see the world through refreshed eyes.

  I also believe that being passionate is about being sensitive. Our societies may mock sensitivity and there is a general trend to believe that being sensitive means being weak. I disagree.

  Being sensitive makes you stronger. Being sensitive is about feeling the world under your skin. This does not make you weak. It makes you more compassionate and mindful, and it invites you to expand in different directions and to embrace the bittersweet side of life.

    Being passionate encourages you to create ripples that will reach the shore of other islands and universes.

  Working on your creative passion makes you feel the heat of spring amid the winter; it brings you a cool breeze in the summer. It’s like holding onto a raft in the turbulent waters of life.

    Working on your creative passion enables you to grow flowers in the desert and it infuses you with the resilience of a weed that survives a drought. Your passionate creativity transports you to diverse settings and will enhance your own identity by pouring over you a different one.

  There’s a time to feel sad and a time to feel happy, and the pain of different situations opens up bridges and highways to other souls. You need your solitude just as you need your time to share a part of yourself with others.

   Being passionate is what allows you to appreciate the beauty around you and to celebrate each second of your life because being sensitive is about being alive. (If you can’t feel pain, you are not as alive as you think you are).

  Being passionate is about conjuring up a world of possibilities under the rocks that you encounter in your journey. Working on your passion is like being inhabited by a population of birds in the core of your being. You watch the birds fly away in different directions, and you feel the bliss of knowing that a part of you exists in those birds while your feet are happily dancing on the ground.