Life’s Scars

I don’t know exactly when, but these days I was reading about a soldier who awoke from a coma in Texas three weeks after he had been burned in Afghanistan when he almost died. This guy had no fingers, his face was completely destroyed, one ear was gone, skin grafts crisscrossed his face like lines on a map; he looked like a monster from a terror movie. After several surgeries his face is better, and today he can walk on the streets and go to every place without a mask covering his face. But beyond these physical scars, I believe the worst is the emotional scars which will accompany him throughout his life. So I decided to write a little bit about life’s scars.

Have you ever thought about how you have become who you are? I’m talking about our life’s scars, about everything, actions, events… that make you become who you are nowadays.

I know that our personality is not built only from our scars; Thank God, there are a lot of other things that help in this “building”, such as the knowledge acquired from our parents; and other that we acquire at school, on the streets, with our neighbors, friends and all those whom se meet along our life. But these things are so normal and constant that we hardly think of them, and when we think about, this thought is so shallow and fast that we don’t mind about and we forget it as so fast as it show up.

But on the other hand, there are these scars which help us become who we are. For example a guy who had received bad jokes at school because he was the shortest, ugliest, poorest, or any other reason, will probably be shy when he grow up. Or a guy who lost his daddy and had a hard life without money enough to fulfill his whishes, he probably will give much value in everything he conquests during his lifetime. And this is the point that I would like to talk about, these scars are so hard to think about, and how these scars are kept in the deep of our heart, when it shows up it’s keep in our mind during more time than we would like, maybe for days, months, years...

So, although we go through hard time, we must learn to live with these scars to the best of our ability, because that soldier’s scars will be with him for all his lifetime, as well as our own life’s scars will be with us forever.

As Eric Clapton said about his son Conor:

“I must be strong and carry on; because I know; I don't belong here in Heaven.”

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND RACISM

I don’t know why I post this here, because it’s so different issue from my goal with this blog, but it’s ok. I felt so sad when I made my paper to my English course that I would like to share some information with you.

First of all, I would like to talk a little about racism, a problem which began so early as the history of the humanity, a problem that we can call a ‘Social Disease’, which without reason grows up in our mind and contaminates more and more people around the world. Some studies show us that people around the world share the same tendencies to fear, domination, and subjugation; and these diseases together with a yearning of the power and sovereignty to others, it eliminates the social feelings and respect for human being and makes people think only of themselves, turning them into “monsters” who can make barbarities to conquer their own goals.

But this post isn’t just about racism, but about racism influences on decision about people’s life.

In United Stated, since 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed reinstating capital punishment, the country has been executed fewer prisoners year by year until today (it’s the good part of the history). But on the other hand the problems of racism in the execution of the death penalty have not changed.

Numbers reported in newspapers allow us to see that racism may take part in executions of death penalty, like published in the New York Times in July 8, 2011 telling the teacher David C. Baldus with more two colleagues, published a study which they analyze more than 2,000 homicides in Georgia since 1972, this study shows us that black defendants were 1.7 times killed in a death penalty than white defendants. And if murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more to be sentenced to death than those murderers who killed black victims.

But someone can says that it exist more black murderers, but it`s not true. In the same study Baldus shows us that like all country, Georgia has blacks and whites as victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, but different in the time of the America’s capital justice system defined the future of the murderers, which 80 percent of the murderers executed killed white people, number which the Baldus shows it has been a evidence of racial discrimination. We can analyze the numbers of executions in Texas, where since 1976 has carried out more than one third of the executions of the country, it’s 470 executions, which has just one execution involving a white murderer and a black victim.

I don’t know about you, but I think it's hard to draw the line between who has the right to live or not. Principally now with this issue “Racism”.

So now, I remain to ask: How many innocents need to die until it changes?

And as I always left a song to express my texts, this is the best for it.

Friendship

What does friendship mean for you? Have you really thought about this?

There are some blues moments that make me think about.

There was a Roman philosopher called Cicero who believed that in order to have a true friendship with someone, you must have complete honesty, truth and trust.

But now-a-days, with a lot of “virtual friends”, “virtual life”, can we really have all this feeling really? Or the real friendships are dying?

And about our “real” friends, what should we think about them?

I don’t know about you, but I feel so sad when I trust my life to a friend, my secrets and my feelings for him and suddenly I discover that our friendship is not worth as much as I thought. Or those people that are always lying to you, I think they lie so much that they believe in their own lies and they live in a world of lies and illusion. Poor people, they don’t know the expression “lie has short legs”.

But it’s ok. Probably this kind of “friend” never will understand the real meaning of this feeling and I hope I’m wrong, but these people will never have friends.

But I didn’t want to write this text because of these bad times that we all have some time, after all, on the other hand there is a lot of people which we can call friends and about these people I want to write.

I don’t think people must have the same thinking, feeling, ideas, perceptions, kind of life or any other same things to be real friends. Me for example, I have some extreme by different kinds of real friends and it makes me feel so good, because it make me understand that we can “walk” for all kind of tribes and make all kind of real friends that we want. We simply need to have a real feeling for ourselves and for others. I realize that while I’m thinking about my friends, I have a friend living in a big city in Ireland, between tall buildings, traffic jams and people from all over the world; the same way I have other friend living in a small city, with his wife and his soft life, or other friend lives in a farm riding a bull, or other one that has Hare Krishna and he knows everything about Philosophy. I have the same feeling for all this guys. In others words, if you have a true heart without interest, you can be friends with people you have never imagined.

And about those people who pass in our life very fast, for a week or just for a day, and they become a friends that seem to have always known you.

I don’t think there is a formula for two people is friendship, it just happens. No matter what kind of friendship it is, if it’s between two men, two women, between a man and a woman, between father and son or between two brothers/sisters. In my perception this feeling is the same in every kind of relationship.

Once I heard a phrase that said “Nostalgia is a good feeling that remains”, so I began to think about everybody that I miss and I understood this expression. I realized that true friendships stay with us for the rest of our lives, no matter how long or how far away we are from our real friends.

I’d like to share a video with you as a proof of friendship.

A point of feeling

A “dot” is used when we want to break a period in a text or maybe begin another one.

Ok, on November 22th, 2010 I had a point in my life, a point that I called “A point of feeling”.

The time of pointing had just begun when I was in front of Morumbi Stadium and every car and people just stopped. Then I saw many lights coming shine in the middle of the crowd, and a big black car was coming. Suddenly, a man got out of the car through the window like a boy cheering for his soccer team. But he wasn’t just a boy; his was “the boy”, Sir. Paul McCartney, at the age of 68, with half of his body out of the moving car shouting, waving and calling everybody to get into the stadium. I couldn’t believe on that: the most important musician alive was there, just a few meters from me, among the people and having fun with us. But much emotion was still about to come.

It was almost 10pm when the lights went out and our magical mystery tour would began. Many songs were played: "All My Loving" ... "Blackbird"... "Eleanor Rigby"… and when I thought that there wasn’t more songs to thrill us, he gave us the pleasure of feeling “SOMETHING” special, honoring his friend George Harrison. And he wouldn’t stop yet; many songs were still about to come: "A Day in the Life", "Lady Madonna", "Helter Skelter", “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and many others. It was three-hour concert, full of lights, fireworks, a very good band and “Sir. McCartney”.

But I’m not here to write about him, the lights or the songs. but about the feeling of peace and love that hovered over all this there, and that was felt in every heart and visible in every eye.

There was a moment when “I think” everybody was feeling so good, that there were not friends or enemies, men or women, white, black, Portuguese, Japanese, Catholic, Spiritualist, anti-Christ or any other kind of segmentation. There were just a lot of souls learning to live better feeling peace, love and respecting each other.

Finally, I would like to send good thoughts for everyone to live better and in peace of mind. And to thank my three good friends who shared with me at this special moment of my life.

Peace and love to all.