What do you want? How many times did I get this questions and how many times did I answer without thinking. And of course these answers change according to your age. In early ages the answers show a heavy tendency into a material direction and are usually projected on toys. This won’t change for some years, just the toys will become bigger and more expensive. Years later the material focus will fade away, replaced by non-material things like happiness, friendship, love, satisfaction. And some more years down the road it will change again, mainly circling around health.

Recently I spent some time with this question and I thought about it seriously, for the first time in my life. It was time to focus on this. And to answer the question what I want in life, I had to answer another question first. What is important to me? So I made a list. Some things I could write down right away, some came to this list after some thinking. To be honest, most of the entries have been clear to me, but some have been a surprise for me as well. And for sure this list will be in a constant flow and change over time. Here comes my current list, the items which are important to me right now:

• respect, appreciation, trust, understanding, attention
• happiness and inner peace
• justice and fairness
• health
• an interesting and challenging international job, responsibility, power, influencing and changing the world
• constant self development, broaden my horizon
• sports, especially skiing, good condition and shape
• friends
• intellectual discussions, experiencing different points of view, cultures
• fun, smiles, positive attitude
• well, the list wouldn’t be complete without satisfaction of physical needs

Okay, these things are important to me. Good to know since some of them I ignored within the last years for different reasons. So I didn’t care much about my health, or I don’t have too many friends. In fact there’s only a hand full of true friends and I am lousy in maintaining friendships. Do I like this? Of course not! Do I want to change this? Definitely! So looks like I have already some items for my What-do-I-want list. And in fact thinking about my values helped me to become clear what do I want in life. And here is the outcome, my personal what-do-I-want list:

• intact partnership, based on trust, appreciation and respect, giving and experiencing unconditional love
• providing my kids an optimal childhood
• being best dad ever
• being best husband ever
• international assignment, living abroad
• travel/explore the world, meet new cultures, learn new languages
• maintain and enlarge a circle of good friends, spend more time with friends
• develop a more mature character
• experience my limits, do extreme and unexpected things
• writing

In some things on this list I am already pretty good, in others I failed in a miserable way. But this is my list and this is what I want. I am very clear about this meanwhile and I am ready to change my live accordingly, even if this will require more drastic steps.

I found my path. It will be painful, but it will lead me back to inner peace. My journey just started. What do you want?

Last weekend I went for a hike. It was an organized event which started very early in the morning, about 5am. One hour to get there meant that my alarm clock started at 3:30am to convince me to get up. The plan was to hike a distance about 63km and an attitude difference of 1700m within 14-15 hours. So far so good. I have been motivated and prepared and wanted to make this a success.

Unfortunately it started to rain right after I started. So I had at least 10 dry minutes. From there it did rain more than five hours continuously, sometimes more, sometimes less, but constantly. Some heavy rains in between in combination with heavy wind made the entire thing an interesting experience. Soon there wasn’t any dry piece of cloth on me anymore. Luckily I had water-proof hiking shoes, but as I found out this doesn’t really matter if the water flows down the legs directly into the shoes. At least they proved to be water-proof since the water stayed in there all the time and made a nice noise with each step. Funny thing is, shoes and cloths increase in weight when wet and so I carried a lot of water with me. It didn’t take long until I started freezing, which was okay as long as moving, but the cold sneaked in slowly. After about 6 hours I had lost the feeling within my fingers and couldn’t move them as I wanted anymore, which turned out as issue regarding bio breaks. Next time I’ll go for zippers instead of buttons 😉

This had been the signal for me to give up, to stop the event after only 27km. I knew if I continue I will suffer through it, I will finish it even if I ruin my health with it. So I decided to stop, to call a taxi and to drive back. Well, the taxi driver wasn’t really amused to drive such a wet, drenched and dripping guy. But you have no idea how hard this decision was for me, to give up, to skip something I wanted to do. But why? Yes, it has been the right decision to stop, it’s logical. The theory is very clear, but why is it so damn hard to implement that theory? I still feel bad about it and I am still angry at myself for not finishing it. Stupid, isn’t it?

So what could be the reason. Money? Okay, I paid some money for this event, but that’s not the reason. Getting up early? Why should it bother me? There are other reason, unconscious ones. One of them is my ego. Giving up something I wanted to do hurts the ego and hits my self-respect. But I think even this are symptoms of something deeper. One of the reasons is my main driver, which is the “be strong” driver. Somehow I have over-developed this basic setting for reason I am starting to understand slowly. Nonetheless it influences my behavior dramatically. I have trouble to show weaknesses, I feel uncomfortable not to be good in things I do. I am ready to suffer to accomplish. I am trying to accomplish things others don’t. I have a need to appear strong, even if I am not. And this comes in company with another basic setting of mine. I have a certain need for appreciation, maybe more than others, maybe I was lacking more than others. And this kind of events gives me appreciation. Sports in general gives me appreciation and especially sports where I am good in.

Now the be strong attitude and the appreciation need come together, giving a dangerous mix which makes me behave as I behave. Understanding these mechanisms, understanding the root cause where they are coming from does only help to a certain degree since they trigger my behavior patterns unconsciously. If I focus and analyze constantly I can see and correct my actions, but if I don’t do this consciously, I will fall back into my default patterns quite fast. Well, I followed these drivers for years, how can I expect to change them within months? So, I am still angry because I didn’t finish the tour, but I take it with a smile 🙂

Life is beautiful, isn’t it?

We all have them, plenty of expectations, most of them unconsciously. Many times we are expecting people to behave in a certain way. For example, you are driving your car and you are in a hurry. All slower drivers in front of you are becoming suddenly slow idiots. But in case you are having time, enjoying the car ride, all drivers in a hurry, pushing you from behind, are suddenly fast idiots. It’s a matter of expectation. How do you expect the others to behave to a certain point in time. If they don’t, you are perceiving them as abnormal troublemaker. And this is true for all circumstances, not only for car driving.

We are expecting all others to think like we do and to behave as we would behave, which is stupid if you give it a second thought. But we do this all the time, even in love matters. If we love somebody, we are expecting to be loved same way. If we feel close to somebody, we are expecting that this closeness and openness is recognized and returned. We are expecting that the other takes care and does not use this openness to attack. If we feel a distance to somebody, we are expecting the other to understand this. So many unsaid expectations. Of course this won’t work and we will get disappointed if some of the expectations will not be met. Implied expectation have such a great potential for misunderstandings. And not only that, it can lead to anger, even hate.

The solution is so simple and so complicated same time. There are two aspects:

1. Just expect less. Easily said, but hard to implement.
2. If you expect something, be aware of the expectation and communicate it.

Live can be so easy 😉

Love, what is love? What defines love? How important is love for you? What is your definition of love? What do you expect from love? One thing I have learned recently is that different people have different definitions of love, and hence different expectations.

So I started to analyze what is love for me. Easy one I thought, love is one of the most important ingredient in a partnership. I want to love my partner from heart, unconditionally. And I do have the expectation that my partner loves me the same way. So far so good, but what does this mean now? Hmmm … well, for me it means to spend time with each other, to be there for each other, in sunny but also in bumpy times. It means to care for each other, to realize when a hug is needed and to give it, to believe in each other when nobody else does. It’s about passion, want and lust, it’s about sitting together silently for hours and nonetheless knowing the thoughts of the partner. But most important for me is respect, trust and appreciation. Love is to smile with each other, to laugh with and about each other. It’s about accepting the the partner as he/she is, with all amenity and flaws. It’s about forgiveness. Love creates the feeling of incompleteness without the other.

Love is so much more than a simple feeling. For me love is life.

Already as child my mom told me to tell the truth, always. If you want to be a good child, be honest and tell the truth. This is right, this is good, this is honorable. Good people always tell the truth. But what my mom didn’t tell me, the truth can hurt, terribly. It can hurt others, it can hurt heart and soul. The closer the person is, the more it hurts. And the truth can hurt yourself, horribly, your own soul. Moreover the truth has potential to destroy relationships, trust, marriages, even lives.

What about keeping the truth unsaid? Is it a lie to just omit the truth? Is the intention acceptable to keep the truth unexpressed, to avoid to hurt close ones? I think not uttering the truth is far worse and has the potential to generate even more damage. Keeping the truth inside to avoid to hurt others will poison your own soul and subducts your happiness. Slowly but steady unuttered truth will eat you up from inside and hence influence close ones as well in a negative and painful way. Unsaid truth makes people suffer in the same way or even more than uttered truth. But telling the truth while knowing it will make people you love suffer is so immense hard. Even when knowing it will be the better option long-term, it requires so much courage. And it’s so easy to be a coward, to run away. Face it and you will suffer less long-term. Irony of fate, isn’t it?

Losing a relative is always painful and it is something we all have to go through sooner or later. It is something our mind blocks until we are forced to deal with it the hard way. I couldn’t imagine how heart-breaking a sudden loss can be, but if you escort a parent into death, it will become soul-crushing and you wish it would have been a sudden, unexpected death. Seeing a loved person suffer is the worst thing I ever had to handle.

When you are coming home to see your fatally ill dad and you are getting shocked since he has changed so much. He is looking so different, thin and weak in his bed. He has trouble to move his arm since he hasn’t eaten anything for more than a weak. Mom tells you he is unable to swallow currently and can’t drink anything anymore and starts to wet his lips with a tiny wet sponge. Then you are looking into the eyes of this man which has been so strong previously. You are looking into his eyes and you can see a shadow of a smile since he recognizes you. He knows you are there, you came to see him, to support him. In this moment you are feeling so sorry for him, so deeply sorry.

Then he wants to say something to you. But because of his weakness he can’t speak clear anymore and you can not understand him. You are asking him to repeat it, once, twice, three times and you don’t understand him. You can see that he is trying so hard and desperate to tell you something, but you don’t understand it. This feeling of helplessness hits you like a hammer. You can see in his eyes that he wants to say something important to you since he knows he will not be able to talk anymore soon. You are looking into these beseeching eyes and then you see within these eyes how he gives up since he is realizing you will not receive the message. I don’t have words for this heart-breaking feeling.

I think back, two weeks ago, I was registered for a cross-country skiing marathon. I didn’t want to participate since I had a cold and had injured my knee which destroyed the meniscus partially. But these cross-country skiing competitions made him so proud of me. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I knew this would have been my last chance to make him proud of me regarding to this. So I went there and when crossing the starting line I said: “Dad, this is for you.” and his thoughts carried me over the entire distance of 42km and I was faster than ever before and not even my knee made me problems.

And now I am sitting at the bed of this weak and skinny man, which has been my dad. He is losing all his muscles and fat since he can not eat nor drink. The cancer made him so weak. His mouth is open since this way he can breath better and the muscle which closes the mouth doesn’t work anymore. Mom is trying desperate to keep his mouth wet since the breathing dries him out very fast. Every careless water drop makes him cough since he lost the ability to swallow and his eyes express how painful this is. Each breath makes a noise like snoring, but he is not sleeping. Even if he can’t move a hand anymore, his eyes tell me he’s awake and realizing what is happening around him. He’s locked in a weak and helpless body. Each breath is so immense exhausting, costs him so much strength. I want to help, but don’t know how. We are calling the doc, again, as so many times before and he is explaining again what is happening in his body. “His journey as almost over” he said finally. And this is what I feel too.

The only thing I can do is to sit with him, holding his hand, giving him the feeling he’s not alone. At times it feels like he his pushing my hand back, very slightly, but I am not sure. I look into his eyes, they are following me a bit, looking at me expressing a sadness I have not known before. And later on, his eyes turn more and more blur and don’t follow me anymore. But for some reason I can’t explain, I feel he is still with me, recognizing that I am there.

He is fighting, fighting for each single breath. He can’t let go somehow and I start wishing that his suffering will have an end soon. His breathing becomes weaker and slower and at times one or more breath is skipped at all. Breathing pauses from ten and more seconds at times, silence. I am looking at my mom, she is looking at me, and then his breathing restarts, comes back and the suffering continues, hour for hour. Only skin and bones are left from the strong man who has been my dad.

And then during another breathing pause, the silence stays…….  and his journey ends here. We are closing his eyes, trying to close his mouth, but it doesn’t stay closed. And then we say good bye to him, silently.

It is too late to call a doctor to attest the death, so we leave him, his dead body in the bed until the next morning. The dimmed light, his unnatural skin color, his open mouth and the burdensome silence make the entire scene appearing surreal. It is over.

Nobody found sleep that night. When coming back into his room in the early morning the definitiveness of the happenings last night became more and more real. It feels like being strangled when he has been carried out of the house and the car slowly drove away with him, leaving an emptiness in our souls. This is so deep and so final and I do not know if the scars from these days will heal some day. Probably never entirely. Some feelings and pictures have been burned into my mind. And now, he is driving away in a car with black windows. Thinking back I was leaving so many times this place and he stayed there, waved to me with a smile. And now I am staying here and he is leaving. I am lifting my hand, but I am not able to wave …

… he will never come back.

XC-skiing stands for cross-country skiing, which boils down to running with ski, thin like needles, through a snow-covered forest. And this is what I did today, first time on ski this winter. And know what, it was awesome, breath-taking, and this in several aspects. As desk culprit the possibilities to keep a certain fitness level are restricted. Nonetheless I need to use every possibility for cross-country skiing. If I have one, then I do run until I reach my limits. So either my legs, my lung or my heart will give up, preferably in exactly this order. On the positive side we have, once your legs go on strike, you have some time to enjoy the beautiful snow-covered trees and the silence around you, once you are able to breath again and your heart-beat isn’t hearable in your ears anymore.

But hey, you have no idea what fun this is. You are coming fully concentrated with high-speed around a corner and you see this huge ramp in front of you. Several hundred meters of uphill pain. You are feeling already exhausted, your body is tired and you know, the next meters will definitely hurt. You know you will reach your limits here. Your heart is beating til your throat and every bone shows suddenly some reluctance to go forward. Nonetheless you are jumping into this hill with a smile. You even increase the speed and the fighter within you awakes. The pain is overlain by a layer of overwhelming happiness. This feeling is awesome. Boah, it’s comparable with … yeah, I really believe it’s comparable. Amazing, isn’t it?

Do you know this feeling? This feeling of emptiness? Do you feel sad at times but you don’t know why? Do you feel restless at times with no reason? Do you feel out of peace at times even if everything seems to be alright? Strange, isn’t it? But welcome to the club.

I do feel this sadness and restlessness at times. There are happy days and there are sad days, for all of us. That’s human. But at times the sad days reach a new quality. Means you feel this sadness, you are feeling you are not in peace, but you don’t have any clue why. This is kind of dubious. You are having a beautiful wife, lovely kids, an interesting job, nice friends, everything is there to be happy, everything is in place. But you are not, you know you should, but you are not happy at times. Strange, isn’t it?

But what is it? What is the reason of all this? Do you have the feeling that you have done already all major tasks of live? You are having a lovely family and you are done with evolution. You are having a challenging job, but you are realizing that focusing too much on your job does not bring you the benefit you expected. You are doing a lot of sports, but you don’t improve in that as you did some years back. Things seem to be set already in your life, decided and fixed. You are starting to think about the “remaining years”. You are realizing that you didn’t pursue most of your biggest dreams you had in life and you are realizing the door is closing already. Most of them can not be fulfilled anymore.

Do you know how this is called? It’s called midlife crisis I believe. But as the word says, it’s a crisis and hence it has an end. It will go over, vanish. And do you know what the best therapy is? Yeah, smile …. just smile 🙂

Empathy is the ability to recognize feelings that are experienced by others. And as with all other capabilities, also empathy isn’t equally distributed among mankind. There are very empathetic people, blessed and filled with this gift named empathy. They just look at somebody and immediately know how they feel in this certain moment. Some of them even feel the same, which can be a beyond words pleasure. The downside is that this is also true for negative feelings like sadness, unhappiness or anger. As always, two sides of the coin.

And there are other, less empathetic people, like me. My parents gave me many gifts delivered in their DNA cocktail, but for some reason I forgot to say “Here!” when the empathy had been distributed. People like me don’t see that easily what other people feel. Exaggerated said, if somebody would die an emotional death next to me, I wouldn’t recognize it. Emotions of others are less visible for me. On the positive list here is that I don’t experience negative feelings of others (as long as they are not expressed violently). Sad people can not pull me down with them usually. All this leads of course to many nice misunderstandings in human communication.

But the good thing is that I am aware of my lack of empathy and so I developed other ways to get at least parts of the information I am usually blind for. Body language for example is very helpful for this purpose. The body sends all the time signals, unintentionally and unconsciously. This information can be used to conclude to a certain degree to the current emotional level of the counterpart. Small example, usual conversation between two humans. Your are observing that you can see the palms of your conversation partner many times, he/she is moving her head little to the side or starts unintentionally to simulate your gestures. These are usually positive signs. He or she is with you, likes and what you are saying and hence feels well with you. And there are much more similar signs. Of course this doesn’t work all the time and with every subject, but it fits surprisingly often.

Of course this is still far away from what empathic people receive automatically and it requires focus to observe this body language signs, but it helps empathetic deficient people like me to understand the world around. And then, at times strange things happen, e.g. during a talk with a closer person. You don’t know why, but for some reason the words and messages you receive verbally seem strange. They don’t fit into the overall picture. You know and you feel it’s not the truth. E.g. a close friend want’s to convince you he/she is alright. But you know he/she is not, you can feel it. Might this be rudimentary and short-term empathy? Ahhhhhhh, you have no idea what this empathy attack can do to a non-empathic person. It’s not logical at all, we don’t understand what happens and why. Irritation takes over. Is it possible to develop empathy? Interesting, isn’t it?