The Tunnel of Love

I got inspired today by my father commenting on this picture that we have been visiting the Tunnel of Love as they seem to call this tram line due to the fabulous fall colors and the straight rails full of brown leaves.

Yeah, we have visited it. But, in fact, Camelia and myself, are living in it!

Love is an Addiction

"That's not love, that's oxytocin" It's a colorful line of a husband catching his wife in bed with another man in Sarah Ruhl's, Stage Kiss, theater play. While I did not made it yet to New York to see this 2014 late success, I found this paragraph in a fascinating book I read in the past months.

Few months ago, when in London, Camelia was training herself into flowers and I was wandering between bookshelves, sunny streets and my own ghosts. In the turmoil of thoughts, shadows and restless search for answers, I got myself attracted on the neuroscience library section, my late interest, by this title: "THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN US. Love, sex and the science of attraction"

It took me a few plane trips to finish it (lately I get to read only on planes) but I devoured it and read second time the most of it. Half of it is too technical and too much about lab rats experiments, animal studies and testing. Even the former engineer in me got overwhelmed at some point about the data. But the rest it's fabulous.

"Love is an addiction. Not in the poetic, metaphorical way, but a real one. Love it is just chemicals stimulating neural activity on well defined neural circuits, and not meany to elevate us in some kind of a higher spiritual plane, but to lure us unthinkingly into reproduction, thus maximizing our evolutionary fitness. It is all so base"

" ... the brain processes activated during sexual bliss, and during the development of fetishes and partner preferences, have tremendous overlap with the brain circuit that makes drug use fell so good. They both relies on the same structures, the same neuro-chemicals and create the same changes in the brain ..."

Got you interested? The room for debate is huge. With or without scientific arguments everyone has his own views about love and its importance in our lives. We do love. We need to love. We want to love. Or we just LOVE. Deeply, madly, passionately love sometimes. How can this be trivialized and reduced just to some neurons and the juice flowing between them?

Larry Young and Brian Alexander explain that.

"We can know exactly how love, desire and gender work in our brains, yet we'll still invent meaning to go alone with that knowledge. We'll still celebrating the feelings and the thrills, as well as lament the sadness.

Now we have a chance to be more wilful and more conscious of what we are doing. We have the opportunity to end uniformed prejudice, to appreciate the power of the love mechanism and to try to guard against heedlessness. Like those who don’t believe in God, or in a life after death, yet who construct ethical lives and find meaning despite the conviction there is no supreme being waiting for them ..."

Me, I chose love. I chose to believe that love exists. I chose to live and fight for my love. For my wife, for my family, for my life. Yet, I know the guys are right. I know that sometimes drugs and addiction might flow onto the same brain circuits and inhibit any other flows wanting to pass in the same time. Reading this book helped me, once more, to understand that sometimes nature can be defeated, but only by the awakened, informed and self controlled human being.

Write me if interested to read it, I will happily lend it to you. Or try Amazon.

Quick Detox Report

After traveling in 5 countries last week and with work demanding the most of me these days, I just drop by to tell you that while I am still fat (well, according to my standards), everything else is going great.

Give your life's 100% of your soul and mind and she will smile and embrace you fully.

Life is fabulous. Some pictures from the it's past 10 days.

Your Detox Fall

I got fat. About 2 kilos. On top of my other extra 3 kilos my belly carried for more than 10 years (just realized that when looking retrospectively to my photo archive).

Five years ago, I had a heart attack. I can't allow myself being fat.

I got toxic. Especially in my brain. I got blinded of my own ghosts. I was on the brink of loosing everything. Which I can't allow.

And then, and only then, I realized I am my own toxin and fat supplier and had to change.

It is very fashionable to do this detox thing especially among ladies right? Vegetables, sport no stress. Simple? Not quite. But try and to do the detox cure when it comes to your brain. To your habits. To your anxieties. To your demons.

Raise your head, climb the ladder and reach for the light. Do your detox.

My detoxification menu this fall.

Start going to gym. Checked
Pursue dreams. Checked (had the IELTS again)
Build your plans. Checked (will keep posted on progress)
Show more of your love to the family. In progressReduce noise. Checked (dropped the ipad, got the Kindle back)
Follow your passions. In progress
Reduce toxins. Checked (can't tell details)
Work happy. Checked (just got, officially, shareholder in the flower business)
Laugh more. Smile a lot. In progress

Good about today. And always

Did not had much time to write these days, we were busy traveling to and from but mostly having fun at Legoland where we celebrated Radu's sixth birthday.

No need to write it down to know what makes me happy today. Or any other day.

Just to remember who is kissing & holding me when leaving to work and jumps into my arms when returning home.

Counting your life blessings

Margitzighet, July 2014

The challenge continues!

The thing about counting the positives in your every day is that when you done it regularly, you just realize they are so many that at some point they become common thing, commodities. Our brain is used to go on the same paths and ignore them just because are there, familiars and safe.

Sometimes you need a big storm in your life to realize that nothing is granted and one needs to fight for the familiar. To fuel it, to maintain it, to constantly bring in his soul, mind, hands, sweat and heart to keep going it.

So, when the storms come, obviously the mind storm, one good thing you can do is to count your blessing in your life.  Depending on your values in life you may count your car, your home, your watches, your social achievements, your professional success stories.

However the real blessings in your life are the ones which stood by you even when the storm came and you just forgot about them.

Coming back of the good things happened in a day, I mention only one: My beloved wife and kids made it to Budapest again. Next stop: Legoland! Adventure starts soon.

Felling High

Observation Point, Zion National Park, 2010

Challenge day #2

Isn't it amazing how many things can happen in a day? And how many of them are really positive when you are able to pull off your negativism curtain blocking your eyes?

Today was a good day in so many ways. Not only because my family took the night train bringing them to Budapest for our new adventure trip. Not only because I self indulged myself with a double pair of Ecco shoes (heavily reduced:)), not only because of the surprise evening visit of a dear friend passing through Budapest.

But this was such a good day for some huge news received I would not dare to tell you about today. Because I still have to work, I still have to earn it. 

Wish me luck and ask me again in one month. 

And you, how positive was your day today?

How many times can someone reborn?

Prague 2004

Apparently, every 5 years, at least in my case.

15 years ago I married with Camelia and, God, you wouldn't have wished to know me before :)

10 years ago, I was reborn as a traveler after we started our traditional Oct 24th wedding anniversary yearly trip. It was Prague 2004, USA 2005 (only me :)), Rome 2006, London 2007, USA 2008 (again me alone, Radu was just born), Andalusia 2009, USA 2010, Extremadura 2011, Lisbon 2012, Porto 2013. 2014 is under planning phase :)

5 years ago I had a heart attack, actually two of them. I was 38. Reborn by default.

This year, life and troubles made me reborn again.

Five years from now, my daughter will be 18 and I will be 48. A good moment to enjoy life & maturity.

See you then!

Good things challenge

Isola Bella, Laggo Magiore, Italy, 2009

I've been challenged yesterday. No, not to the ubiquitous, meaningless ice bucket challenge. But to write here on this blog about good things happened to me in a day.

Hmm, quite simple when you read it. So, after thinking all day about what I should write tonight, here I am, trying to fill in this empty computer window with some positive thoughts about what happened today.

Why it has to be so damn hard? Probably because of my overall negative emotional potential these days but still, objectively, anybody can fill some positives about a day. Any day.

Do you have such moments?

Should I try the method of my old companion? You lay down in the bed, at the end of the day, and you play in your mind the moments of the day, what you did, what you felt, good or bad, without judging yourself.

Judging yourself. The main inhibitor, the biggest saboteur of one self. The little worm inside your brain keeping you being harsh on yourself. You are not good enough, you are not smart, you are not good looking, you are not slim, you are not worthy, you are nothing, you are dirt.

BUT. Self judgment left aside, it was a good day.

I woke up by smiling on my wife on messenger, I enjoyed my cereals like any given Hungarian morning, I had a very productive morning at work, I got a strawberry and chocolate ice cream, I had lunch (wow), I skyped with my little kids home, I completed three IELTS tests on reading and had excellent results, I had a warm bath in the hotel's spa and I will probably finish the evening talking to my wife again while deciding upon our next vacation.

Not bad, I would say, for a day in which you feel low and depressed about it. 

Did I mentioned something about saboteurs? Well, forget about them. They are only bad chemicals in your brain circuits. You are better than that, much better. 

You don't believe it? Take this challenge then. 

A demain!

The day when relevance was lost

It doesn't really matter what is perfect and what is not. It doesn't really matter if it is not perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect and the search for perfection might be just your alibi in order not to face yourself. 

It is just beautiful. It always has been.