• B U T H A N •

 Upon reading the book written by Eric Weiner, tiled "Geography of Bliss",  I came to the understanding that happiness is something relative. Happiness depends, on my opinion, on your particular feelings and how you take your life experiences and what you make of them. Weiner on his book, describes how Bhutan was a city rated as one of the happiest in the world. This is something that Weiner felt very interested about, and decided to visit. Upon arriving at the country, he was greeted with the great hospitality and friendliness. But to me, this seemed as it was a forced happiness. The Bhutanese, to me, appeared as if they were happy because their king was happy, they didn't feel happiness because they genuinely felt it.

  Everyone experiences happiness in different ways, and definitely culture, country and religion greatly influence this. I live in the country and small island of Puerto Rico. We often are celebrated as being one big happy country that if given the opportunity, celebrates anything and everything. As everything, not always its all fun and celebration. Puerto Rico has been under public scrutiny for over so many years because of the debt caused by the corruption of many politics. But even given this situation, I am grateful to be called Puertorrican, because even in the greatest adversity, we manage to face our everyday lives with a smile and great joy of our country.

  But happiness is not always "measured" you can say, the same way. As I mentioned before, happiness is relative. What makes a person happy, might make another angry. In Weiner's chapter describing his visit to Bhutan, we can see how the Bhutanese people don't ponder much into the reflection about what makes them happy or nor, they just go on in their everyday journey enjoying everything that life and that day has to offer. We must not worry too much about the things that make us sad or keep us from resting at night. We must understand that sadness is temporary and that everyday the rising of the sun gives us another opportunity to go about our day and experience our new happiness. Because sometimes, all this worrying and overthinking causes us to miss those opportunities and/or experiences that would've granted is happiness, even if it was just for a moment. It's those little moments that we must embrace, because when we're older, most probably what we remember the most, will be those little moments, thus we have to make every day count and not delve  too much on sad and stressful things, and make everyday, a happy day.

"What doesn't kill you not only make you stronger, but also more honest."
                                    – Eric Seiner

A • D A Y • I N • A • B A K E R Y

 

"Quesitos"

I have had the privilege and opportunity to travel to various countries and places with my family. While being on another country, one is a tourist, and usually stand out. Since in between the to and fro of things, we stop to try new foods, to take pictures, basically, do anything and everything to stand out. As part of a class assignment, I was instructed to play the part of tourist for a day. I decided that I wanted to try and play off my best impression of a British accent, and decided to go to a bakery not too far from my house, and not to far also from the common tourist area of Isla Verde. The name of the bakery was "Panaderia Metropolitana". I discovered this bakery while on a volunteer work one night, and what impressed me the most, was that it as a 24 hour bakery.

  While in the line, I was getting cold feet. I was so nervous, I could hear the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. I wondered if they would look at me funny, if I would be so nervous that I would start to laugh; so many other things filled my head in that moment. I had never felt so nervous! When it was my turn to order, I started speaking in a British accent, and I stated that I found this bakery while driving without aim in order to see other aspects of the island. I noted that the person looked at me in a weird way, and I started to panic a bit, because it looked as if she didn't understand me. It was here that I to panicked internally. She started to flash at me with her hands that she didn't understand me, and started to look for someone that did speak English. She finally found someone in the back that spoke English,  at this point I gave up on trying to do the British accent impression. I told that I wanted to buy some sweets, but that I didn't know which. He then proceded to recommend me "quesitos", "tembleque", "tres leches" and "flan de queso".

"Tembleque"

  Although my impression of the British accent was kind of off in parts of the conversation because I was so nervous, I think that they really didn't believe I was a tourist, and the way they would look at me made it even more true. Fortunately, the lady that took my order first didn't understand my English, which prompted the change in the person, and thus made me regret speaking in the British accent, because it made me really self conscious. While pretending to be a tourist, I experienced first hand the different treatment that is given to tourists, even though I think that they didn't believe me, they went along with it. Even though I think I got a treatment that was a little courteous and more friendly than usual, I don't think that the treatment, in this particular place, was not going to be much different than the treatment that a local would get. Regardless, I was glad to have the experience to be a tourist in my own town. This experience is one I will certainly be doing for fun in the future.

T H E • C A R O U S E L • R I D E

           One way or another, everything in our lives is a carousel ride. We jump, we get excited, and we are desperately waiting in a line. We wait for the ones who are riding the carousel to end their ride so that we can go climb our horse (or whatever creature is on the carousel) and start our ride. When we were little, very very little, we didn’t know what a carousel ride was. Our eyes would look with great wonder and amazement at that foreign object that we had never seen before, and get excited and wait for our turn to get to enjoy the ride.

   It may sound bogus, but think about it… In life, we get to experience things once, others more than a few times. If we are satisfied with the experience we look forward to our chance to experience it again. But if it just so happens that we made a mistake while on the ride or while getting of it, we ponder our mistakes and try to not make them again when we ride the carousel again. This, I have come to understand it and ponder it myself for a while now. When we are little, we look to others as role models or we look in others for things that we want to do or try because we saw another person doing it. Sometimes, this may lead some to a few experiences that we may come to regret. But in the end, everything is a learning experience.

    Just recently, I had a fight with a friend. I know, you may think is your common fight when you don’t agree with something, right? But no, this was different. The things he was saying, it was as if he was wishing upon himself great misfortune. I didn’t want him to keep saying those things because I would not know what would I have done if something did happen. To make matters worse, he blamed me for overreacting. It wasn’t my fault for the things he said, but the words hurt more than anything at the moment. One thing lead to another, and matters were resolved. But what leads me to the carousel is that, no matter how many times we get into fights, into being hurt, sometimes little things like that don’t matter because we want to keep experiencing the ride more. But the most important thing, is that no matter the situation, one can’t change a person. The person if he wants to change, he has to do it by himself and by his own free will. Even if its for their own good.

     We can’t try and change someone… that is a lesson I learned the hard way. Now, I may look like a selfish person because I’m trying to change someone and not trying to accept them as they are. Sadly, the truth is, that there is not a day that goes by that I try to put myself in his shoes, trying to understand, but just like a carousel, I end up in square one. Sometimes we want to ride the carousel in hopes that this time would be different, sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not.

    Experiences are not fun and happiness all the time, but they make us who we are. We have to take up the ride in the carousel as never ending experience, because whether we want it or not, we always end up in a carousel ride. But whether is good or bad, we must make the best out of the situation so that we don’t end up in the carousel back to square one without getting to learn something out of the ride.

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P.D. It was not easy writing this, nor it was easy posting it for everyone to read. But as everything in life, not everything is simple and a "piece of cake". In posting this,it is proof that I am over the situation and that I have learned and forgiven, and that I have returned from the carousel with a learned experience, and had not let that ride go in vain. Thank you all for reading. 

A U T O B I O G R A P H Y • A N D • F I C T I O N

"I have no memory at all. That's one of the great defects of my mind: I keep on brooding over whatever interests me, by dint of examining it from different mental points of view I eventually see something new in it, and I alter its whole aspect. I point and extend the tubes of my glasses in all ways, or retract them." 

                                                                               – Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard

   Is with this quote that V.S. Naipaul opens the first chapter of his book, Reading & Writing: A Personal Account. The quote greatly expresses and fit the line of thought Naipaul gives in this chapter. Across this brief but deep chapter, Naipaul recounts to us, the reader(s), about his experiences with his Indian family in his new home, the island of Trinidad. He also recounts his experiences while growing up in the island and the diverse memories he had while in school and in the university. As one keeps reading, the reader finds that Naipaul is recounting his inner journey while he is discovering a side of himself that he had been having trouble with since he was a child. This side is his own desire as a writer. He recounts how he has several anthologies of parts of books that he liked, and how this would differ from the own likings of his father. 

    His father served a rather special role in this journey. His father served as his role model, and his inspiration for the things he wanted to achieve. We can observe in this chapter as he struggles while wanting to become a writer, not having nothing to write about but his experiences, which frustrated him greatly. But what's rather impressive in this chapter is how Naipaul uses a rather peculiar way to recount his tale. He gives real people characters, and uses a rather peculiar way to tell his journey.As one keeps reading, one gets caught up in the stories, which makes it more interesting when reading, since it provokes an interest in the reader to keep reading and find out what happens.

     While reading Naipaul's chapter, one may think is rather easy to write this way, but it actually is a rather difficult task. I find it rather hard to write a personal experience as a story and assign real people characters in that story. While Naipaul uses his rather fun and entertaining way to write, we can see in other authors like Carl Jung, that there is a tendency to exaggerate and even have the possibility to alter the memories or alter the success of events as they really happened. I personally think that this is a normal part of writing an autobiography, since most of the time we can't remember the event in full detail; I make the remark that some people do possess this amazing ability to remember everything in full detail. That's why we must be careful when writing, even more so if it's an autobiography, because we can get caught in writing everything as a fictional tale and forget the actual event, and start exaggerating or change the actual story when writing about it, just so it can fit more into the fictional tale we are trying to tell. 

"An autobiography can distort, facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally."

                                     – V. S. Naipaul