I miss the times when I was having strong convictions about almost everything.
love, politics, music
friendships were born thanks to how much you were into something.
my gothic friends. system of a down, black sabbath or Marilyn Manson.
my nerdy friends. it was a high-school degree for nerds that manifest their willingness to be even more nerd.
we had pimples, an inexistent sense of fashion and we were happy debating if humans are just featherless bipeds.
my basketball friends. spending more than 9 hours per week training and playing. sweating fears, tears and complexes.
with every friendship and every situation, there was an intensity that could move mountains. i could take part at any conversation.
what was good. what was bad. it was very clear in my mind.
but today, nothing surprises me anymore. a break-up. somebody quitting their job. a change of life.
there is no black and white anymore. there is no right or wrong. there is just several sides of the same story. and they all tend to be fair.
however, I don’t know if this is part of growing-up or if I am just becoming boring as f*.
I wonder if after being 7 years living outside Spain, and experiencing different cultures, I have just integrated new things.
new ways of thinking, of being, of behaving.
and doing so, parts of my identity or my culture got mixed and diluted. like less pure. less intense. less black or white.
is like becoming a decaf version of yourself.
because strong coffee is not for everyone.
and to be likeable, and being able to integrate yourself, sometimes you have to take it down a notch, you have to mix it with something.
you have to make it sweet.
and some parts of yourself start getting blurred. they even disappear. and you let new ones in.
new points of view. new music. new languages. new interests.
I just wonder if in this journey of constant evolution and change, i am not losing myself.
how much newness can you integrate without losing your foundations?
last night I was reading Lady sings the blues, of Billie Holliday:
“I never forget this wonderful old spaniard, Pablo Casals, who played the cello once on tv. when he finished some Bach he was interviewed by some American chick. ‘Every time you play, it’s different’, she gushed.
‘it must be different’, said Casals. ‘How can it be otherwise?. Nature is so. And we are nature.’ So there you are. You can’t even be like you once were yourself, let alone like somebody else”.