What I've Learned This Week |Five|

One. I spent a long morning at the Apple store and I’ve come to realised that among the various reasons that make me frustrated, the most common is when I don’t understand. It doesn’t really matter what it is I’m not understanding, is the fact that I’m not understanding that makes me impatient, stressed but more importantly rude to others. Patience is key in many cases, patience with myself is key in these particular cases. Sorry Apple Geniuses!

Two. You never stop learning, especially a language.
I love learning new expressions, more so if local....but I'm still trying to figure out the meaning of weird Mancunians saying, so for this week's favourite, two common British sayings new to me: 

That's the way the cookie crumbles! (That's life) 

and my love for crows made my melt when I understood this:

as the crow flies (In a straight line, speaking of distance) 
It's also fascinating how my brain is really not capable, after a while abroad, to keep languages separated. It happened after the year in the States, it happened in China, and it's happening right now. Oh well. Italenglish it is!

Three. I read a story on the Italian newspaper about a boy that went through troubles and drugs and just wanted to thanks his parents and his church for the love and support he got from them that made him able to exit the hole write a book and was about to get married. There were a lot of negative comments, which I tried not to read as part of my quest to avoid negativity in general, but there was one positive comment that really struck with me. It was quoting the introduction to the book that a priest wrote and it read:

"Ma succede che questo «io», soggetto di pensieri e di azioni, consapevole di sé e responsabile, nel mondo in cui vive, è mosso da desideri e bloccato da paure, acquista abitudini, sente più facile il lasciarsi andare che il prendersi a carico; può accadere, e accade spesso, che s’illuda di essere libero mentre sta solo seguendo la linea di minore resistenza e di minore fatica nella vita."

“But it happens, that the “I”, main character of thoughts and actions, aware of himself and responsible for himself, in this world we live in, it’s moved by desires and paralyzed by fears, get into habits and thinks it’s easier to go with the flow then to make a decision.

It can happen, and in fact if often happens, that he think of himself as free, whilst he, instead, is just choosing the life with less barriers and less trouble”

Apart from the philosophy of the” I” as a separate character, so hard to understand for me (ask my philosophy professor! Ah!)  the comment resonated so much with me as I’m trying, constantly, to don’t let things just happen to me, buy consciously decide for myself. I strongly believe that, in the end, happiness is clear to us when we choose the bigger life.

Four. Because Excel is the source of all my power at work, ie the majority of my time spent awake, I often think about the inventor.

How many times must he have thought “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts…”?

The information technology language really amaze me daily.

( if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re a lucky ignorant worker)

Happy weekend everyone! Life is good!