Sunday, January 22, 2012

Becoming Ageless.

Someone important to me told me today that  I have a classic beauty. Asking him what he meant with that, almost thinking that he had told me I was getting older and he‘d seen the difference, he told me that I have a beauty that never age.

And that was enough for me to think about so many things.

First, thank you dear. You made my day. I came to the conclusion that I should feel flattered.



A general and common thought goes with what Suzanne Somers teaches worldwide, of how menopausal symptoms such as weight gain, diminished sex drive, hot flashes, and difficulty sleeping had turned her formerly happy life into a misery, leaving her feeling cranky, tired, and irritable around the clock.

Her efforts to regain her mind, body, and quality of life led her to discover bioidentical hormones—natural hormones that mimic the hormones produced in our bodies—which are almost completely lost with aging.




The world knows how to be cruel.

We assume that an old person is tired and a young person incapable. Generally our assumptions are followed by actions. If we treat young people as being irresponsible, they may tend to act that way. People are prone to act as they are expected to act.

Robert Butler said, “ageism can be seen as a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this with skin color and gender.”

In other hand, growing older is not the negative side of ageing, it is the accompanying degeneration of the body that we must try and negate to make aging more acceptable.

That means, physical ageing comes to all, and antioxidants, free radicals, baggy eyes, herbs, drugs interactions, it can make us crazy if we will worry too much about it.

Today’s world, in the battle against instant gratification, the most potent skill of all is also the simplest: patience.



Patience is a virtue of maintaining a balanced emotional control, without losing calm over time. It consists basically of tolerance to errors or unwanted events. It is the ability to endure discomfort and difficulties of every kind, any time or anywhere. It is the ability to persist in an difficult activity, keeping our self control and believing that you will get what you want. It is to be steadfast, waiting for the right time for certain actions, to wait on the understanding that peace has not yet been obtained. It is the ability to hear someone, calmly, carefully, without haste; or the ability to get rid of anxiety. Tolerance and patience are safe sources of support that we can use and trust in any situation. Being patient is to be polite, be humanized and know how to act calmly and with tolerance. Patience is also a charity when practiced in interpersonal relationships.

Now I have a question: if we strive so hard to develop patience toward others, why don’t we see that we need that to ourselves?

Patience is a challenge to master because at first it feels as if it’s going against our nature, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Patience, when mastered, is one of the skills most conducive to fulfilling our nature. Our nature as human beings is to create our way of life. There is no more powerful tool for that job than patience.

Our greatest achievements are accomplished over time, with considerable dedication and perseverance. Neither of these qualities would be possible without it.

Patience is a virtue.





Having a positive attitude towards life requires patience, more than anything else.  But, it is also a skill, a learnable skill that can be mastered by anyone. It’s fulfilling, once it allows us to relax, to regain self control, to restore our sense of well being and balance in the middle of chaos, allowing us to rise above and understand the forces that, in first instance, look like want to destroy us, but, with patience, they can be made to work for us.

Learning patience is exactly the same way we learned every other skill we now possess, through practice.

Oh well… what this has to do with becoming ageless?

I answer.

It has to do with Positive Attitude to see life like a succession of learning opportunities, instead a war against our figure.

Animals spend their lives locked in a cycle of instinct. When they are hungry, they eat. When they hear a loud noise, they run. When they are attacked, they fight. When they come into season, they mate. They live the way their genes and their environment have programmed them to live because they have no choice.

But we do.



We can think that we too are programmed by our genes and by our environment. But we can transcend our programming. We have been given the awesome power not just to respond to what the world throws at us, but to choose our response.

We can break the chain of events that has shaped us and learn to shape ourselves. We have been given the God-like power to participate in our own fate.

The challenge is to wake up for our own strength, to the role we play in our own destiny.

We control our environments. If our current environment is causing entropy, then we can change it. Each person needs to discover what guidelines work best for him. Each one of us has a unique set of experiences and only we can know when we feel most at ease and confident in our environments.

Being content with our environments influences our health. Even if our genetics and experiences have carved us into what we currently are, we can self-direct our existence and redesign ourselves.

Age is another mechanism of control society likes to perpetuate.

I love agency in everything and I love my Lord and Savior to have fought that I could keep it in this life and forever. I can choose what I think, do and say. The moment we understand that our life is whatever we make of it by choice, we will awake to an astonishing new world.



First we feel humble. After empowered. Humble because life is a gift, power because I’ve been given the most potent gift of all - the power to choose. And we can only exercise this power if we are awake. To be awake means to grow up.

All of this is exactly what I need this year to make the changes I need, physically, mentally, professionally, personally and spiritually.

Once we realize that we can give ourselves what we want, we’re no longer content to rely on others to get it for us. Nor are we willing to accept only what the world feels like giving us. The moment we realize all that we can give ourselves, we refuse to settle for less.

We feel a greater sense of freedom, possibility. Our limitations are limitations no more. We become realistic, and seeing the big picture is easier. The bad dreams of the past lose their power over us, in the exactly moment we awake.

After I heard today that my beauty is ageless, I thought about the knowledge I have of eternity. Believing that I will live forever helps me to not believe in ageing.

People who are young at heart tend to look younger, whereas those who are very conscious of their Age and who comply with its doctrines tend to look it, as if the thoughts and feeling of Aging are the very cause of its physical signs, rather than the conventional view which says that it’s the other way round. Our thoughts do affect our physical well-being.

The higher self, the eternal being that we all are. It’s not just our bodies, it’s us. Life is just a temporary focus to experience life through a body, and in this are included our relationships, finances, everything. This perspective gives us back all our power.



This perspective keeps life energy flowing through us without the resistance of a belief that life is happening to us. We create our life. We are making it happen.

That means that, when our time comes, we don’t die. We just change focus. We just stop looking through this body’s senses. And we do it all the time, I guarantee.

We are eternal in nature. We are manifesting this life as well as all the other physical and non physical parts that are not focused in this life. We focus on living our life, not how old we are.

Announce our age and be proud of it, embracing all stages of life is healthy.

The external appearance of our physical body may be determined by the amount of light developed by us, with patience, recognizing we are eternal beings, in our actions.



Educate our personality accepting and allowing ourselves to change our attitude for better will bring the feeling that ageing is a gift as well.

Only an attitude of pure thoughts, and a high degree of unconditional love for oneself and others, will maintain our light in our being.

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 19:19)

As visionaries in our own rights stretching beyond the constraints of yesterday’s and today’s limitations, we are on the journey to forever life, adding the quality of life.

It’s a future where we can grow healthier and more youthful as long as we wish, reinventing ourselves to be whatever and whomever we desire, and He teaches us to be.

He is ageless.

That is perfection.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

New Year. Starting Over.


New Year. Ah, 2012!

What a end of 2011 I had. As much 2011 was not a outstanding year for me, the last three weeks was so much. I made memories that I am going to treasure for the rest of my days.

We went to Brazil to spend Christmas and New Year Reveillon with my people.

We solved document pendents; I got a surprise party to celebrate my mom's and my birthday (spent between airports); we had an 75 year anniversary party (yes, 75 years of Marriage!); we had Christmas at my uncle's home; we had Christmas day at my Mother, while visiting other family members and a cousin that I had not seen for more than 20 years.


We also spent a few days at a tropical beach. Ah, the beach! Almost 10 years that I hadn't visited my good friend, the Sea. Along the way, bananas growing wild like weeds at the side of the road. Mango trees and giant avocados.

Brazil has the best beaches, combined with the shrimp, coconut water, barbecue in the stick, and of course, a breathtaking view of paradise.




I remembered the first day I got to have the water through my neck, I was shedding tears. Tears of Joy. I miss the memories I did at the beach. The memories of me and my dad jumping waves as they would come so soft or so definitive. I miss when my father's free spirit would feel itself so deep holding my hand.

Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer and sailor, translated my exact feelings as I was crying and letting my tears mix at that moment. And many others.

“A man must travel.
By his own, not through stories, pictures, books or TV.
He’s got to travel by himself, with his eyes and feet, to understand what is his.
To one day plant his own trees and value them.
Knowing the cold to enjoy the heat. And the opposite.
Feel the distance and absence of shelter to be well under his own roof.
A man must travel to places that he does not know
to break this arrogance that makes us see the world as we imagine it,
and not simply as it is or can be.
That makes us teachers and doctors of what we have not seen,
when we should be students, and simply go see. ”


(Mar sem Fim, Amyr Klink)


My tears come back just to remember that single moment. I have that quote from Amyr at my screen and phone. I am grateful for the opportunity to go back, and 'go see'. The sea.





Anyway, I had a blast of a time.

I was happy to see progress in the lives of people I love and care about. I also missed my dear aunt, my mother's sister, that passed away last April. I didn't know how that would be, getting there and not being able to see her. I saw all of her children, my dearest cousins that I grew up with, and that helped a lot. I saw my aunts and uncles, cousins, their kids, friends and their families.

We had a great time at a former Bishop's sister home, today a Stake President in my mom's Stake. I heart them so dearly! In parts, he is very responsible for where I am today. He was the right person at the right time when I most needed.

We went to Campinas LDS Brazil temple, where I met several friends, many past co workers, and visited with some great families I love dearly. They are part of who I am today. They are examples of great heart people that helped me, sometimes just with their example and strength.




The Temple is gorgeous and breathtaking. I remember those early mornings, waiting for the President to get there and open it, I would sit at that center square and open my heart to my Maker, crying out for things that I never thought I would experience in life, but that today, knowing that I am already blessed with the most, because He answers prayers.



I was also able to visit a few places where I lived, studied, worked, and liked the changes that time makes. We enjoyed a lot.





Coming back to my mother's town, we visited Natural Parks, saw Atlantic forest, we also went to the Zoo and many other places.



We enjoyed the End of Year's celebrations, the fireworks, the preparation, the traditional Italian foods just she knows how to do it.

And then, unfortunately, time goes by, and the day to come back was there.

Leave Sao Paulo, my hometown and lifelong tropical background, was extremely hard this time. Brazil is a place of beauty and love, even with all the problems the country has. We here in US have other problems, but we are all children of God, all His creations are beautiful and made for our joy.

The green mountains, the ripe and organic fruits, the rain (how I miss the rain!!!!), Mama's care, plus the 50 thousand people I know there, was so hurtful.



Here I know about 5 people... just joking... lol, but seriously: Starting another year over again this time has been harder after the memories I made for the last weeks.

I need to pick myself up and keep going. We all, at one time or another, need to do that.

When we finally accept these changes as a part of life we can once again move forward. We only live once, and we can't live in the past forever. And I am responsible for my choices, and aware that, to harvest good fruit, I planted good seed.

And the field is there still, and I can go anytime. Maybe someday.

Well. Back to the 'blessed land, where the Lord took us by hand to bring here'. Everything is calm, everything is fine. We are very blessed to have friends and neighbors that watch over us. I am thankful for them.



Another year is here. Another opportunity to rightfully right our wrongs. Start over anew like the night I was born. Put pride aside, "break this arrogance that makes us see the world as we imagine it", and assume that life is beautiful anyway, and the best we can do is love people the way they are, because we remember the good . This medicine is called 'Time'.

Goals for this year?

Take care of my emotional, physical, professional, spiritual and personal health. In a matter that I can be ready to meet my Maker and Savior anytime. Everyday of my life I want to be ready.

And, of course, I will always "go see".

Happy New Year!!







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