This is where thoughts become things.

Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my personal lair on the Internet. This is where I write about storytelling, activism, technology and pop culture. Sometimes I post videos. I update my lair when the mood strikes me. Follow me on Twitter for daily updates (@dcap).

Tag : thoughts

Thoughts on friendships and karma

Tonight I’m going to make my first in a series of daily countdown videos until my 30th birthday on 9/29. But just to get my thought process started, I wanted to write a bit about friendships and karma. Whenever a situation occurs where I am being treated in a hurtful and senseless manner, I try to remember three things:

1) Perception of a situation is subjective. Two people can look at the same thing and see it in two entirely different ways.

2) Sometimes love, without multiple harmonious and aligned factors, just isn’t enough.

2) Karma is a bitch.

Perception

In my lifetime so far, I’ve gone through similar situations repeatedly. I do something, another person interprets it in an incorrect manner and reacts. Someone does something, I interpret it in an incorrect manner and react. It all boils down to communication (effective or ineffective) and the decisions you make after you perceive what you perceive.

We have to live with all those decisions based on perception. So these days, I do my best to 1) breathe, 2) think first and 3) react later. Because my first impulse isn’t always the most healthy or productive when I’m coming from an emotional state. I don’t always succeed at this, but I make a conscious effort to not be ruled by emotions. And with each passing day, I get better at accepting and moving past the way others react towards me (in positive and negative ways).

Perception also ties to a very accurate saying: “Actions speak louder than words.” If you tell someone you are going to do something and then do the exact opposite, it’s your actions that actually count at the end of the day. People perceive your ACTIONS and judge you accordingly. Sometimes the way we are judged is unjust, but often it’s tied to our actions. Sometimes our perceptions are clouded by insecurity, resulting in a chain of events that would have never had to transpire if we had just practiced patience and understanding.

When someone perceives my actions from an insecure point of view, and is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, all I can do is remember that I have no control over the actions of others. I can only control my own decisions and the way I choose to perceive situations.

Ultimately I have to trust my instincts, which is a process that isn’t always so smooth. But trusting myself and my ability to make good choices is part of living. So I embrace it, bumps in the road and all.

Love

“Sometimes love isn’t enough.” No truer words were spoken, right? I can’t recall who said this to me first, but I remember that the first time I heard it I was taken aback, aghast. “WHAT???? Love isn’t enough??? How can that be possible???” It was hard for me to grasp, but now I see — it makes perfect sense.

Sometimes we think we’re ready for things and we’re not. Sometimes work schedules conflict. And sometimes you’re just fundamentally — and in key areas — not compatible with someone. This applies to all relationships, not just romantic.

But striving for love, experiencing love in different ways, is what makes life worth living. Loving someone or an experience goes hand in hand with accumulating knowledge. Love is a conduit for personal growth of all sorts.

So I never regret my experiences with love, as perilous as they can be 😉 I can never regret being allowed to experience someone’s most vulnerable states, to be trusted and confided in on different levels, and experiencing that in return. Even when things don’t work out, the good memories stay with you through your life. Those gifts are priceless.

Karma

Some people don’t believe in karma but I obviously do, or I wouldn’t have included the word in the title of this post! The concept of karma is explained through different religions, but the one I’m most familiar with is derived from Buddhist teachings.

In Buddhism, karma is just another way of talking about cause and effect. We plant seeds with our thoughts and deeds. Most importantly, motivation is what makes the difference between a “good” and “bad” action. Sometimes people do things that they want others to interpret as selfless or loving, when in fact the true motivation for their actions is the exact opposite. So sometimes we can reap bad karma even from actions that technically (on the surface) appear to be good.

Whenever I experience betrayal, hurt, or any other unpleasant reality, I now take the time to see how my own karma brought this to me. Obviously dwelling on it and obsessing is unhealthy. But if look back on the ways that I was thoughtless, selfish, and unkind, it’s really not a huge surprise when someone gives me this down the road. That is the karma I created for myself.

The one element of karma that does trouble me though is when little children — who have yet to even accumulate enough life experiences to generate any karma of their own — are abused and neglected. That is the part of karma I don’t get. Supposedly it’s because they created bad karma in their past life. In certain schools of Hinduism, they teach that “one must reap the fruits of one’s personal karma and one may need to undergo multiple births, incarnating variously as plant, animal, or human. Such fruits of karma may be analogized to a bank (i.e., God) not letting a person be released from karma’s effects until the bank account is settled.”

I don’t agree with this. It just seems too cruel. But if that’s the case, it makes the most sense for me to continue to do my best to treat others the way I want to be treated so that in this lifetime and the next I limit the amount of personal bad karma I create for myself.

My favorite example of karma is in one of the later scenes in “The Color Purple.” Near the end of the film, Celie finally has the courage leave her abusive “husband,” Mister.

Oprah summed it up better than I ever could:

“Remember physics class? Did you pay attention to Newton’s third law of motion? Let me tell you, that thing is real. It says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is the abiding law that I live by, artic­u­lated to perfection by Miss Celie in The Color Purple when she finally gets the courage to leave her abusive husband, Mister. ‘Every­thing you done to me already done to you.’ It is the Golden Rule to the 10th power.” — Oprah Winfrey, May 25, 2011

What I took away from this scene was that Mister believed Celie, deep down. He had his own struggles and pains. As a result, he took it out on everyone around him. After years of abusing Celie, her decision to finally leave him and that abuse did something to him. He started trying to set things right. It could never make up for what he did, but it did change his karma for the better. And if you notice, Celie’s strength inspired Sophia who’s experience in jail had killed the life in her. Celie’s actions transformed Sophia, brought her back to life and set her free.

In the book “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, Celie ends up developing a real friendship with Mister. She ultimately forgave him for the past and acknowledged his efforts to change. She saw him striving to reach his higher self, in his own way. She saw the “real” Mister and welcomed him back into her life.

It’s true, time can heal all wounds. Time can’t erase the past but it can provide enough distance to help you see what’s worth saving and what’s worth letting go.

All relationships are complicated — romantic, platonic, business — all of them. They change over time. Some last longer than others. But each is a chance to experience your higher self — the one we truly are.

Twitter Is MySpace For Adults Who Hate MySpace – But Teens Are Catching Up

– image via purplelime‘s flickr

In 2007 I created a Twitter account, played around with it for a while and then went “hm, lame”. There were only a handful of people updating and because I didn’t know them or care for their link content, the whole concept of following strangers tweets didn’t appeal to me. I forgot about it for a long time and didn’t really become active on it until late ’08.

Enter 2009.

Everyone tweets, everything, all the time. It’s insane. My friends use Twitter. My coworkers use Twitter. All of the social media experts/techelebs/early adopters and their circles of followers and the people who follow them use Twitter. More and more celebrities are on Twitter. People create fake accounts and impersonate celebrities. Is this starting to sound familiar?

Yes, Twitter is MySpace for adults who are over MySpace, with few teens (for now) chronicling their daily activities and observations. How did this happen?

Follow Me = Friend Me (But With Less Clutter)

Twitter was created for everyone, but it’s initial adopters were primarily adults. These social media addicts of drinking age enjoyed the fact that they could interact with folks, the way they did on MySpace, without needing to create some blinged out profile or fill out a bunch of useless interest fields. Teens who were used to profile pages filled with videos, slideshows and other candy weren’t impressed by Twitter. Adults, on the other hand, were wowed by the faster response time on Twitter, as people obsessively checked updates from their Twitter apps of choice on their mobile devices.  Adults could use Twitter to market/whore out whatever they were selling, just like on MySpace, but faster. They could share links and useless info (like with bulletins) but again, with faster results. What do adults like more than babies? Instant gratification & results, especially when it comes to money, recognition and fame.

You Heard It Here First (Now Tell Everyone)

Like MySpace, Twitter allows anyone with a semblance of public notoriety to cut out the middle man who once functioned as his/her PR person (sorry guys!) and break stories even before the press gets around to it (smart PR folk are on Twitter though). The press is all over Twitter, looking for those mini releases that could be potential stories and sharing their own. How do I know this? Because my work recently did a piece on it and even Gawker posts daily Twitter roundups.

Sure, the fogies are still holding on to their MySpace and Facebook accounts. How else would they keep in touch with their parents? Yep, Twitter is definitely a playground for adults – but not for long.

What R U Doing?

Even though teens primarily continue to update their status via MySpace/Facebook/direct texting, Twitter is quickly catching on with the JoBro demographic as well. Consider that despite the iphone’s pricetag, a lot of apps continue to be marketed to the tween set and that many teen-friendly album releases this year will come bundled with a related (and interactive) iphone app, offering “instant access” to fans on the go. With more celebs (with teen fanbases in tow) on Twitter and youth brands promoting in that space, young people are creating accounts to interact with their interests, enjoying the instant gratification just as much as the adults. These teens are, in turn, creating their own micro communities of tweet connected teen social groups, which means it won’t be long before search.twitter.com searches for “first kiss” will yield more than some late 30-something late bloomer’s blushing confession or whistful nostalgia.