Some of the First Impressions of the Year Ain't so New

2010 has started and so far is beautiful and hopefull, like every January and every new year in the begining of times. There are moments when I feel a bit at lost, overwhelmed by the size of many thing, worried at moments for pety things such as "debt" and "time" and how they seem some times to hover over my head like giant buzzards. I send them away clearing my head and filling it with hope and projects: I can make them go away, I can get rid of them and I will. This year I will get my University diploma, pay all my dues and fly back here, back home, get a job and live happily ever after with Kari.

Like everytime I'm here, my days are more planned than the protocols of the Parliament, and each minute has been perfectly planned from months before. On Friday, January 1st, we got home from Sofia and rested. On Saturday the double plan included visiting my "adopted" parents in Mezőkövesd, an adorable country village known for it's beautiful embroidery, where we had lunch, which was delicious, talked, and then went back to Budapest, got the battery replaced in one of my Swatches and later went to pay visit to some friends who had invited us for dinner.

Today I was supposed to go to church, but since I woke up filling less than well, I skipped the gospel and rather stayed home resting, which did wonders to me. On the afternoon we went to visit my Godmother to discuss a few issues concerning the future, and then back home, did some grocery shopping and finally sit at the computer and delve into meditation and evaluation. If the first days of the year tell you something about the whole year, I would say that it won't be free of worry, but it will be many times more filled with hope and homely feelings, and added to it, the comfort of knowing that I can trust and count on a wonderful mate and man, such as my man, Kari.

Some of the things that happened also made me meditate. In early days I saw people with little consideration for others, I saw people so terribly filled with themselves they force their pety things upon others, gather friends and family around to get served by them, throw all manners through the window and flaunt their "signs of success" in rather forced and unproper ways. I realized I'm still intolerant, I still expect people to behave according to the social patterns I learned, to hold themselves to a given standard. I realized I can be easily disappointed and that didn't bother me, since I learned also that disappointment is a way to learn about people, about what you can expect from people.

I learned that I love my friends, but that doesn't mean that they are perfect. It doesn't mean either that I must accept everything from them. It means that they are my friends. Plain and simple, and they are people, with flaws and virtues. With characteristics.

I realized through 2009, just like in years before, and also in 2010 so far, that there are people who live for the "numbers", the "statistics", the "figures" as if life were nothing but a big, ongoing championship where these figures tell them how close or far are they from being  whatever they think they want to be. People desperate to get attention, to get more and more statistics about their position in a feeble, unrealistic world where a number can easily be dubbed, manufactured and even if it were "real" it wouldn't mean much about who they are and what they are. I'm sad for these people, hording their friends and followers to become another click, another number in a long list of meaningless numbers because "numbers" and their content-less filling is the only thing with meaning for them.

Kari has often told me that more people read me than what I would thing. That's unsettling. Sure, I like receiving comments from my friends, and I love getting that contact with people out there and in here, like a touch of fingerpads that makes us realize there are humans at the other side of the screen. Humans like J from Portugal, Humans like Julie up in beautiful Canada, Humans like Sartassa in Austria, Calendulina, Dragonfly, Lex... Humans, not numbers. People, not statistics.

I ask again: why would you want hundreds of followers/friends/buddies/readers... or whatever you call them if you can't reach out and "touch" them? Personally I believe that I'm not a collection item, and so I don't make my friends into one. I don't collect friends, I love them. What about you?