Live

Live

carla.ornelas@gmail.com

Challenged to once again write on the topic of experience; I searched my brain for something new that I could teach to someone with twice my time in existence.

Try explaining the joy of travel to someone who has been around the world or the taste of food to he that has tried every cuisine. What can I possibly share with someone who’s probably lived far more experiences in life than I have? Where’s the novelty in my words?
Yet, it doesn’t surprise me, when I can teach my own father and mother something about living or when my little brother shows me a different way to see and feel things.
There are those that have everything, been everywhere and have experienced absolutely nothing!
Experience isn’t prone to opportunity but to one’s attitude at that moment. It’s how you choose to live the moment that defines it and so gives you what people call “Experience”.

Closing my eyes, I recall the streams of tears that fell down my face on the day that a friend I had fallen in love with, told me that he didn’t feel the same way. Fifteen at the time, I knew no other way to express my pain other than cry ashamedly in front of him.
Years later, after getting my heart broken again, I cried the very same way in front of friends and people I worked with. I didn’t want to cry but the tears wouldn’t stop pouring down my face. My friend who had rejected me years ago, sat down next to me and putting his arm around me I recall him saying:
“Girl, he’s a loser who one day will understand just how much he’s lost today. He’s not worth crying over, no man is. And you should know by now not to let yourself get heartbroken this way, you’re too emotional, you feel too much”.
At the time, sitting on the bathroom floor looking like I’d just gotten ridden over by a train, I still managed to give my friend a smile and respond with the same conviction that I still believe today:
“Be happy that I’m crying this much because it means that I loved him as much. If I wasn’t crying it would mean every moment I spent with him was meaningless and that I didn’t live something special after all.”
My frustrated friend managed to laugh and warn me:
“You do realise that you’re just going to keep getting hurt, and it gets worse with time”
“Maybe that’s true, but if protect myself from getting hurt then it means I also protect myself from being loved and then there’s no point in it at all”.
Just for score’s sake: the guy who made me cry says that his infidelity is one of his biggest regrets to date.

What is the point of Paris if you can’t scream “Jetaime” from the top of the Eiffel Tower? Or the point in visiting in New York if you can’t hopscotch on Time Square or take a bite of an apple whilst humming to yourself an old Frank Sinatra song? To live life… to really experience it is to embrace it with your soul.
Live the Moment.

There are things you won’t live twice (I reckon Bungee jumping is one of them) but why not try it at least once?
Crash and Burn: how will you ever know how fast a car can go and how far it will get you if you don’t have the courage to step on the accelerator?
Take it slow… drive just fast enough to feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face and the blood in your veins.
Dance: Shake your hips until the vibration in syncs with the beat of the music and the rhythm of your heart and then take it down to the gentle sway of a romantic melody.
When you take away the fear of falling on your face, you begin do dance life with desire and learn how to keep a better balance. Keep taking life to its speed limits and soon you will learn when to put on the breaks or when to take that turn.

To live, to really live… is to risk losing, hurting or dying. Learning has nothing to do with experience. The gain of experience lies in each individual’s will to do so.
I began living on the day I stopped fearing life itself.