Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 28 degrees, hot, sunny, and beautiful, clear blue skies.
It is Friday. I am a little tired. It has not been a particularly heavy week in terms of workload, but there has been stress with Julie and Nalva.
I’m stressed about Julie because we haven’t spoken or exchanged a message for a little over a week, and I miss her. It’s now clear to me that we are separated, and there’s no going back; only when I go back to England will I know. However, I feel she’s upset with me for calling her attention to it because of her insistence on talking to me at that exact moment, when I was busy; it seems to be more of a control issue.
But she may not want to wait for me or show me that while I’m in Brazil resolving things, we’re not together, she will not support me.
This time we have been together has opened a can of worms about whether we should be together at all. More and more, I think we are not compatible. When I go back to England, maybe I will not look for her. Only the future will show me this, but the longer we are apart, the further away I feel from having a healthy, deep and loving relationship with her.
The more I think about having a person in my life, the more I feel it is better to be single, without distractions, so I can work and make money in peace. This takes me to Nalva, the eternal stone, boulder, or rock mountain in my shoe.
She works all day, and when she came home, less than 5 minutes later, she was looking for things to complain about that were wrong at home. It is like a dog with a bone!
Every day, I clean and tidy the flat while Yasmin and Nalva are out. Yasmin is also much tidier than she used to be. When she cooks her own food, she cleans up after herself, something that was previously impossible or extremely rare.
The flat was tidy, the floor swept, and a damp cloth had been passed over it. The kitchen was neat, with no dirty dishes, a clean stove, and all clean dishes put away. The dirty laundry was washed and hung up to dry, and all clean clothes were folded and ready to be put away.
Yet the woman will find something wrong and won’t hesitate to complain, put me and Yasmin down, and devalue our work.
Many men would not care about this, and I, in the past, would not, all in the name of peace. But as I have come to understand how harmful it is to be in a hostile environment or to be in contact with a negative person, and how it can affect your life in so many detrimental ways, I let rip and said what I thought.
For me, there are two key points:
- She’s unhappy, and this internal unhappiness overflows externally, hurting, polluting, and injuring others because she is hurt and sad inside. She’s used to being unhappy, and everybody around her has to be unhappy too, even if, for example, the flat is clean and tidy. She did not do it, so she has to find fault, devalue what others have done, and make herself feel better, even stronger with herself. For me, she has a serious problem with self-loathing, and everybody else around her has to pay. She will pollute the atmosphere around her because she is unhappy with herself.
- Another point is gratitude, or the lack of it, for what she has, being thankful for where she is, building on it, and ultimately valuing what she has. In some ways, she is a victim, as life has not turned out exactly as she expected, and because of this, she is an eternal victim with external suffering. Yet she will not try to get out of it or voluntarily improve herself to have a better life in the future. Investing in herself now so that she can receive in the future does not even enter her mind.
In life, especially in the world we live in today, we have to invest in ourselves and our self-improvement all the time, more for ourselves than for others or the marketplace, without any guarantee of an immediate return.
You just have to do it!
If it works out, great. If not, at that moment, either continue and insist, and maybe, eventually, it will pay off, as in so many examples in history. Or change to something else, but always try to improve yourself, never stopping, like a boat drifting without power in the middle of the ocean. There has to be a destination, and that destination is meaning in your life.
Or you find your destination and meaning, or you go back to a vicious circle, never improving or breaking bad habits, like a dog that turns round and round, chasing its own tail, whilst not knowing any better.
The argument and fight with Nalva were ugly, but they were needed. In the evening, I bought a bottle of wine, and we cracked it open as a bit of a peace offering.
In bed by midnight.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
