The passion fruit mousse

Maybe due to the way I was raised, plus the values ​​passed by my parents, reads my mother, which influenced the formation of my personality, I now have a tendency to simply "accept" things as they are, adapting to them as best as possible whilst managing the conflicts that arise along the way. Deep philosophical discussions bore me, somehow, it reminds me of my philosophy classes during my time at university; not very pleasant experiences I have to say, as the classes took place on Saturday morning, and my teacher was an useless person that knew nothing of philosophy, much less life, worse, he seemed to have a hot potato in his mouth, and half the class could not understand a word of what he’d say. Anyway, as a psychologist I was aware that Philosophy and Sociology were important subjects so I tried my best to understand the impact of the major theories on humans, and luckily I had other great teachers along the way that helped me with my struggle.

I am not, and probably will never be the kind of person who needs to understand the meaning of life, and I am happy about it. I'm not a person who talks a lot. I've been the type, but today much of my process of perception of the environment around me happens on a private level, and of course, with no surprises, I give the impression that I do not care, which is not true. I am not the kind of guy that just accepts the facts without arguing, or even not trying to see the other side of the coin and all possible alternatives, which in my view, always exists. I'm the kind of person who needs time to think, as a good Taurus, I analyse facts, and so during a discussion, I end up listening more than talking. Thanks to this behaviour of mine, I've been called passive aggressive, introverted, difficult person, resuming, a lot of adjectives. I know this is seen as a "deficiency" of mine by some people, and I also know that I am kind of responsible for how others perceive me, and I confess I have even tried to be more argumentative during some discussions, but it is just not me. What is interesting is that due to the nature of my job I have to be extremely inquisitive, once I cannot let doubts about a feature on a system or an application pass. However, I think I may need some extra sessions of therapy to get over this behaviour.

I know and firmly believe that people are different, and I want to make clear that I have nothing against people who are inquisitive by nature, curious and strive to exercise this nuance in their personalities. As I said, and being honest, I even envy them sometimes, I just do not have the mental energy to invest. In my opinion, discussions, most often reaches a point where we no longer know what was being discussed at first, facts and information are brought into the middle of a conversation and suddenly the focus is lost, and conversation and discussions continue without a clear purpose. Maybe I am a conformist person, however, the fact is that there is no recipe for living or behave, and even if we had them, some recipes are tested again and again throughout the time, and even after that, still a huge risk to go wrong when we try our hands at it for the first time, so I follow my life, creating my own recipe, and it's alright, everything's great!

I have tried to prepare a passion fruit mousse for more than two months, my mother's recipe, which is always a delight when she prepares of course. You know any recipe that is simplest than a passion fruit mousse? It does not exist, right? Well, perhaps porridge! Well, the truth is that even though it is one of the easiest things to prepare in the world, every time I try, the result comes twisted! Sometimes it hardens like an in ice cream, sometimes it does not settle at all, looks like a porridge, so ...  the bloody mousse never ends-up the way me and half of the world is expecting. Reality is, does not matter the outcome, I always end up eating it, after all, the taste is always so good, and condensed milk mixed with cream cannot ever go to the bin!

Life is an eternal cooking class, and similarly, I believe we have to keep trying, evaluating, measuring the ingredients and testing the results to try to identify what went wrong, and even if you do not eat everything in the end, there's always something that can be used and tasted. What is certain is that during this process we perceive what is best for us, and seeing how we move through the intricacies of life, somehow we are creating / adapting our own recipe. Here, I have to open some brackets, because I'm not talking about recipe for happiness. Come on! Seriously?! I'm sick of all this recipes to achieve happiness, those who come and go via Power Point presentations via the Internet, with instrumental music in the background and the Dalai Lama’ words, who preach that we have to do this, we have to do that, and all that… Come on! Get a grip! No one deserves it! The worst is that people, including me, read them and think it's so easy to be happy, and being so easy, we have an obligation to be happy, all the time! Twenty-four hours a day, all year long! It is a lot of pressure and responsibility on our shoulders.

Another thing, today looks like it is kind of a law, it is official, we cannot be sad. If you are sad or going through a depression, bereavement, or whatever, you have to be strong. You cannot cry you cannot let people see that you are going through shit. Show weakness? Do not even think about it!  No way! Hold on! What is this? Just because people are expecting you to be strong, it does not mean you have to be. To the hell with this concept, each person lives the pain of a break-up, death, loss of an individual going through different processes, and if you want to get home, sneak into your room, listening to Adele and drink a bottle of rum, drink it! After some time, the tears will dry, the rum will end and the CD of Adele will end! So what's the problem? Just be sure not to press the repeat, otherwise, Adele for more than 60 minutes ... No one deserves!

Nobody is happy all the time, that's a fact, and happiness and sadness are moments, not a constant feeling, because if they were, it would be a disease, leans to one side and you're labelled as depressed, turns to the other one you will receive a label where it can be read maniac. The important thing is to maintain a state of readiness and alert where you can be opened to the happy moments, and thus we are more aware of facts that can give us a nice time, provided you have a good idea of ​​what makes you happy, it is easy to avoid the sad moments.

During one of my therapy sessions, I was challenged to describe briefly what makes me happy. Like this, out of the blue! Well, I thought to myself, this is easy, right? Wrong! After thinking a little bit, I felt my mind was choked, so I looked at her and I could see a very understanding smile on her face that me understand that sometimes we think we know things, that in reality we do not have a clue. The naked truth is that I could not enumerate in a clear and simple way what makes me happy today. Everything I thought about or described were just concepts that somehow I "instigated" in my mind by others and the environment. Moreover, when I challenged them, I realized they did not have the weight I thought they had.

Does the concept of happiness is so commonplace nowadays that we cannot even articulate anymore what really warms our hearts? Are we so contaminated by all Hollywood films and soap operas that we just associate happiness with material possessions?

Well, as I dedicated boy, I went home and started doing some homework. I made some short lists, physical and mental ones, of things that I thought could bring me happiness and after much thought, I came to the conclusion that I could not answer the question at that time and therefore, I would need more time to think and analyse the subject. So, I began by checking some old photographs, and as one day a very famous Brazilian singer sang "Today I will change, I will open my drawers, stop suffering for little things”, anyway, I must confess I felt a certain relief in being able to confirm that, yet after all I have been through recently I could feel a warm hearth when remembering moments where I was with loved ones traveling the world, Most important, that hatred or indifference did not take over my soul. So, to travel and to be with people I love is what makes me happy? No, but they are situations that, for sure, give me moments of happiness.

I dropped the photos and started thinking about some of my relationships I had throughout my life and I realized that in every one of them, it started with hope, desire of making thinks work, passion, love, affection and promises of happily ever after, which still brings me so many good memories when the "backgrounds" are transformed into "figures". Sure there were sad moments, but I would rather focus on the good ones. So you may ask me, what happened? Why it did not work? Maybe because the moments of happiness were not enough to keep them? Maybe, maybe the balance was negative after all, and you just realize that when you check your account balance and realize that the balance is red and you do not have a limit anymore.

Everything in life has its own cycle: beginning, middle and an end, and I could never have the presumption to describe here all the reasons why my relationships came to an end, because reality is, I do not know exactly what went wrong for sure. What I know is, that among the many reasons, the fact that sometimes I have deposited great responsibility on the shoulders of people may have contributed to accelerate things. I'll explain, sometimes when I started a relationship I thought the other person had an obligation to make me happy. Moreover, I accepted the responsibility to make the other person happy at any cost, even if it meant going over my feelings and desires, and worse, I did not even have been requested to do this. In a way, I believe that my unconsciousness was like I was postulating "I love you! You love me, so you have the obligation to make me happy and vice versa, so we have to make it work at any cost.” Today I know how this is ridiculous, because no one is responsible for our happiness, only we are, and to speak the truth no one should accept this challenge, it is unfair. To make us happy is already a huge challenge, nevertheless, the responsibility to carry on your shoulders other people’s happiness as well; it is just too much to accept. I do not want that for me anymore, and I do not wish it on anyone, because the result of all this is a lot of anguish, anxiety and disappointment.

By this time in life, it is supposed to know from experience that everything in life is thin, events change our paths unexpectedly, and as a close friend says: "Shit happens, so deal with it." People who you love today, turns to you and they no longer feel love or admiration for you anymore, people who love us are somehow forgotten by us, that in itself is a subject of loads of texts! Friends, lovers and relatives "climb on the roof," and no matter how careful and thoughtful you are, you will suffer and cause pain and disappointment to others along the way. Shit happens, remember? I honestly think that when the feeling of abandonment and misery afflicts you and you feel that is almost unbearable to continue living, you must take the opportunity to rethink your concepts and your views about your own position in life. Be honest to you. What happened to get you to the point where you are? What were your contributions? Is there something you can learn from all this? Are you one of those people who put your happiness on someone else's hands? Another thing, sometimes people give up on us, not because they do not care about us any longer, but because we do not care, well it is also true that sometimes they do it simply because they are selfish.

Being true to my principles, to respect the people who are around me for what they are able to achieve and offer; to be honest with myself, to respect my physical and emotional limits, to look at me with calm and compassion in relation to the acts I committed and its choices, these and other factors, in my opinion are the indicators that can bring me happy moments. I know that I must keep doing my homework, keep trying to discover what really makes me happy, I'll probably have surprises along the way and will be compelled to revise concepts as well, but one thing becomes more clear to me every day, I need to be in tune with myself, and consequently I will be more aware to the opportunities around me that can bring me happy moments, and believe me they happen all the time.

Well, tomorrow I'll try to prepare the passion fruit mousse again, maybe this time I hit the jackpot.

Good afternoon and success with your recipes.

Laureano