The world is at the feet of self-confident people

I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight. Instead the party has been cancelled because one of the friends of the guy organizing the party decided to have a dinner with most of their common friends at his place. I thought that it was very rude, but this is just my opinion.

This story made me thinking about something.

I know a lot of people and I am very close to a few of them. Many of the people I am very close to are not that self-confident, even if they would have all the reasons to be. It had always be part of my role in life (and I don't why) to open the eyes of these people to let them see how great they are and how many good, fantastic qualities they have. Me, finally, after many years of struggling, I got most of my self-confidence back. Not all, of course I still have many insecurities here and there, but for sure right now I care very very little about what others think of me. For sure it helps that I am alone, without a boyfriend....I always lose self-confidence and self-respect when I am with someone, unfortunately...I guess that it is because I always put the other person and the other person desires in front of me.

Anyway. The point is that when someone is self-confident he/she can convince almost anyone else of how great he/she is and attractive, and interesting, and the rest of the whole "I am cool" package. On the contrary, when someone lacks self-confidence, it doesn't matter how great he/she is, he/she will be the first to put him/herself at a second place and either follow what other people think or do or isolate him/herself. It is very sad. Because all these people that I know who lack self-confidence are actually very cool people, they are probably just different, they just probably don't fit in and they didn't find their dimension yet, but they are wonderful, amazing people, who cannot see how valuable they are because they lack of self-esteem. My ex-boyfriend was and in part still is like that. And this always made me very angry. The world is so judgmental, we are so judgmental (and of course I include myself in this statement) that if someone doesn't conform to what it is generally considered "cool" or if someone is just slightly different, then he/she doesn't deserve attention and the investment of time to be discovered as a maybe wonderful person.

When growing up I had many problems because I felt different, I have always been interested on different things than the majority of people of my age, and in general I rarely felt that I fitted in. Fortunately, instead of becoming a very self-insecure person, I don't know why, but probably thanks to my mom who always encouraged me to just be me and follow what I like and want to do, I grew up liking myself very very much. Again, I have my insecurities, but overall I like the person I am and the way I look. I am proud of myself. But I do know how difficult is to interact with people when you are even just slightly different. You can feel immediately wrong or not interesting enough. I had times in the past years in which I thought I lost my self-confidence forever and it was very hard, because I felt incredibly insignificant, invisible, and unimportant. And it was horrible.

It is amazing how much importance we give to the people around us and how strongly we let them influence our lives, who we are, and the opinion we have about ourselves.
We should all get a course while growing up on how to be just ourselves and on how not to be afraid of not fitting in and being alone, because after all it is better to be alone and be ourselves, than being surrounded by people who actually don't know the real you or are not interested in knowing it.

I feel lucky

I feel extremely lucky. I know very wonderful people. Interesting and wonderful people. I just had two very close friends visiting me and I had a great time with both of them (too bad that when I am having a good time, it runs away so fast...). One of them lives in Portugal and I always stayed at his place when I went there to arrange things for my new job. His house is always open for me, as well as his heart when I need someone to talk too. I have met some really wonderful person in my life so far and I feel very, very lucky for that. Good, interesting, loving people. I am always positively surprise by the good heart of people, because it is a very rare and a very precious quality and I highly value people who are not just absorbed by themselves.

My plan is to take a road trip with my mom and drive with most of my stuff to Portugal at the end of the summer. I will leave my things in a garage of a friend. And this friend is another amazing person. I cannot believe that at first I had an horrible, horrible impression of him. I thought that he was very arrogant and I immediately did not like him at all. And it didn't matter if other mutual friends kept telling me that he is actually a nice person. I needed to see this with my own eyes. And I did. Fortunately, because otherwise I would have missed out a very altruistic, nice guy. I keep being impressed by how helpful, friendly, altruistic he is.

I have to say that I don't know why, but the best people, the most helpful and less selfish people I know are all men.....and they are not just very nice with me because they have some second goal, like sleeping with me, they are just naturally very good people. I feel so lucky in having met them! Truly good, helpful, altruistic people are so rare that they represent a treasure to me.....

Pizza, mandolino e mafia

This is the definition that a friend of mine gives of what represents Italy in the eyes of a foreigner. I think that he doesn't go too far from the truth.....

Last night I was out with a good friend of mine from Spain and we met some people I know here and some others. Before going on, I have to say that my patience in general can be quite limited, that I badly stand people who do not use their head to think and talk by using pre-made sentences, and that in general I am a very demanding person (read "pain in the butt"). This often ends up with me being very bored very quickly after meeting someone new. I love to listen to what people have to say and I love meeting new people. But if these do no result interesting according to my standards, my attention starts to drift away pretty soon and I get bored. Anyway, last night overall was not bad, especially because my friend from Spain is a very good company and for sure he is someone with whom I don't get bored. But then I met a girl from the USA and we were talking a bit and I was telling them as the best pizza I have ever eaten was in New Haven, in the USA. Soon enough from pizza we ended up to talk about the pizza from Naples and then the boyfriend of this girl made a very stupid comment about Naples and Italian mafia. Gosh, I can't express enough how much I HATE with all myself, very deep down, when people feel the need of making stupid comments about Italian mafia, especially when totally out of place.

I am very proud of being Italian. Despite the things that I don't like of my own country. Despite Berlusconi. Despite the very much needed improvement that the country should invest in doing. Despite many things. I am proud of being Italian and from Tuscany because I love the natural beauties of my country. The sea, the mountains, the forests. I love the architecture and the monuments of many cities. I love the diversity that we have from region to region and sometimes even from city to city in terms of food and traditions. I love the sense of family that we generally have so strong. I love the colors of our flag. I love the we were the home of the Roman Empire. I love the many old historical cities. I love that Italy gave birth to Leonardo, and Michelangelo, and Fermi, and Marconi, and Dante, and Manzoni, and Pirandello, and Calvino, and Puccini, and Verdi, and Armani, and Piano among many others. I mean....how can you just think about mafia when you think about Italy???

It makes me very sad and angry when someone tries to be funny making a joke about mafia as if it was all what Italy is known for abroad!

Missing

I miss my regular escape to the USA at least a couple of times a year.....being far from a place for quite sometime makes me appreciate the things of that place that I can't have here.
For sure when I will be moving away from Montpellier, I will be missing biking to the beach and the wonderful Mediterranean sea, of which I am a big fan.

I still have among my life-dreams the one of traveling across the Mediterranean on a sailing boat. Not that I am absolutely able to sail. But it would be a nice thing to do with someone or with a well-selected group of friends.

At the same time, while I keep dreaming, I started planning my trip to Portugal to move things to what it will be my new home pretty soon. And I got a Lonely Planet about Chile. It is not like being there, but it is a beginning after so long dreaming about traveling there. Most of my dreams are all about new sports to try and especially new trips and adventures to take.......

Two more days

Two more days and my year of waiting will come to an end. The last Harry Potter movie is coming out this Wednesday and I am really looking forward to that!
I am planning to go to watch the movie alone, as I don't have any friend who is so crazy as me about Harry Potter and I deeply want to enjoy it. I am also hoping to find a shop where I can rent some Harry Potter's stuff to wear it on Wednesday. I may even go to work in a Harry Potter look if I find something.

I know that this passion of mine sounds very childish, but I absolutely don't care at all and I am extremely excited and I am strongly looking forward to this new movie (unfortunately maybe the last one, if no more books will come out.... :-( ).


PS. I really enjoyed the last Harry Potter's movie. I will go to watch it again very soon, I think. The movie also broke the box office record in the USA.

PPS. It is very weird...here in Montpellier, it was not a big thing at all this Harry Potter last movie. I went to the movie theater very early to make sure to get tickets and there was NOBODY! I was very surprised. Nobody was dressed or anything. I felt a bit of a nut-case here....but I then saw that around the world the movie has been received as I would have expected.

Los Angeles: here I come!

I had a very weird dream last night. Not a bad one. Just weird. It must have something to do with my travel planning for the month of October. I would like to go traveling around in Chile for 3-4 weeks.....my father already told me if I am crazy and that it doesn't sound a good idea.....(why not???)....

Anyway, the dream.
I was on a plane and I landed in Los Angeles. But in a weird Los Angeles. I have never been there, so it could also be that the "real" Los Angeles resembles the one of my dream. But I doubt it. The airport was in the middle of nowhere and it was night and there were only a few people and only one helping desk. And my destination was not Los Angeles, but Philadelphia. And I didn't know why I was actually in Los Angeles, when clearly I should have been somewhere else. And then I looked at my tickets while I was talking to the woman at the helping desk and on the ticket there were many different destinations, so she couldn't help me. I basically had to buy another ticket. I was supposed to go to Philadelphia for work, to go to a museum (is there even a Natural History Museum in Philadelphia?). While I was trying to buy the ticket, someone put a cheap bomb in the airport. We had all (the few people there) go out and then in again. But while I was out, I got totally depressed seeing the scenario around the airport. Only dark and tracks driving around, nothing appealing on the horizon. I woke up totally frustrated that I wanted to go to Philadelphia and I was stuck in Los Angeles in a very unappealing place.

What does this means????