Ever since I can remember myself I wanted to write. writing, putting my thoughts in sentences and words and turning all these spinning images in my head into a coherent picture was always a delight for me.

However what I always had trouble with was the beginning. How to start. Once I started writting then everything just sort of floats, without any effort. But the beginning.......now that was always hard. I think that a good piece can be judged by its beginning. That's why many times we read just a few words, or lines from the beginning of a book or an article or a story, and we stop. Without a second thought. Or other times we know we're hooked from the very first words.

Anyway, I was thinking today about certain people, who are always depressed. Always sad, they think life is so unfair, so difficult, so devastating. That they can't cope.

And whenever you're around them, even talking to them on the phone, not necesserily close friends or anything, even just collegues or even simple acquantances, they manage to pull you down.

I'm the first to say that life is not easy. Life, as Budha says in his first of 3 Truths, is pain. Yes life is pain. Deal with it. Even though Budha says that the reason for pain is desire, and if you eliminate the desire than the pain has no reason to exist I do not agree.

I think desire gives us one more reason to live. I mean if not for desire, than why try to achieve anything? We all desire something, and no matter how great or petty that is, it possibly gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I have not had the easiest of lives but not the hardest either. There are some who would say I'm the most unlucky-lucky person they know, because so many misfortunes happen to me but also so many unbelievable fortunes.

The twists of fate are for me not an adversary but a welcoming friend.

So, life is pain. What is it that makes some of us fight like hell, give everything we have to get through this life with joy, with delight, with love, with knowledge? And what makes others give up so easily, or not so easily, but ultimattely give up? I know that when you take a hit you fall.

Its not how well you fall though, its how well you rise that defines you.

Sure I've fallen. More than once. But I always rise. The phoenix to me is not just a magical beast, but perhaps my innermost strength. (The phoenix cannot heal herself, she can only take the pains of others until she dies, and is reborn)

I think that what defines these people, these emotional vampires that try to suck out of you your strength and your courrage and your joy for life, is their lack of hope or joy.

For me every waking moment of this life is full of hope. Even in my darkest hours, when every happy hour I've ever spent was a painfull sting, even then it was this hope that kept me going. I want to be an optimistic person. I believe that humanity is basically good, that there is still hope for man (not unlike Aragorn said in The Lord of the Rings):).

I also want to maintain my awe and joy towards the wonders of this world, I want to be able to cry and laugh and love the light as much as I do now.

And I think the only way to do that is to evolve and to love myself and my life. It is the only way also to be able to love anyone else around me. Cause if you don't love and appreciatte yourself than you cannot love anybody else.

I have many times tried to help these people, tried to share with them optimism and joy. All they do is take it away from me and leave me empty. And sad.

So now I know I cannot do this anymore. If someone is always trying to get me down, or suck the joy out of me....than I just stop having anything to do with him.

It may sound harsh, but its only a method for self-preservation for me.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).