Pasos

Si das un paso al mes, en un año conseguirás doce logros diferentes. Si das más de un paso al mes, en treinta días conseguirás, al menos, dos enormes fracasos.

Why marijuana is illegal

Marijuana is a green plant. Both the male and the female varieties are quite useful for a wide range of uses. Needless to say that, for recreational purposes, we all like females better.
And so it happens that its effects are as simple as they are complexly strange. Your body will dwell in space, and your mind. . . well, it is what marijuana makes to your mind what makes it an illegal drug.
Unlike alcohol or tobacco, marijuana has got some astoundingly beneficial effects to your physical health—at the cost of messing with your mind a little bit. It can help you with some illnesses—specifically the chronic, uncomfortable ones—and it can also help you with bad feelings and emotions.
What it does is it relaxes you—and here is where the mind starts getting messed up. Long-term marijuana users get so accustomed to the drug's help in getting them relaxed, that the mind starts to wonder whether she is of any use in the body she lives. An obsessive mind will get obsessed with the idea of the meaning of social usefulness. A bipolar mind will get random onsets of happiness and depression every time the drug is not in the body. A quiet, mindful and introspective mind will get embedded upon itself.
So, unlike other legal drugs available without prescription, marijuana does some unexpected tricks on its hard-bone users. The main thing about marijuana's illegality, when compared with its hated cousin, alcohol, is that it sometimes has an opposite effect.
What alcohol does to the brain is it turns its main social self-control circuits off (or makes them dull); marijuana makes them vivid. Alcohol reduces or impairs inhibitions; marijuana enhances them.
A lot of people may say that the laws underlying alcohol's or cigarette's legality and marijuana's illegality are absurd and arbitrary, but even our most absurd and arbitrary decisions are guided by unconscious factors. Are there unconscious factors underlying marijuana's illegality? I think there are, and I think there are as many good reasons for the drug to remain illegal as there are for it to get legal. But it is not legal, nowhere in the world it is absolutely legal, not as alcohol, cigarettes or aspirins are. Why? Well, I think that it is, in a sentence, because it makes social interaction harder than it already is—but I probably am still too messed up to answer.

De la aceptación a la frustración

La disyuntiva, en términos generales, es absurdamente simple: aceptar de una vez lo que sea que tengas que aceptar y dejar de sufrir por no haber conseguido lo que sea que hayas aceptado no conseguir, o jamás hacerlo y emprender una interminable lucha por conseguir lo que sea que hayas decidido luchar por conseguir.
Los resultados, en términos generales, no son tan simples: vivir sin saber si era posible conseguirlo, pensando quizás ya en algo más, o llegar al final de tus días con un enorme fracaso o con una enorme satisfacción entre manos.
Lo cierto, al final, es que no puedes saber qué fuerza hará que comiences a moverte o que dejes de hacerlo, por lo que negar la búsqueda de manera permanente es, categóricamente, imperdonable.
Siempre al final, después de la búsqueda pero antes de la disyuntiva, queda preguntarse: ¿y qué del cambio que llega con la aceptación de lo que no se puede cambiar?

The breakdown of a skill

Giving life a meaning is a complex skill.
It can be broken down into pieces.
So can yourself.
Small, doable actions.
One single step at a time.
One by one so two can become real.
One by one and two then becomes ten.
A hundred, a thousand, a million—all built by one-step pieces.
You fall.
The return to the very beginning.
You rise.
Then you can start again.

Lo indispensable

Un ejercicio para conocer, a fondo, la esencia más básica de nuestra cotidianidad, consiste en salir de viaje unos días. Al regreso, basta con no abrir la maleta durante un día completo (o quizás algo menos radical).
Son todos los elementos básicos que la conforman —ésos que se guardan siempre en las bolsas aledañas, las que están formadas por redes, por cierres diminutos, por espacios imposibles—, junto con alguna que otra prenda imprescindible, los que más nos hablan de lo que somos día a día.
Las necesidades básicas son personales, y son tan pocas, en realidad, que caben en una maleta. Lo demás es paja.

Train

As in my dreams, I'm in a train station right now. Sometimes I'll wake up feeling sure—as I am right now—that I have always been in one. A train station, a voyage, a place unknown. Over and over again when I can barely remember my dreams.
It is my request that you—If you know something about train stations—tell me where am I traveling (if anywhere), who am I visiting (if anyone), and what does it all mean (if anything).