Saturday-science: How to “be happy” and stay that way – scientifically ;)

Well, so there are proven benefits that gratitude and helping others HAVE great consequences for us here and now as well. Science confirming the Bible. Again.

And compassion itself is the best choice for this life. Not only for the benefit of others (if that’s not enough of a reason…). 

Happy, compassionate weekend!

And the good ol’ times. 

Wednesday – a song to lift up

Blessed Audrey Assad!

Thoughts on Depression

Depression – a disease hard to define, a state that psychiatrists dread… a sadness and numbing of the heart.

Even more dreading – antidepressants. And how scientists (honestly) fail to understand how antidepressants work, why they work sometimes, and so often don’t. The deceptive lure of ketamine as an “antidepressant”. I am left speachless.

Original article here:

http://time.com/4876098/new-hope-for-depression/

And another troublesome one:

http://time.com/4900248/antidepressants-depression-more-common/ 

Gand de duminica. Meditatie. Silvia Scutaru

Ai zice ca oamenii cu nevoi speciale sunt de compatimit. Unii sunt. Dar poate ca mai multi vrednici de mila sunt intre noi, cei “normali,” “intregi,” “fara” nevoi speciale. Sau poate ca noi toti suntem, intr-un anume fel, “cu nevoi speciale,” doar ca nu sunt la fel de evidente, sunt undeva, ascunse, taine ale sufletului nevoit.

Ea, Silvia, e un exemplu pentru mine. Pentru ca nu a permis circumstantelor si conditiei ei sa o defineasca. A ales singura “cine este” – prin ochii Celui care a creat-o, si o sustine, cu dragoste, zi de zi.

Povestea ei, aici:

https://moldovacrestina.md/viata-ei-te-motiveaza-la-schimbare-istoria-ei-iti-schimba-gandirea/

Spoiler Alert: You’re Going to Die

Just found this post. Great one! Made me grateful for this day. For all the people I am blessed with in my life. And for all the people that are hard to love. They need my love the most… Grateful for my Lord Jesus!

It is humanity’s best kept secret. We all know we’re going to die. But few of us really believe it. Even fewer live our lives as if we understand it.

Ask yourself: If you knew you were going to die one year from now, would you live your life differently?

I know I would.

I would savor every moment, cherish every breath of air, notice every blade of grass. I would live like the people I most love are the people I love most. I would stop complaining and criticizing and feeling sorry for myself. I would live to make their lives better, and wouldn’t wait to hug them and hold them and tell them how much they mean to me. I would stop worrying about what strangers think. I would re-read the books that made me happiest and listen to music that makes me want to dance. I would live as if I knew I were going to die.

Sometimes we do know when our days are numbered; but by then it’s often too late. By the time we get the “months to live” prognosis, we’re often feeling too sick and tired to live like we were dying.

Here’s the thing. Most of us aren’t going to die a year from now. But we’re all going to die, maybe in five years or maybe in 50.

So take a moment every day to be grateful for this day, and live as if you knew your days were numbered.

Because they are.

My Instruction Manual

It is humanity’s best kept secret. We all know we’re going to die. But few of us really believe it. Even fewer live our lives as if we understand it.

Ask yourself: If you knew you were going to die one year from now, would you live your life differently?

I know I would.

I would savor every moment, cherish every breath of air, notice every blade of grass. I would live like the people I most love are the people I love most. I would stop complaining and criticizing and feeling sorry for myself. I would live to make their lives better, and wouldn’t wait to hug them and hold them and tell them how much they mean to me. I would stop worrying about what strangers think. I would re-read the books that made me happiest and listen to music that makes me want to dance. I would…

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How Doctors Die – Ken Murray

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

“It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be

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BY KEN MURRAY|NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen–that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

How has it come to this–that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.

To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.

The above scenario is a common one. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.

But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.

Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar. When I faced circumstances involving end-of-life choices, I adopted the approach of laying out only the options that I thought were reasonable (as I would in any situation) as early in the process as possible. When patients or families brought up unreasonable choices, I would discuss the issue in layman’s terms that portrayed the downsides clearly. If patients or families still insisted on treatments I considered pointless or harmful, I would offer to transfer their care to another doctor or hospital.

Should I have been more forceful at times? I know that some of those transfers still haunt me. One of the patients of whom I was most fond was an attorney from a famous political family. She had severe diabetes and terrible circulation, and, at one point, she developed a painful sore on her foot. Knowing the hazards of hospitals, I did everything I could to keep her from resorting to surgery. Still, she sought out outside experts with whom I had no relationship. Not knowing as much about her as I did, they decided to perform bypass surgery on her chronically clogged blood vessels in both legs. This didn’t restore her circulation, and the surgical wounds wouldn’t heal. Her feet became gangrenous, and she endured bilateral leg amputations. Two weeks later, in the famous medical center in which all this had occurred, she died.

It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.

Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.

Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of overtreatment.

But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.

Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight–or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me.

We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland, his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He had no serious pain, and he remained high-spirited. One day, he didn’t wake up. He spent the next three days in a coma-like sleep and then died. The cost of his medical care for those eight months, for the one drug he was taking, was about $20.

Torch was no doctor, but he knew he wanted a life of quality, not just quantity. Don’t most of us? If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night. Like my mentor Charlie. Like my cousin Torch. Like my fellow doctors.”

Original post – http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus/#.VaUfUlLKnNM.facebook

Project. 4 Days and 4 Nights as a Homeless. Catalin Ciuculescu. Part 4

Original in Romanian here – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro/4-zile-si-4-nopti-pe-strada/

source – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro

6. I met again the guy whom I shared the two pieces of fried chicken with, in the very first day when everything started… He said ‘Hi’ and asked how I was, then he advised me to take care, the ‘community police’ is around… He told me also ‘Go there, the repented are spending food!’ He detailed me how to reach that place. I crossed the street and saw a very old woman, with a severely bent back… I stopped in front of her, and had to bow way down to see her face… She was hauling a carry-on luggage… We were reached by the lady that crossed the street… She offered herself to help the old lady… The old woman was going too at that place where ‘the repented are spending food”…
The lady that passed the street asked me if I was going to eat there too… ‚Yes’, I replied… She asked me a lot of questions, including how I was, where I came from, where I were sleeping overnights… She told me that God’s Holy Spirit told her that there was something about me… I felt so happy of the favor of the Lord… She went with me, holding her on my arm, up to the place where they were dishing out the food, and kept talking… She presented me to the brothers who shared the food with a childlike joy… They were all from different churches, and I told myself that this was a genuine ministry, the place where a Pentecostal, a Baptist, an evangelical Christian, a charismatic one, or whatever Christians there might be, crosses the boundaries and work all together to serve his neighbor, because they all love God …
I am already known among some of those living on the streets… I met the man who wanted to share his cream cheese the first night, and a couple of others which I met before… Petrica, the one who came with the idea of helping the homeless, was talking and praying for them… A rogue one was drawing more attention… I asked him to speak more quietly, because I wanted to hear ‚what that man has to say, since he is saying he was once on the streets too”… He saw my tawny neck cloth… ‚Give me that,’ he told me… And he put it gladly around his neck… Then he kept talking loudly… I asked him again to stop talking that loud… He took me aside and shared me his life story… He was having a handicap and he cannot control it, he wanted to kill himself, but didn’t succeed, and now he is doing some things he doesn’t really want to… He asked about my name, where I was living, and where I came from… ‚Catalin, I am from Oltenia and I sleep in the train-station’, I told him… He went quickly and brought another boy with him… They came both and Ionut (this was his name) started doing something very moving thing for me… He told the one he brought along where I was from, where I was sleeping, and that I was a poor fellow… He asked him if they were able to do something for me that I don’t have to sleep in the cold anymore… The boy didn’t hesitate and said he was going to help me… He wanted to give me a bed in the ruins where they were sleeping, in the former police building… He told me that, if I desired so, during the day, I could go there and sleep, because he was giving me a bed… I was moved deeply in my heart…
At least three of them asked me if I received an order number for the food… I didn’t, because I still had a half loaf of bread and some sandwiches in the raffia bag… I told them I would get one after all of them had… My Ionut went up to the front of the line, at Petrica, the one who coordinates the whole action, and asked for a serving for me… Petrica, knowing my story, looked at me… I waved him, smiling, and bowing my head… I was standing on a brick… Ionut came to me with 4 warm cabbage-rolls in a disposable plate… He bent over to me and put it in my hand …
The ‚cream-cheese’ man came over to me… He asked me if I didn’t want some more, he was willing to go to bring some to me… I asked him only for a slice of bread, because Ionut forgot to bring me some… He reached in his plate and took 2 slices… And they fell on the ground… He apologized… ‚No problem,’ I said, and I ate with him sitting next to me… He saw I had no more bread and he gave me quickly two more slices from his portion… He went for another 3 rolls for me, without having me asking him for that… I thanked him, but I had plenty, so those 3 were his then …
The one who gave me the slices of bread asked me why I was sitting with the empty plate in my hand and why I don’t throw it away… I told him that I wanted to take it to a trash bin… He took it from me and disposed it himself… Another one said I am ‚one of the respectful,’ while he smiled… Someone got thirsty… The man who took my plate to the trash bin gave him a mouthful of surgical spirit… I asked him if that wasn’t harmful for him, after he’d just eaten…’ Why are you asking such stupid questions… This is no harm for me, not before, and not after meals’… I felt sorry for him… Then, he asked if I didn’t have some water… I gave him my one-pound-bottle, a quarter full… We said good-bye and wished one another good health… I found another dirty bottle, only half full, on the street’s border… I took it in my bag… In the park, I met another friend who didn’t recognize me, only after I smiled to him… We made some photos, while some people watched as amazed… He left me some money… I can buy myself a ticket… I don’t think I’ll buy one to “Baile Calacea”… Aaa, I got a turtleneck cloth from Petrica… It does as the tawny neck cloth…
7.
I left the park and went to the downtown cathedral… Before I got there, I ‚met’ someone other’s eyes… I was in the market… He watched me intensely… I looked at him too… He bowed his head, as a salute… So did I… I made a ‚mental shot’ and I analyzed it on my way… It was the man in the orthodox church who turned back in his way to say hello and ask me how I was… He remembered… I was glad he didn’t forget one like me …
They read something from Peter’s epistles at church… They said something about some don’t-know-which saints, some martyrs, or whatever, but this is the second part… I took for myself everything that was good, that emphasized God… On the left chair was sitting a pretty old homeless man, on the right one, another one… The one on the left fell asleep at some point, and started to snore… I look to the one on the right and ask him if I am to wake him up… He shrugged and the corners of his lips went downwards… It was distressing to some who already watched him… I touched just enough for him to feel it… I told him his snoring was audible… He took a guilty, heavy breath in with a long ‚i’ and said ‚thanks’… I laid my forehead on my left hand… I instantly fell asleep… I hope I didn’t snore… I woke to the end of the mass, when people were ‚communicating’… I wanted to be at the Lord’s Supper too, but I saw people kissing the icons before and after they took the wine-drenched bread from the priest’s hand, so I changed my mind …
I went to the mall… There is some place outside where they blow warm air… I stayed there till I warmed up… I went further and told myself, let’s go in… I sat on a soft chair and waited someone to come and show me out… Everything felt like a different world, not assorted to the way I looked… Luckily, no one showed me out and I left willingly …
Afterwards, I slept for one and a half hour on a bench in the park… Your back hurts because of so much walking and sitting on chairs, so you feel like lying down… I woke up and went to the train station… I didn’t buy a ticket to “Baile Calacea” this time… I bought one to „Remetea Mare”… Oddly, because it cost 4 Ron as well… I thought it would be cheaper …
In the waiting room there was a boy I know, Alexie… He used to ‚go for’ the girl I liked some years ago… This boy was a ‚character’, sending her kisses and telling her she was beautiful, while I was next to her… After a while, he exited the waiting room… I went after him to say hello and to tell him who I was… There was someone else who went outside to smoke and I didn’t want to tell him that quite there, so I touched his jacket and made him a sign to follow me aside… He glowered at me and went swiftly back inside… ‚ Hey, wait a second, I want to tell you something,’ I told him, struggling heavily not to laugh… He gave me another look and went quickly inside… I was staying outside and couldn’t stop my laughing… I was seeing him watching me fiercely through that window and couldn’t stop laughing… After a couple of minutes, several times, I started to go back in the warmed up room, but each time I got close to the door, I started laughing again… In the end, I made it in, I managed to take my seat, thinking I probably was that atrocious, since he gave me such a black look … Eaahh, it was really interesting…

Project. 4 Days and 4 Nights as a Homeless. Catalin Ciuculescu. Part 3

Original in Romanian, here – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro/4-zile-si-4-nopti-pe-strada/

source – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro

3.
We left the train station… We met other two homeless people on the street… We asked them where they were sleeping… ”What do you care?” one asked me bluntly… I explained them I’m not from town and I am looking for a shelter… They gave me all info I needed… I left them each a New Testament… „I received them myself, and now I gave them away, since they gave me a couple,” I told them… They took them, I left and I saw them from far away how they put them safely in their chest-pocket…
I passed by people I knew… They didn’t recognize me, since they didn’t really look at me… When I left my home, I left with a lowered head, sensing the people watching me… Now I have raised my head, and I watch them closely… But they lower their heads after seeing me, and they stare at the road… „They don’t care,” whispers my soul…
I met another boy on the street… I took a New Testament, and without a word, I put it in his hand… After departing a couple of meters, I turned enough to see him turning the pages, smiling… I hope he knew reading… And now it’s raining …
4.
I have slept on the benches in the park already 3 times… Yesterday the sun was shining, today it’s raining… I was chilled to the bone, I feel my back hurting, and more… I have no idea what time it is… I couldn’t sleep to much because it was cold, so I entered the orthodox cathedral… I uncovered my head and went to one of the stalls in the church… It seems I sit on a „bought” seat… Above my head it’s carved in the wood of the stall: „Dr. Octavian Neagoe”…
I see people kissing objects, some are passing me by, wanting to get to the place they can confess their sins… I thanked God in my heart for the Scripture and for He unveiled himself to me… It’s a favor… I confessed to whom I am supposed to, to God… It’s well…
To my left, there is a man who’s singing with the priest… He knows the songs… I listened to him several times… In one of the breaks I told them „You sing nicely”… He lowered his head, sign of him hearing what I’ve said… It was a nice mass, the mass where I heard them preaching Jesus and repentance… I said „Amen” to whatever I consented… The security guys were eying me… Each time our eyes crossed, I lowered my head…
I stayed about 4 hours in church… After the mass, the man to my left looked at me and told me he wanted once to become a priest, but, because of the persecutions during the communist regime, he gave it up… He shook hands with me and left… Another one, passing me by, smiled to me, while he lowered his head… I smiled back and lowered my head as well… He turned on his exit, shook my hand and asked me how I was… „I came for the mass,” I told him… I was amazed by his gesture… Then I talked to the one who had been staying at my right… We talked about nails, axes and shovels… I enjoyed them …
5.
I went to a shelter for the homeless… They didn’t let me stay overnight because my name was not on their list… I needed an ID too, but since I left without any papers, I had no chance to be let in… I said good-bye and left …
I passed the Christian bookstore “Kerigma”… I turned back and said in my mind, „Let’s test them”… Inside, there were two ladies and a little child… I asked them if it was still open… „No. We closed at 5p.m.”… It was about 7 p.m. … “Was there anything you wanted?” asked me the clerk. I told them „No, I just wanted to warm a little up”… „Come on, then, warm up,” was her answer… I was staying there, looking at that little one playing around me… After 2-3 minutes, I told the lady that it was a test… „How come?” she asked… I told her the whole story… She recognized me only after hearing me out… We met before a couple of times… She asked me to stay some more, and so I did… I left that place „warmed up” and with a half a portion of chicken salad. … It was nice
I mat a homeless „little old man” somewhat later… I stopped to say hello and talked about this and that… He was somewhat deaf, so I needed to „turn up” the volume… I asked him if he was hungry… „No, thanks, I’ve eaten”… He told me he was cold, he would stay only a little longer, and then he would leave… I put my hand on his left shoulder and ended our time with „God help us!”… So he replied to me…
I stopped at a marble girdle right downtown… I turned my head, and look, before me, two acquaintances of mine… They heard me talking with the old man; they recognized my voice and followed me… They gave me a warm tea, which made me very happy, and I told them some of the things I saw so long… They asked me if I was hungry… I was not… I still had a half of that loaf of bread… In the cathedral I’ve read Matthew 6, so God was fulfilling His promises… I’ve got some coins; we said good-bye and wished each other „a good sleep” …
In front of the railway station there was someone rocking and waving his hand to all the cars which stopped at the red lights… It was the boy who gave me the fried chicken pieces a day before… He was listening to music… While I hold my hand out to him, he took his headphones off… I asked him how he was… I told him he gave me food and he answered me „God knows all I’ve done”… I asked him if he was hungry, wanting to share my bread with him… He’d already eaten… I told him „thank you” and gave him a hug…
Those from the station’s security would let me in only if I had a ticket… I told them who I was and why I did what I did… They were intrigued but didn’t believe me, thinking that those on the street are inventing all kind of stories… I went to the ticket shop and took a ticket to “Baile Calacea”… Now I am sitting next to a man who urinated on him… He smells heavily… Someone from security pushes him to exit… „These are the rules” …
About 5 a.m. I met the girls who offered me the tea one day before… They came in the waiting room and we talked, causing some of the present ones to be amazed… One like me, to talk to some like them… We said good-bye, then I went out to stretch my legs… When I came back, I saw them coming out of the waiting room, where I’ve left my bag… They had left some sandwiches for me there… I am not a big fan of pepper in sandwiches, so God put pepper in all those sandwiches… He wanted to teach me… I said nothing and ate some of them with great joy and gratefulness. The other ones I offered to others, with a New Testament… They wished my health… I stopped on a bench now… I think I will take a nap…

Project. 4 Days and 4 Nights as a Homeless. Catalin Ciuculescu. Part 2

Originally written in Romanian, here – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro/4-zile-si-4-nopti-pe-strada/

source – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro

This is part 2.

2.

After it got dark, I met Bir… We ate the chicken-piece I received during the day… We went around the campus where we met some easy clothed boys, inhaling from some silver colored bags… We sat on a cement block and we watched TV, through the large window of a food restaurant… One of the bronze “inhaling” boys watched the game as well… He looked oddly at us, we weren’t from around… We asked him if he was cold… “Me? No!” and turned back to the TV-game… It was too cold, so we went for a walk to warm up…

When you live on the streets, time passes slowly… There is no reason for you to hurry up, there is no one waiting for you… Time seems to behave more gently with this kind of people, but to me, it seemed more like a punishment… I couldn’t wait for time to pass…

We went to the railway station… We saw people seeking a shelter here through the years… We didn’t eat anything since the beginning of all this, except that piece of chicken… We bought a loaf of bread… We paid 2.3 RON (tr.n. about 0.75 cents) for a not so large loaf… We got out of the store and ran into one “of ours”… He stank terribly, even worse when he talked… He was an alcoholic… We went back, telling him we bought a loaf of bread… We asked him if he wanted a piece of bread… He seemed amazed of us, and asked “And what will the two of you eat?” We told him we will manage with that piece of bread. So he said “Give me some of that bread, come on! Wait! … And he slid his hand in the bag, took some soft cheese and he tried to rip the package with his nail… “I received it too,” he said.  He couldn’t rip it off… I shook his hand and left… I ate that bread with such appetite…

We searched for a place to sleep… The waiting room was somewhat warmer… Around 1 a.m. two people showed up from the railway station “safeguarding” asking everyone about their train tickets. Who had none, had to leave… We had no ticket and we left… We went to the underground passage and slept some on the floor, but it was too cold… We got  up and found some out-of-use railcars… Someone in the station yelled at us “Hey, what are you doing there? Get lost!”… We continued our searches in spite of what he asked from us… All railcars had bolts… We left a New Testament in the bag of a homeless who slept deeply in the coldness, under the sky… We turned at the passage, and endured the coldness all over… Around 5 a.m. we went back in the waiting room. No one cleared us out this time…

I opened my eyes and saw a young man in the waiting room… He was reading… The Bible… He passed 6 times by me, and not even once he dared not to look me in the eyes… I wondered “what is the good of it?” It looked terribly wrong from the “outside” I felt like going over to him and asking him if he understood anything of what he read, but I was way too ashamed to do that… Ashamed of him, of all the other people in the room, but even more, I was ashamed of myself… I was not any better than him, having my thoughts turned to God, I learned from what I saw…

I wouldn’t have guessed it would be so hard to live on the streets… The cold turns your eyes red, and changes your voice… I didn’t need much to understand that, in the mean time, the sky lightened up… It was a hard day… Very hard… Too hard… Bir couldn’t stand it anymore, so he went home… We said good-bye…

Project. 4 Days and 4 Nights as a homeless. Catalin Ciuculescu (part I)

4 days and 4 nights as a homeless.

 

source: http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro

I read this. It’s… heartbreaking. I’ll start translating it for you all. One piece at a time.

“To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak;” (1 Cor.9:22)

The original in Romanian can be found here – http://www.catalinciuculescu.ro/4-zile-si-4-nopti-pe-strada/

the 9th of December, 2014

I wanted to find out how homeless live… Where are they living, what are they eating, where are they sleeping, how are they… Bir (Andrei Birtea) wanted to join me… We both had our hair cut short and kept our beards growing, to be more credible… My sister and my brother-in-law cut our hair by scissors, and the result was a real “piece of art”… We took no cell phone, no wallet, no ID documents, no money, only 5 RON (tr.n. – approximately $2) we got in the name of Jesus for what we intended to do… God was behind everything… Thanks to Him you can read this… He taught and showed me that life is not what I used to think it was… I lived unthinkable experiences… I’ll share them… It will be long, but for anyone who reads this, it will be useful… So here it goes…

1.

I have just left… I said good-bye to Bir… He went right, I went left… I walk on the street and dare not to raise my head… When you’re poorly dressed, you feel inferior… I am a “homeless” for no more than a couple of minutes and I already feel it burdensome… I pass people, look into their eyes, they “scan” you from head to dirty sneakers… They lower their heads too or look away after seeing my appearance… I see one that “resembles” me… I passed him, but then I turned back… He had some “ironware” in some stroller… I asked him what’s he doing with those… Laughing, he said “What do you think? I sell them out.”… So I asked him if I could sell some too… “What the hell, why not…” he answered dryly and indignant… Even he looked my oddly… He told me where he finds them, where he takes them, how much they pay for a kilogram of iron, and how much you can earn at the end of a day… 40 RON, he said (tr.n. – about $13), then he inhaled deeply the smoke of a cigarette… “OK”, I said, and left…

Now I am staying in a graveyard… I looked at the photos of deceased and the words written above those images… One lady saw me… She looked into my eyes, lowered her head then… I passed a newly dug grave… On the pile of dirt lays a package of cigarettes on which it’s written “smoking can kill you”… I smile bitterly for myself and walk away, to the grave next to which I stay now… New as well… Deep… Dark… It seems colder inside the grave than it is up to the surface… The flesh is dust and turns to dust… The soul is supposed to go to heaven… Well, at least it was peaceful… I stroll away… I’m curious…

I am staying on some cold stairs… I took a coat out of the raffia bag and sat on it… A couple of minutes earlier I passed through a market… I was walking amidst all those exposed “goodies”… I left the market and met one “like me”… I passed him, and then I turned back… I asked him how he is… “Well, you know this and that.” Then, he too asked me how I was… “Well, walking around.”… He asked me where I hanged around… I told him here and there, outside… “Are you not cold?” he asked me. “It’s not that cold yet,” I said… I asked him if he’s having some underpants… He had… One pair… He asked me where I come from… Whether I have any brothers or sisters…

This boy smelled of “industrial pasting”, resulting from the liquid bronze he was inhaling from a bag… I asked him what he was eating… He said there were people who gave him food… He asked me why I don’t go in some other country… I told him I’d better die in my country that among strangers… “That’s true,” he said… And he added, that if I desired, we could go bathing on “Brancoveanu” (tr.n. – large boulevard in Bucharest)…

Out of the store in front of which we stayed came another one “like us” with a white bag in his hand… “Here, eat”… He handed it to me… “I’ll share it with him,” I told him… “You can have it all!” told me the boy that was inhaling bronze… “Eat, both of you, it’s chicken… It’s fine… It’s warm,” told us the well-doer… He left… I took the two pieces of chicken and shared them, then, I “instantly” started to cry… I met this one who gave me the food… Eleven years ago, I still remember it clearly… I was at the beginning of the 9th grade, in Resita, and I was changing trains in Caransebes… He was there, on a bench… He was rocking and had a strange twitch of his tongue… He was a homeless then too… I cried till I could no more… Then, long ago, I laughed of his twitching tongue, today I cried for the good he did to me… The one I was sharing the chicken asked me why I was crying… I told him “it’s only these like us who can do good”… He told me then not to cry anymore… I shook hands with him, said Good-Bye and left… God is good…