Que el alma que puede hablar con los ojos, también puede besar con la mirada...

This is a letter, sent by a person who is living the consequences of how stupid humankind can be, in Beirut-Lebanon...

Today the reality of things changed. As I'm writing this, the sounds of terror are haunting the air in Lebanon. It is midnight and I cannot sleep, the only thing that comforts me is to know that I'm not alone. Everybody in Beirut are nailed in front of their TV stations, flipping channels, craving for news that gives them hope but all they see is destruction, shedding of blood, while people abroad are watching from afar with no empathy at all.

I thought I'll never have to live another war again in my life. I thought war was a distant memory. Being born during the war, I lived most of my childhood and teenage years in battles and chaos. Now the ghost of destruction and death is back again. Only this time, for me, it's worse.

I remember being in shelters when I was a child throughout the Syrian-Lebanese war, and the civil war in Lebanon. I was never scared. I guess it all seemed like a game to me. My parents and sister were next to me, I felt secure and invincible. The idea of being hurt never crossed my mind even. I had faith that things will be ok. Sounds of guns, tanks and explosions were nothing but a background music that meant absolutely nothing to me. It only gave adults a reason to tell us, kids, to keep quiet so that they'd listen to the news on the radio. All I cared about was that my parents were close and I was beating the neighbors' kids in a game of cards.

The game has changed now. I am 29 years old craving for a life of freedom, lots of dreams to fulfill. I've always heard the saying ' life is unpredictable', but I never thought it can change completely in one day. It all started like any other vacation with people on the beaches, lots of sun and parties. I don't know what happened. I knew that politically, the situation in the country was not 'good' but I never thought that my life and the lives of all Lebanese people would be in danger.

I haven't slept since 3 days and 3 nights now. Not only because of the sound of rockets that keeps everybody in alert, but also because I worry I don't care about my life much. But I don't want to die for this ridiculous cause. I think life is worth more than that. We feel we are in a 'Risk' game and we're dying for it to end.

I cannot stand another sleepless night, watching the news flash every minutec it has to end. What confuses me is that no one cares; no one is showing any interest in actually stopping the killing and destruction. I watch politicians of the most powerful countries meet on television with a smirk on the their faces, saying their opinion about this and that. They do ask for the killing to stop, but then they go play golf or continue their normal lives with no worries. I guess I do understand the people abroad not to know what it is like or how it feels like. War is not something you can sympathize with, unless you lived through one yourself. It all seems like a movie when I talk about it to others but living the terror, seeing dead bodies of children, and worrying if your house will be destroyed any minute is a different story.

I watch television at night. It is all I can do, I watch CNN, euronews and French televisions passing through the Lebanese news as if it was just 'another' war in the Middle East. They don't know that my people are dying, and entire regions are being abolished. The airport, bridges, ports, and entire villages are being destroyed. It took Lebanon 10 years after the civil war, to be reconstructed and to see a glimpse of hope in its economy. Now we're back to point Zero. Saturday night, southern suburbs of Beirut were being attacked and I couldn't sleep because of the sounds of planes and bombs. I was watching a Lebanese TV channel from 1am till 5am; it had its camera focused on the area from afar. Whenever they throw a rocket, I'd see the light on TV and I'd cover my ears not to hear the loud sound of the explosion. The entire house shakes, the TV set, the computer, the bedc it feels like an earthquake.

That same night at 5am, I was still watching television. My head and legs were hurting from the stress and worries mainly. Smoke is covering Beirut; I couldn't realize that it was morning already until the roosters started announcing the break of dawn. Then it started raining; it never rains in Lebanon during summer time. It just doesn't happen. But it did, that morning. It probably does not mean much. But maybe nature was weeping. After all, Beirut died a few times before throughout history from earthquakes and wars. Only this time, it's a slow and painful death.

I don't know if this means anything. I couldn't sleep and I started writing. Because I don't want to forget what it feels like tonight. If I live to tell the whole story, I will. For the people who don't know what is the real meaning of injustice and cruelty. For all the children who died and did not live to tell their stories. It probably felt unreal to them like a game as it did for me when I was young. But they died, and I hate to think they wasted their lives for nothing.

I will continue to write until this nightmare to end."

Nadine Nehme, Beirut

Why international countries and UN are so passive???.... Is it because United States of America supports Israel attacks??? What happened with Iran Nuclear Plans... Who wants to deviate the attention from it??.. W. Bush or Iran's goverment??

Future can be changed???… as far as I have seen, yes it can be changed.

If future can be changed, it means there is one already written???… well, there have to be an existing future that could be changed… otherwise the thesis would be that anybody’s future is already written but we create it with every decision we make every next piece of time. I would really like to believe that we have no future, and that we create it with the time. But I cannot deny what I have seen and what I have experienced.

There are other questions I cannot answer… can we change our future and we don’t know it???… I mean, is there a future already written for us, like a predetermined future, but we can change it with our daily choices, obviously without notice it???… I have to say I like this theory…

I wish I could also tell you that if we change the future, nature is going to search for its correct path again… if we really can’t change the future but postpone what it was going suppose to happen… I don’t know… I hope so, because although the experiment was a success… a couple of lives were affected negatively, and I’m not really proud of that.

I don’t know if you really believe what I’m saying… And you know what??, I quite don’t care if you don’t believe it… because this is something so special, so unique and real… that it is better to keep it for a few and I don’t have why to talk to much about it.

The other thing I confirmed is faith. As I said in the last post, it’s really easy to convince a person that he/she is beautiful when everybody else said so (from the mass to the individual), but it can happen just the opposite thing: we can convince everybody else that one is beautiful (from the individual to the mass). And what you have to do to make it from the individual to the mass is to have a good mentor (not necessarily an excellent mentor) who knows about the basics of what you want to do, and faith. Faith is engaged with ATTITUDE… I have also learned that life is ATTITUDE, and life is as your ATTITUDE is. In this way you can make your future as you want it to be, and you don’t need to know, literally, what is going to happen to be successful… because the instinct you gain from that ATTITUDE tells you what is going to happen!

I have done it, from the individual to the mass.. and I have helped some persons to do it… it is not a super power, but it is super great.

Hello!

This one of those topics that people rarely talk about. It is about premonitory dreams.

May be if I talk about it I will find more people with similar experiences.

I just remember another experience that I used to have, and for which I haven’t find a satisfactory explanation. It is something dealing with an activity called in Spanish “Desdoblamiento”, which consist on going out of your body, whether its your mind or your soul I’m not pretty sure. But I will talk about this later.

This one is about premonitory dreams. Have you ever felt déjà vu???, I bet you have.

Déjà vu describes the experience of feeling that you have being witness or you have previously experienced a new situation.

In most of the cases, déjà vu last few seconds, but the person who is living it can feel it longer because of the sensation of restlessness that he/she is feeling. This feeling of weirdness should go away when déjà vu finishes. The facts are recognized immediately, although is impossible to define in the past a similar situation, and as you try harder to remember when that happened to you, the faster it goes away.

Déjà vu may have various causes like:

- Subconscious fantasies that people have about things that are very important to them. We dream about a certain situation and when it happen it turns familiar to us. The problem with this one is that it doesn’t work on all cases.

- Alterations or mistakes of the memory. The brain enables wrongly the responsible neurons of the “remembering sensation”. So you feel like you are remembering something. But note that the circumstances of the situation that you are remembering (when, how, where) are unknown.

- Sometimes, when we are tired or stressed out, the subconscious part of the brain gets an experience before the conscious part does, so when the experience reach to the conscious it is already in the memory (putted there by the subconscious)… so the conscious treats it like a remember…. Did I make myself clear??

- Another explanations like reincarnation are also accepted by some persons. Personally, I don’t believe in reincarnation.

Déjà vu is not an act of precognition or prophecy, because when it happens you are not able of predict what is going to happen next.. you just stay there trying to remember when it happened to you before, while a sensation of weirdness covers your body.

But what if you become able to predict what is going to happen next???…. What if you become able to remember clearly that you are living a situation that you dreamed, and you are able to remember WHEN you dream it????

Well, as the cuantic physics shows, we live in a world of probabilities… then its possible that we experience a situation exactly as we dreamed before…. But what if it happens a couple of times more???… It gets more interesting…

But, if one can dream about future situations… then should I conclude that my life is already written???… this is something I cannot accept.

Then I find myself in this paradox. I believe one can dream or have visions about future situations, and the only way to change it could be if the person is aware of the situation before it happens… so far I haven’t know personally someone capable of doing this… or now that I’m discovering this new facet about me, I’ll try to do it, and then I will have an answer about if we can change our future or not.

Here appears another element: faith. I have also experience the power of faith… I think I have discovered the cold water, because its quite simple: when you believe something in such a strong way, you believe in it so strongly that that’s the truth… then it becomes true for everyone else. I’m not saying that if you start to believe, strong enough, that you can fly… then you will (there are many negative thoughts about this possibility, but it can happen). We should try on easier examples:

Why beautiful people think they are beautiful… because every one else think so…. Then it becomes true for them…. We can do just the opposite thing… Starting to believe that one is beautiful, then every one else will do it…. I believe in this kind of examples… I have seen this kind of examples….

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The AXLDS Colombia 2006, so far my best Conference Experience Ever!!!

March 23^rd 

It started when I arrived to Bogotá, and I’m noticed that I couldn't stay in any of my AIESECer friends home, and that I had to pay for accommodation that night. It was OK. That night I met Nikki from @CAS, Diana Stain from @ Venezuela/ Romania, and of course my roommates that night, Mike from @ Canada/ Dom. Republic and from @ Mexico.

March 24^th

There were also other important invited people like, Fundación Carolina, Colombia es Pasión, Yo Creo en Colombia, Ashoka, Artemisia, Kellog, ANDI, United Nations!!!, our ministry of Education, Deloitte…and many others…   In that forum we also divided into 31 groups according to our interests, to discuss about a topic. There was groups like: poverty, violence, HIV, entrepreneurship, religion… and other 26 topics. I was in the Poverty Group, and there I met Mireia Mateu from @ Spain… I love you Mireia!!!!…. We should keep talking about this issue… These learning circles were cool because there were not only @cers but NGO representatives, not @cers students, civilian people (jijiji), etc… In the picture: Emi - @Japan, Diana - @Colombia... and other people :D

Some of the Corporate Social Responsability Forum DELEGATES!!!!!!!

This time we moved to another Hotel, and there I met Gloriana from @CAS and Bárbara Basso from @Brazil (many kisses from Cartagena for Bárbara :D).

March 25^th – 27^th

The Opening Plenary happened at Andes University... some cool things happeden there, like presentations from Colombia es Pasión and IESO. Here I am with some of AXLDS 2006 Delegates...

The GLOBAL VILLAGE happened, and of course I met some things about many other cultures, and I tried as much foreign food I could. Brazilian delegation showed how happy and funny they are… they just couldn’t stop dancing, running and yelling… We danced almost ALL ROLLCALLS, I think we only missed to dance Enya music… Thanks to my friend Lucia Torres, who shared with me many photos (I had no camera :( )

During these days we focused on Leadership Development sessions and activities (in ALDS, because in Expro they were talking about strategy… it’s good to be LCVP :D). There was a cool activity about how much we trust in our team members. One had to fall backwards and hope our team members were capable of grab us. There were other cool activities during these firsts’ days like the “Water Walk”, and I had the chance to talk to many people from different parts of the SSGN, and also the chance to reinforce the friendhips I had made so far.

In the Gala Dinner, on March 26^th AIESEC in Colombia won the Phillips Award to The Best Progresive Country in SSGN!!!!!… cool :D

March 28^th – 30^th

These days, ALDS was about our Leadership Development focused in our @XP!!!… How we deliver better Experiencies in our LCs according the stages our members and one are in.

We gain better understanding of how and what should happen in each stage of the @XP, ergo, we could put it clear our FUTURE in AIESEC

From Left to Right: Naty, Nikki,Sarah, mexican delegate, Martha, Megumi and Andrea

Learning Circles happened during the entire event, always before parties, but there were some Learning Circles that happened during breaks and even after de after-parties…

Now, lets talk about the parties during these days

I think all parties were about Colombians teaching other delegates how to dance Vallenato, Salsa and Merengue. Of course we also dance other kind of music during parties, including RollCalls!!!... I know you have seen photos of AXLDS parties a lot of times.. so, what I did here was putting the KISSING photographs...

Click Here to Access to the KISSING PHOTOS...

To me, these were the Top 3 persons that assisted Expro-ALDS Colombia 2006:

Brodie Boland, President of AIESEC International 2005-2006

Pedro Cadena Copete, Founder of AIESEC in Latin America

Fayder Flórez, Local Vicepresident of Exchanges. AIESEC Cartagena - Colombia.... :D