Category: Thoughts

Caroline BachLeave a comment

The pain of too much tenderness

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“When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

Khalil Gibran – The Prophet
On Love (1923)

Painting by Saad Ali, seen in Amsterdam

Caroline Bach4 Comments

Day 2 in Belize City

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Thanks Belize City, I admit I was very worried, but you did extraordinarily well today.

After waking up with the sunrise and feeling like there might be some hope in this new adventure of mine after all – I was picked up and taken to work.. passing by the seafront.. palm trees!

The office was very inspiring on many levels, first with the utterly friendly welcome breakfast and my new happy colleagues, meetings and defining my work priorities for the months to come, setting things up, lunch with colleagues by the sea – where we even managed to find a nice vegan option! – getting my new sim card and 4G connection, and then a proper after work with the other newly recruited international staff member. And as a cherry on top, I was driven home by a super friendly driver recommended by the office – who just called to say he had probably found me a car.

And.. I might be signing contract for an apartment this weekend.

I shall embrace and rock this.

Caroline BachLeave a comment

Morning rays

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Good morning palm trees, good morning neighbour on the other side of the little river, good morning new city.

Let’s start from scratch today, no? I know you’re not a very big city, I know you don’t have tons of activities to offer and that it’s not going to be very easy here – but I got to wake up with the sunrise today, and I’ll do my best to enjoy you.

Caroline Bach3 Comments

India 2013 – Part 9: Thoughts on Photos and Vulnerability.

After sharing so many photos from India and my other travels recently, I would like to once again explain my relationship to taking photos of people, and how I experienced the attitude towards portraits in India.

The photo above is of a young woman who lives in the Dharavi slum on the outskirts of Mumbai, also famous as the “Slumdog Millionnaire” slum from the movie with the same name. She works for a non-profit women’s organisation for which she embroiders sequins and beads onto pillow cushions, dresses and other fabrics that are then sold abroad. One pillow cushion can take her about two hours to work on, she will work about eleven hours a day, and what she earns from the work is just enough to cover her expenses and provide the right nutrition for her little son, her first one. This young woman told me about the organisation she works for and how she is thankful for being able to provide for herself and her child, we spoke about her priorities for a while while she kept on working, and then she asked if I would like to take a photo of her.

That’s right. She asked. And often, especially in India, people are very happy to have their photo taken and don’t consider it intrusive, especially not after a proper talk. On the contrary, it’s an honor to be captured in an image together with what values most to you.

Photography can be a very powerful tool and it often takes a serious amount of consideration on my part whether I want to share an image or not, and how the person in it is portrayed. Vulnerability in images is a sensitive matter with many layers – and unfortunately very often based on the prejudice and expectations of the beholder. I will not state that people who live in the Dharavi slum and many other areas of Mumbai aren’t in a particularly exposed and vulnerable situation, nor that a person who already feels empowered shouldn’t have access to better opportunities – but if we take the woman above as an example, and many other faces I recently have shared on this page – I would like to insist that you look at the image again, and see the fact that she is very proud of having her own one-room apartment, a tv, a healthy little son who she can spend her entire days with, and an income she is in total control of.

Now look at the image below, and imagine the huge smile the girl had on her face while pulling on my skirt to have her picture taken, just before she exposed her most natural of faces for me – and see the sincerity and beauty in it instead of feeling any sort of pity.

Seriuosly, pity is a serious insult when not asked for. Don’t you even dare.

Caroline Bach2 Comments

Marseille, Sun and Vertical Fun

So, as you already know, I went to Marseille last week to spend another seven days with Luc. We were combining work with pleasure, trying to get things done while spending enough time in the sun. The wonderful thing about Marseille is that it lies in a beautiful area surrounded by national parks, white rocks and the sea – while being an artsy restaurant, bar and music packed city where strangers happily talk to each other by night. So we had drinks with friends, played wii, watched movies, had dinners and went out dancing after sunset. And by day, when not working, we took little walks and day-trips to the sea. On my last day in Marseille we had a picnic by the beach, and it felt like a perfect summer day.. and then Luc introduced me to his world of rock climbing.

I’ve never climbed before, and I’m a bit afraid of heights – but it was seriously so much fun I can’t wait to go again.

Caroline Bach3 Comments

Birthday messages

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So today is my birthday, I’m in Vietnam, and I just received a letter from myself in 1999.

In the tightly sealed envelope I found a description of what my life looked like at that time, apart from going to school daily from 8am to 2pm.

So I had a nanny who “talks a lot” as my mother was working hard every day from 1pm to 1am, and to fill my afternoons I played tennis on Mondays, piano on Wednesdays followed by religion class, Polish on Thursdays.. and then I was “free” on Fridays and weekends. My father lived in Poland and my poodle and best friend Lucky was three at the time.

Then there was a second note, about what I think (and wish) my life will look like when reading the letter 15 years later. Let’s just say that I’m a beautiful house (with high ceilings), a (kind, caring and funny) husband, two (well mannered but not too nerdy) kids and a bunch of dogs short of making 13 year old Caroline happy.

So my concept of being an adult 15 years ago was obviously very different from what it turned out to be. From tangible things such as a house, wedding, stability and a safe job, being an adult suddenly became the amount of self awareness, balanced rationality and life experience people possess. And just as I at age 16 thought I was so damn old, wise and experienced, I feel much younger and more lost today than ever, without any idea about what will happen next week or where I will be living next month.

Carpe diem and living your dreams and all of that is pretty damn beautiful and teaches you a million things about life, yourself and the world, and I’m forever thankful to myself for the choices I have made and the happiness, people and experiences they have granted me throughout the years – both personally and professionally – but I must agree with 13-year-old Caroline that a home with high ceilings indeed would have been wounderful by now. Being an adult apparently does mean suddenly being attracted to stability.

And then, just as I was finishing this blogpost, there was a knock on the hotel room door. And I got a birthday message not from 15 years ago but from far away. And it seriously couldn’t have made 28 year old Caroline happier. “More happier” even.

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Caroline Bach7 Comments

2013 – The Highlights

A lot of moments, new people and 15 different countries made some sort of impression on me in 2013, and I really can’t pick only one occasion and photo per month to highlight like I did last year. Click the links and photos for the full stories, and I hope you will enjoy the trip!

January
January started off very well with me being introduced to Josie’s mind-blowing mousse on New Year’s Eve. After that, it was a cold and gray month where I was based in Sweden and occasionally managed to get away to some of my favourite people in Stockholm and Cicirella’s Copenhagen SPA.

February
February was a grey and slow month, so I went to visit my grandparents in Wroclaw, Poland.

March
In the end of February, however, I suddenly got an email – and a week later I was working for UNICEF in Nicaragua. I used the Easter holidays to explore neighbouring Costa Rica – spent some days in the sun with the two happy Ka’s and lived the Pura Vida lifestyle with my old friend Frank in Tamarindo.

April
April was a month of work, work and work. Then there was some occasional dancing, the Managua carnival and a friend’s wedding.

May
In may I found a couple of days to escape to the beautiful Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. I took a long and exciting trip and found some very sweaty and dirty dancing on the Palo de Mayo festival in Bluefields, and a well needed dose of hippie Island bliss in the paradise of Corn Island.

June
June was marked by the arrival of my dearest Renata and Den. Renata came first, and we went together to surfy San Juan del Sur, and when Den also arrived I couldn’t have been happier to be in both of their hilarious company in beautiful León. “WE SO FUNNY!”

July
In July, Camila came to join me in Nicaragua and we started off by travelling to Tola for work on Sociopreneur. Then we went for a completely insane barefoot hike in the Miraflor Reserve and for a beautiful weekend full of butterflies on Ometepe Island. By the end of the month, my contract with UNICEF Nicaragua finished.

August
On August 1st, I jumped on a bus headed west, and passed by enchanting Guatemala and it’s Maya pyramids hidden in the jungle in Tikal. I crossed over to Mexico and visited the Palenque pyramids and waterfalls with Chema, and went south to what became my favourite city in the country – San Cristobal de las Casas. We continued to the in many ways bizarre Mexico City, and went to see Chema’s mother perform in Cats. I also found out that I had been a surrogate mother for meat-eating myiasis larvae and filmed their murder. (Haha!)

After two weeks in Mexico, I boarded a flight – and found myself in New York. Reunited with Den and Renata, and overwhelmed by the city’s awesomeness.

September
I came back to Sweden on September first. And took my mother to India only six days later. (I still haven’t shared all of the stories from that trip.)

October
October started off with me randomly saying: “Hey, I want to go to Berlin” and Avina answering “Yay, let’s do it!” So we did a 10-day Berlin, Wroclaw, Torun and Warsaw tour. I went back to Stockholm for Avina’s birthday, and stayed an extra week for a great Halloween party with our Warsaw friends.

November
Suddenly it was November, I went to Gothenburg to do a workshop and then my mother said.. “I have some days off and I’m very curious about Istanbul..”

December
The end of the year came along with a new and inspiring smile. I travelled to Amsterdam and spent three days in a beautiful apartment and in much appreciated company, and after a couple of days of being back in Malmö, I thought “Nah..” and hopped on a flight to Marseille for a mix of sun, work and accompanied leisure.

It’s been a year that’s been very intense and tiring – but at the same time enriching and wonderful. Finding the opportunity to fill all free moments with pleasure and new impressions without loosing balance has been the key, and I am very much looking forward to the way I have chosen to end it.

Caroline BachLeave a comment

How To Be Alone

Conversations today made me remember this video shared with me a couple of years ago by my dear friend Den. There are many friends whom I would like to share this with now – reminding them about the beauty of exchanging unvoluntary loneliness for chosen and appreciated soluitude. But first and foremost, I would like to dedicate this video to the wonderful people I’ve met on my travels. The people I connected with mainly because I was on my own and could give them enough time and my full attention. The deep talkers, the dancers, the happy people. You all know who you are.

So there’s beautiful voluntary solitude.. and then there’s that other thing: Chosen company. Welcoming 2014.