Robustness

'If you take umbrage at every rub how will you become a polished mirror?'

Rumi

In Yiddish umbrage, a sense of slight or injury, is called ‘farible’. In my childhood everyone was always keeping a ‘farible’. No wonder everyone was always complaining of ailments, ‘akh, akh my back, oy, oy, my knees’. How can your body be relaxed if it’s full of faribles?

I believe that our task on this earth is to wake up and become loving, open and joyful human beings capable of celebrating life. For that we need to keep clearing ourselves of all the umbrage, resentments, envy, competitiveness, limiting beliefs and cliché expectations. Like 'The leopard doesn't change his spots.’ This is an illustration of the clichés we carry inside us, without realizing how trapped we are by them. The leopard doesn't change his spots and we don’t need to change. We need to become who we are.

'The hardest person to wake up is the one who thinks he’s already awake.’

Mahatma Gandhi