Almost 4 years, 1426 days, 19271 visits, 100 posts and 202 comments later I must say that I’ve changed a bit since this journey began, well who wouldn’t? I’m all grown up now (sad / smiley face). These 4 years have been a hell of a ride … I’ve had my share of good and bad, made new friends and became disconnected from others, I’ve traveled, I’ve teached, I’ve messed up, I’ve inspired, I’ve learned new  things, I’ve made some people happy and I’ve also made some people sad. This is all part of this thing called life.

Would I change anything? No. I am who I am now because the choices I made till now and this will also define me in the future. I like being me :)
Really! I have my good’s and bad’s, but so does everybody else!

What’s next? I don’t know. I’m trying real hard to achieve something of value. As most of us are. I’m just following my dream and see where it will take me.

As I’ve been going  trough my past posts, I selected some of them.

• Chasing your dreams – Starting my own company.
• Crazy friends – My friends. People I really care about.
• Diversity – Understanding it.
• City of two continents – Istanbul.
• City of romance – Venice.
• Duesseldorf – Germany.
• Returning to Austria – Salzburg. Flying over the Alps.
• City of Rome – Grandiose Rome.
• Becoming an Alumnus - The end of my AIESEC experience.
• Fears – About fears. Fear of life.
• Fragility of Life – Pain in huge amounts.
• Thoughts around a Wish – Inspiration from where you least expect it.
• My Super NPS – Some of my best times in AIESEC.
• Time of my life – Some of my best times outside of AIESEC.
• Thoughts racing eachother – The end of the greatest experience of my life so far.
• The journey – My very first entry.

I see them now as moments, frozen in time, and the feelings are overwhelming. Why do we spend so much of our time looking forward and so little looking back? I noticed that I too got dragged in this strong current … always rushing forward, always in a hurry, always lacking the time for myself, for those around me. We’re all rushing to what? At the end of this road, this voyage there is only one constant … death. I remembered today a poem by Octavian Paler I read a while ago called “We have time”. Maybe we should slow down a bit from time to time, find time for ourselves, for those close to us.

I’ve enjoyed the ride  so far … I can’t wait so see what’s next.
The Lion.

Disclaimer: For all english readers … sorry guys, it’s just one I have to do in Romanian. It covers the typical Romanian attitude towards work.

Atenție: Următorul pasaj conține personaje și fapte fictive fără nici o legătură cu lumea reală.

“Da sunt frustrat și refulez … ca să nu fie comentarii stupide. Unul dintre lucrurile care fac țara asta să meargă prost este modul de lucru la stat …

• Nimeni nu-și iubește job-ul … el a fost pus în job-ul respectiv acum 20-40 de ani pe vremea când toată lumea avea un job. (Ore suplimentare?  Ești cu capu? La 16 fix nu poți urca scările  că ești călcat în picioare de puhoiul care vrea să plece acasă).
• Toată lumea muncește doar ca să aibă cu ce să-și întrețină familia și atât.
• Motto-ul de bază este “Las’ că merge ș-așa” (tensiune de 180V pe prize pentru că nu se trage un nou branșament de 3 ani de zile).
• E plin de incompetenți puși în posturi de conducere pentru că au PCR (PCR = Pile, Cunoștințe, Relații). Oamenii incompetenți se înconjoară de ligăi și oameni mai incompetenți decăt ei ca nu care cumva să aibă altceva decât slugi ascultătoare.
• Există un singur sfânt … de care toți se țin cu dinții și care se numește sfântul scaun. Tuturor le e frică de să nu-și piardă job-ul … orice să nu iasă din culcușul cald și sigur. (Fraza celebră: “eu nu vreau să supăr pe nimeni …”.)
• Se respectă cu sfințenie ordinele date de zeii din conducere ca pe vremea lui răposatu’ … indiferent de cât de imbecile și stupide ar fi. Dacă cumva îndrăznești să vorbești … următoarele 10 telefoane vor fi date pentru a fi distrus în totalitate (Picat la examene, scos de la doctorat, dat afara, împroșcat cu căcat).
• Nimeni nu-și pune niciodată problema de a îmbunătăți un lucru existent … cum domle’ … pai trebuie să aibă și ăla un loc de muncă … (Peste 100 de bibliotecari care în timpul vacanței împrumută sub 10 cărți – vacanța durează 3 luni de zile).
• Nimeni nu gândește nimic (Buda pute a pișat de îți vine să verși pâna la etajul 2 pentru că ambele femei de serviciu sunt puse în concediu în același timp).
• Toată lumea ia decizii fără să-și întrebe personalul de specialitate (Hai să luam 2 lămpi de videoproiector cu un proiector nou nouț … că dacă se arde lampa ?! … că doar lămpile costă doar 500 EUR fiecare, proiectorul fiind 700 EUR; sau hai să luăm 3000 de carduri RFID (2 EUR bucata) … ca să tipărim coduri de bare pe ele, ce contează ca cardurile normale sunt 0.3 EUR bucata …)

Mă opresc aici … să nu ma scape gura despre șmenurile care se întâmpla sub ochii mei zilnic … si cum anumite firme cresc și se dezvoltă pe spatele statului … că doar e ușor să furi de la stat.”

No comment,

The Lion.

I went to extreme lengths to get pictures featuring them in some of their craziest moments …

Thank you guys, you’re one of the reasons I am what I am today.
Sorry for the ones I couldn’t find a picture, I’ll regularly update this post :)

The Lion.

Today I want to talk about diversity. In the last 6 years I had the chance to experience it first hand. A trend that I’ve been noticing lately happening around me, is that people take diversity for granted or do not really understand it. For many people diversity lies in the color of the skin, speech, culture or in names of exotic countries they’ve never heard of.

There’s more in embracing diversity than accepting one’s skin color, culture or speech. It’s also about being open to different ideas and ways of thinking. I believe diversity lies in thought, in the way people come up with their ideas, in the way they express themselves, in accepting the fact that no two people are alike.

Sadly, people fear what they can’t understand and most people fear diversity. I see this everywhere around me, people labeling one another, labeling countries and cultures, labeling ways of thought, rejecting unconventional thinking, fearing the unknown instead of embracing it. To emphasize this, below is a video that I strongly relate to this post.

I think that “The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Over and out,
The Lion.

I’ve been in AIESEC for six years, six years of my life. I was struggling so hard to make a difference, to leave a mark of my passage. In the end my efforts seemed so fruitless, witnessing all my work, everything I created being erased. Becoming nothing. Dust. For a while I was so very angry with myself, with the others. I realized that my time was gone and that right now there was so little I could do, to fix things.

What I didn’t get is that it didn’t matter … what guarantee do I have that AIESEC Sibiu will still be here in 5 years? Or that AIESEC as an organization will still be around in 50 years? All that hard work, all these efforts and sacrifice of generations simply won’t matter.

I was looking for my mark in the wrong place, what I left behind isn’t in that small office, in these files or in those computers. The marks I left behind are here (head) and here (heart) … they’re in my development and in the journey of discovering and reinventing myself, in the moments I cherish, in the people I guided and developed, in the lives I changed. These last forever and these drive change. That’s the reason why I was there.

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die.”

The Lion.

Why heroes? Well because heroes are the people we look up to when we’re young, because every one of us as a child wanted to be somebody’s hero. And because now, as I’m passing the threshold to adult life, my perspective changed a bit and I’m looking up to a different kind of hero.

My hero is good and noble, he stands up for what he believes in, makes right and wrong choices, and is true to his heart. My hero is not afraid to look within himself, find out what drives him and where he wants to reach, to discover what happiness means for him and what he mark he wants to leave behind. My hero is tuned to the people around him, to their happiness or sadness, to their failures or accomplishments, and he helps out without expecting anything back. My hero is younger than me, and is growing within the new generation. My hero is ordinary … my hero is you.

The Lion.

If I look back I have so many memories, so many flash-backs from the last five years. I’ve seen five generation of people coming and going, many of them looking so scared and disoriented at first, growing, learning fast, becoming confident and bold and doing some of the most craziest and amazing things.

This LTS was special … well like every LTS is. For me, it felt good to work with old friends from Cluj-Napoca and Targu Mures, to watch the newies glow :), to actually mingle with some very bright people. I don’t know about you, but I find it most rewarding seeing people grow, having these “a-ha moments”, literally changing before your eyes. One of the sugar cubes I got was saying “I’m impressed with the intensity that you love people around you”. I can’t help it. Its a feeling I got at this conference, like being swamped with these emotions, these feelings. How can one not be touched by it?

In not so many words, I loved this LTS, it supercharged me with energy and positive feelings. This is what’s addicting about AIESEC :). This is why I’ll keep coming back. This is why I still go to the LC Meetings.

Message for the newies:
AIESEC has given me wings and learned me how to fly, maybe in one morning some of you will watch yourself in the mirror and see a shining pair of shiny white wings, maybe you’ll learn someday how to spread these wings and fly. It’s the most amazing feeling you’ll ever get. Don’t be afraid of what lies inside you, embrace the unknown and uncertain, be confident in your own powers, rediscover yourself and realize there are no limits of what you can do … and you’ll certainly get those wings.

The Lion.

Why? Because I get the coolest feeling walking down the street, listening to my favorite tune on my super phone, having my black sunglasses on, singing along with the tune I’m listening to. On the way to work I look for peoples faces and expressions. Some are worried, some sad, some bitter, some happy, some laughing. It’s gonna sound stupid, but I try to give a genuine smile to the worried, sad or bitter faces. Sometimes I get a weird look back, but most of the time I see their faces light up, lips stretching, worries and bitter disappear and I get the same genuine smile back. How is this possible, that something so little as a genuine smile can make worries, bitterness, sadness fade away? By giving away so little, I’ve lighten up someone’s day, perhaps only by a brief moment, but it’s something. It’s like building up my happy mood on my way to work and it’s sometimes helping me go trough a hard day.

You might wonder why I started this…

Not so log ago, I decided to go see a friend of mine. He was very focused on something he was working on the computer and didn’t see me walking in. When I was a few feet away from his desk he became aware of me. He raised his head and I saw something I would normally take for granted, would not even notice: from the focused strained figure, his face lit up as he was recognizing me, and smiled. I can’t describe the feeling but it was like all was moving in slow motion and the poor illuminated room radiated from his smile. Everything shined for a moment as he stood up an rushed to shake my hand. He was happy to see me, I triggered his reaction. I’m 26 and it took most of my conscious life to learn why we smile, to realize how powerful and meaningful a smile is.

The society we live in teaches us to take a smile for granted. It teaches us that a smile is just a smile, a simple social rule, feeling and meaning less. A smile is just a smile …

No! A genuine smile is a response that is triggered by a deep reaction in the person standing in from of you, it’s offered because of real feelings and emotions and is not to be taken for granted. A genuine smile is more powerful than worries, anger, sadness. It offers you comfort, it reassures you that you’re loved, that he/she genuinely cares.

That’s it’s for today. In the background is one of the songs I listen on my way to work. I hope it brightens up your day. And here’s a genuine smile from me :D.

The Lion.

Right now I’m like living in a black hole. Too much has happened during the past 2 weeks and I hadn’t the time to really recover from all this. I had nothing but stupid and bad feelings to write about so I decided not to. Today tough, a friend of mine got in touch with me and gave me this poem that really touched something inside. I know I’ve recognized myself, moments of my life, in some of the verses bellow.

I Feared
I feared being alone
Until I learned to like
Myself.

I feared failure
Until I realized that I only
Fail when I don’t try.

I feared success
Until I realized
That I had to try
In order to be happy
With myself.

I feared people’s opinions
Until I learned that
People would have opinions
About me anyway.

I feared rejection
Until I learned to
Have faith in myself.

I feared pain
Until I learned that
it’s necessary
For growth.

I feared the truth
Until I saw the
Ugliness in lies.

I feared life
Until I experienced
Its beauty .

I feared death
Until I realized that it’s
Not an end, but a beginning.

I feared my destiny,
Until I realized that
I had the power to change
My life.

I feared hate
Until I saw that it
Was nothing more than
Ignorance.

I feared love
Until it touched my heart,
Making the darkness fade
Into endless sunny days.

I feared ridicule
Until I learned how
To laugh at myself.

I feared growing old
Until I realized that
I gained wisdom every day.

I feared the future
Until I realized that
Life just kept getting
Better.

I feared the past
Until I realized that
It could no longer hurt me.

I feared the dark
Until I saw the beauty
Of the starlight.

I feared the light
Until I learned that the
Truth would give me
Strength.

I feared change,
Until I saw that
Even the most beautiful butterfly
Had to undergo a metamorphosis
Before it could fly.

Till next time,
The Lion.

Starfish Story
In an early morning, a man was walking down a sandy beach. The previous night a big storm stroke and huge waves swept the sandy beach. The air was still moist and vapors were now rising from the unusual calm sea. The beach was now scattered an incredible amount of little yellow starfish the storm washed to the shore in the previous night. As the man walked down the beach he saw a little kid running back and forth to the point where the waves hit the beach carrying starfish of the beach into the sea.

When the man came closer, he asked the little kid: “Hey what are you doing? Don’t you realize that you can’t save all these starfish, it doesn’t matter how fast you are, they will die eventually on the sand of this beach. It won’t make any difference …”

The little kid, looked in the eyes of the man, walked towards the next starfish lying in the sand, picked it up and said “It will make a difference for this one!” and trowed it back into the sea.

Cheers,
The Lion.