By now I’ve been so many people, I’ve learned who I am.
I Am an Actress!
If you could draw a map to happiness and make real, palpable emotions into GREEN traffic lights – I would’ve been the shortest way to a Happyville. Why? Because I know how to goose things up and make life on screen shatteringly, profoundly interesting.
I Am a Writer!
When I write, be it stories, novels, plays or movie scripts, I tug at your heartstrings and make you porous to sweat-out-loud gorgeous life experiences. I know how to woo people with my silver pen. It is similar to witchcraft and I’m the most skillful broomstick rider there is.
I Am a Loving Mother and a Devoted Wife!
An extraordinary woman that knows how to build a happy home out of the fabric of love, understanding, patience and compassion.
My face is different. But ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’
Olya Aman
I was shocked and, due to that, felt no pain at first. People were shouting and gesturing to one another, trying to figure out how to distract the furious beast. Somehow, I do not recollect exactly how it was pulled from me. The man who helped me in an old blue ‘Zhiguli’ and drove to the village dispensary and later to the nearest town hospital was the owner of the dog. In the hospital, I got nine stitches in four places on my face.
The doctor that performed the work of reconstructing my face did not know about cosmetic stitching. He simply decided the way he would do it was going to be sufficient. During the procedure, I concentrated on his deep, fine-tuned voice. To listen to him was like drinking warm ginger tea on a frosty winter day, and very likely it served as the best anesthetic for me. His work was not bad, just not good.
I have the scars, one is very visible, and people often ask about it. I consider it a part of my unique personality. I like my face. I love myself the way God created me and the way life, not always gentle, adjusted the sacred work.
Thoughts about my mother, her loving face darkened by suffering because of the incident, overpowered the fear of thread, needle, and pain. And even during the recovery, when the only recollection of the event made me shake with uncontrollable sobbing — the result of a great fright — I tried to compose myself with enormous energy. One glance at my mother’s eyes with a distinct element of worry pulled me together, and I did my best to laugh.
Providence is often a cruel teacher. The life-threatening experience I went through was there to spirit me for what was before to come. I had bad days, but not too many. I had loss enough, but too much. Although, I feel completely miserable at times, I do my best to not feel depressed, rather unite the best blessings of my nature and learn to be a gainer in every situation.
Sometimes I think, I am made practically entirely from one heart, and often it thinks itself far too clever and shuts the rational mind up. But it did me a good service so far by helping me to get over emotionally and physically painful moments.
3 Lessons I Learned
Painful experience often is the strongest building block of a prominent personality.
Everything happens for a reason and your inner and outer looks depend on it.
Moments of struggle open the best (or the worst) in people.
I didn’t react to those unfortunate circumstances with deliberate self-pity. I thought of my mother and not of myself. From then on, my desire to give overpowers the desire to take. Lack of selfishness gives me the strength to withstand many of life’s calamities.
Whatever happens, I only need to understand how things are and accept the change, because ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’.
Find charming weapons in your posture, gestures, and mimic
You must possess a great deal of inner strength to fight for your true essence. – Olya Aman
Experienced the poison of my own personality reflected and redirected at me when I was eight.
We were sitting on a balcony on the 6th floor of a nine-story quiet building and shelling peas when the boy, my distant cousin, the exact relation of whom I am not able to disclose, promised to marry me once we grew up. He was 6 years old, I think, and for me, that was the main obstacle to matrimony. I couldn’t bear my husband being a whole 2 years younger than me.
The boy was petite and skinny, dressed according to the latest style with a modern haircut. His eyes were flickering like quiet water at the bottom of the well. I don’t remember his name, only the electrified tenderness from the combination of sounds that caressed the roof of my mouth.
I used to be a shy girl and I couldn’t imagine anybody might take a liking to me. This first occasion indulged my vanity and coupled with that raised right eyebrow and light tilt of the head to the left made magic. He unconsciously copied all my gestures, like the one of bringing the tips of my fingers together in a thoughtful manner.
That skill of sweet murderous attraction (and my distant cousin undoubtedly possessed it) sometimes takes ages to master. By listening with all six senses, adding full awareness to this mutual process of comprehension, and giving yourself in full to the moment of wisdom, you may be highly rewarded by obtaining a grateful and affectionate friend.
Unfortunately, the relation, if any, was very distant and I haven’t seen my first admirer for many years. Our encounter lasted about 4 hours and was limited by that romantic adventure with peas.
However, the ability to see, or rather to sense with your entire body the inner rhythm of any living being could be a curse rather than a blessing. One day about six years ago when I visited M. I met a good-looking man at my sister’s place. What struck me was the familiar flickering in his eyes. “I’ve already seen that watery gray color somewhere”, I thought.
His wife was a big woman with unusually dainty ankles. She had a style about her, and I could almost call her dazzling but for her loud voice, just a touch above average, with an expression of power and force in it.
Magnetism seemed to radiate from her, and it outshone her husband completely. They both made a curious movement of their shoulders when being introduced to me. At the dinner table she talked a lot and each time her husband wanted to add something, she interrupted him deprecatingly. It looked like she didn’t care even two straws about him when he was completely determined to obey her in every way.
This man was lost in his wife’s charisma, modeling her movements and intonations in vain hope to be heard by the object of his admiration. It can be easier for a person like that to vanish in search of identity and never discover the true self within.
This encounter made me think
1) Enigmatic individuality.
A child, when born, is a little unique flourish. Growing up, he still seats apart from the rest of humankind in the secret tower of his individuality. Looking down at the world and people around, he longs to be accepted and gradually loses the sharpness of his personality.
2) Ability to listen and ask questions.
Every movement is marked by your personal touch when you are relaxed and free from any outside influence. It is, though, hard to always feel comfortable when people are around. You stay conscious of the opinion of others, trying to read their minds and predict reactions to your next words and actions.
How can you keep your composed self and, at the same time, be conscious of the presence around? Indeed, with more self-confidence and less opinion-dependence, you will be completely fulfilled as a personality.
3) The art of attracting attention.
Your vitality and easy confidence of manner flourish when you add to your skill-set and ability to attract people. This is a learned art, and everyone can master it with enough desire and persistence. Sincere appreciation and willingness to understand always help to establish contact with anyone.
People are like parallel straight lines, and they meet only when willing to incline to each other. Some people are more parallel than most, which can be a challenge. You either need to savor this or seek a way to make them curve in your direction.
4) Dominance with body language.
Your body language grants you with an attitude of indolent grace if you listen with it. We should never take the process of communication for granted. It is a talent almost all species have, and we are gifted beyond anyone.
Invest your time in every conversation fully. Listen with your eyes, ears, and posture, and your presence will become irradiation of any gathering.
5) Mastering personality can teach you the skill.
It is a stroke of great luck to meet a virtuoso in any field. Such people go through life in a never-ending state of self-improvement. It is axiomatic that such people are great resources for valuable information. Feeble envy, in this case, is a motivation to record useful knowledge and implement it to your advantage.
Surround yourself with strong, intelligent people. They represent all the vast conscious world of the best in men. Strive to be on the same level.
Final thoughts
Some people possess that engaging gracefulness that makes them forever moving around other people. They seem to be fed by attention and admiration. And if the energy from others is not present in their life, they fade away. That happened with my distant cousin. He was desperately in love and lost himself in this feeling. I’m sure he engaged all his inner resources to win this beautiful and vigorous woman. When done and married, he disappeared, became her shadow.
Don’t make this mistake. The atmosphere of your unique inner strength should be your main source of energy. That state is obtained only if you are in love with yourself. This way if you are forced to stay for some time in your own universe with only you for a company, this experience becomes enriching.
Life can be cruel in its passionate desire to come true, where one theaters an exciting play, changing himself on the go to satisfy the need to be like others. While the other lives in the earnest struggle to protect his individuality. It is easier to continue one’s way by adopting a false personality — effort takes time and energy.
You must possess a great deal of inner strength to fight for your true essence, and most often the reality around you is a rival, not an ally.
My mom shaped our delicate souls with unconditional love
The snow was deep, the morning was happy, and the planned activity for the day was the most cheerful. A nearby forest was a place for kids’ games and enchanted stories about hidden treasures. The kids from the entire village gathered their sleds, skis, and simple hunks of plastic (those were the best things to sled down the main hill) and met at the designated place.
I put on my best coat. That white-pinkish fake fur made me look like a tiny cloud of thick mist on skinny legs — and taking my makeshift sledding gear, I ran to meet my friends. We had a blast! My face was red, my lips chapped, and my eyes watered from the frosty air, happy shouting and too much laughing.
When I came home at last, much later than my mom allowed me, I looked like a drenched grey mouse. My lovely fur turned into a dirty wet mass. The look on my mother’s face said more than words could. But she composed herself, closed her eyes, and sighed with a soft smile on her lips.
I understood fully her words many years after. At that time, they only meant that she was not cross with me, “You know I love you, cutie pie. Life is a collection of happy moments, so let us have another one together. I will make your favorite pancakes. How about that?”
My sister and I were sitting at our small square solid-wood dining table covered with a sunflower tablecloth. My mom always made our house look like one of Stephen Darbishire’s summer paintings. We had color sprinkled in each room: handmade pillows, embroidered pictures, and lacy doilies on every surface.
I spilled my tea, dotted the space around my teacup with sugar, and put the cuff of my shirt in jam with no reproachful comments from neither my mom nor my sister. The green tea with ginger, lemon, and honey was my mother’s masterpiece. Accompanied by hot pancakes, straight from the pan, it was the greatest luxury of my childhood. I needed to possess a remarkable skill to finish the previous round and soft delicacy in time to stretch my hand for a new hot one before my sister did. It was a fun little competition. Even nowadays we play this game mostly to amuse each other and to make our mom laugh heartily.
My mother knew the power of unconditional love as a parent and chose to show it in three main ways. We can use these in our parenting too:
Choose happy moments to outline life.
To an outsider’s scrupulous eye, it might have been a sad life of many losses, but she decided otherwise. We lost our father when I was three years old, and my mom was only twenty-eight. We were her salvation. Her nature was overly sensitive to every little prick in our humble family life. She shaped our delicate souls with a dominant spirit of unconditional love, and it showed us the path to happiness.
Allow them to experiment and explore.
We attain knowledge by trial and failure, touch, and pain. My mom knew that it was necessary to have something to regret about. There is no freedom in a house in constant order with kids in a state of never broken obedience. Wild tunes should have their place in every family symphony.
The world around us is alive, ruddy, and satisfying only if we are allowed to make mistakes without fear. Being a living embodiment of love, trust, and understanding, she always thought about the consoling things to say when she saw the sparks of tears in our eyes.
Make every moment special.
What to use as a measuring scale when you define life is solely a personal choice. There is a multitude of feelings, countless moments, numerous meetings, hopefully, plentiful impressions — everything has its own emotional shade. The good news is we can choose the colors to paint our life.
We are all composed of the fragments of our various experiences. Being a parent myself, I know it is in my power to make most of these personality-building-moments bright, colorful, and happy for my children.
I act often with fear and bravery chasing each other in my eyes… – Olya Aman
Introduction
L. is a good nurse, and that alone tells a lot about her. She was born in Rwanda, adopted and raised in Europe. L. moved back to Rwanda when she learned her way and made sure that helping her patients was her aim in life. After the genocide her native country needed support, her least lucky people needed her knowledge.
You must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony about this story. L. is a fine creature, her big almost black identical in size and shape eyes cause people to confide in her. She learned early on to listen, and this skill proved to be invaluable in her profession.
“Every day is like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” she says. “I begin my harum-scarum day and see the transformation, one person at a time.”
People often live with the brow of an optimist above and the jaw of a pessimist below. To make one dominate another is to create real value in life. A positive approach to everything one does helps to build a skill set that makes a smile last a lifetime. Whereas, one sardonic smile can bring gloom that blankets everything around.
1) Negative Thoughts Are as Bad as a Dangerous Plague, and Infinitely as Harmful to Your Health
“I was 12 when my new parents took me to Europe. I have my first memories linked with horror and fear, loss and grief. Those memories shaped my personality and in some way, I am grateful for the background I have. Although, gratitude was not speedy enough to visit me.”
“My good, generous and loving parents had to put up with a lot. I was not an obedient child, rebelling at anything and everything. I was in constant emotional pain at least first five-six years or so. The lesson of the genocide period in Rwanda left my whole being in ruins. Nearly one million people were killed. I lost my family, my friends, everything I ever loved.”
When we feel negative emotions, they surround our brain by a mysterious halo, which shuts off the outside world, limiting our ability to see the way out. Our brain finds it easy to see the raw afternoon and the dense fog, the muddy streets, and the bleak houses.
You need to make an effort to not letting bad things alone take their own bad way. The world takes gloomy and bright passages, and if you take it off-handedly, it will never go right for you. That is why in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog you need to force yourself to see the light, to shake the negativity off.
Procrastination, spoliation, evasion, botheration blind your brain, depriving you of the ability to see the options and choices that surround you.
2) How Positive Thoughts Color Our Life in Healthy Beautiful Shades
“Love and patience helped me to gradually come back to believing again. Jane and Matt – my stepparents – are my rocks in life. I owe them my new self, or, rather, the return of my old happy before-the-horror-self. I remember and I mourn, I often cry, but now mostly because of happy memories. I have more of those, you know, and the rest is still here in my heart, but not pressing and as vivid anymore.”
“This transformation came with the knowledge that I wanted to make a change. I was sick for a while at some point. A woman that nursed me in the hospital imprinted the longing for the same profession in me. By that time I knew that Rwanda was in the reconstruction period and the system of health needed human resources. I was going to come back home.”
The impact of positive emotions on the brain and overall health is hard to underestimate. Joy, contentment, and love open endless possibilities in life, they broaden your mind, make it more prone to new innovative solutions.
When you seem to be a mass of dull, complaining feelings everything you do may seem distasteful. Gift yourself with optimistic thinking by identifying areas of your life that usually upset you. Each time your thoughts distress you, drive them out or find a way to put a positive spin on them.
A smile during difficult times lightens the burden of troubles. When you humor everyday misfortunes, you feel less stressed. A good laugh is a luxury, the radiating waves of it break the toughest walls of desperation.
Our social barometers always should stand at ‘sunny’. Negative people continually war with your happiness. Surround yourself with positive, supportive people who can give help with advice and action.
3) Motivation is Another Definition of Positive Thinking
“The desire not only to see my country again, but to be able to bring good – my skillset and knowledge – was driving me in my studies. I followed the efforts of Dr. Binagwaho, who spent years helping to rebuild the country’s health care system. She is my hero.”
“The most precious resource of the post-genocide Rwanda was its people. Thousands of community health workers traveled from home to home providing the necessary care. I willingly joined the rural health tribe.”
Life has many costumes and only by looking at it with optimism one can truly value it. Positive emotions prompt useful and valuable everyday activity. Encouraging thinking is a sophisticated weapon in a battle with monotony.
Building anything requires patience and motivation, both are synonymous with optimism. Only in a state of appreciation you can spark massive changes that can lead to new developments in life.
The ability to stay enthusiastic and hopeful is always located within. Whatever happens outside should not determine your state of mind, for that power rests with you only. So, does not allow an external event to be a disturbance.
4) How to Allow Positivity Reign Amid Chaos
“The health workers were selected by the villages they served. The people of my native village decided that I would care for them. It was the happiest day of my life.”
“The country’s health system has managed to achieve so much progress on a very limited budget. Other poor countries often call this achievement miraculous, I call it challenging. Our dedication to delivering effective health care improves the lives of the poor and that is the best reward we need.”
Do not blame yourself for the lack of calmness, doing so will never bring you to the state of inner joy. Practice awareness of what makes you feel good. Immerse yourself in this activity. Meditate if that makes you display more positive emotions, increased mindfulness, and decreased illness symptoms.
Explain your inner state of mind in writing. If you note your positive experiences, you will have a better mood level and fewer health problems.
We are all rooted to our social environment, meeting people we like and … not so much. Schedule fun time with optimistic people. Positivity attracts more of its own self, just being optimistic will make lovely, cheerful people your reality.
5) Happiness and Success Come Together
“At the end of every day, I am tired and full of joy and sorrow. Both mixed together comprise my life and make it unforgettable. I take both and grateful for both. The new coming day is ever more incredible because of this mixture of emotions and I always start it on a positive foot.”
“I am happy to be home. To lead the life of purpose is stimulating. I often in a state of inward merriment and I encourage myself to prolong this feeling because it is contagious. People around me can feel it and, consequently, become happier from my presence in their life.”
L. is very contented in her profession. She is a link in a chain of remarkable alterations for the better.
In a positive state of mind you can withstand the passing disappointments and pain. You become a strong personality, the only one controlling your inner state of mind. Happy you, develop new skills with joy, that activity leads to success and that all gives you more reasons to be even happier. Serenity and peace are on your way when you remind yourself of your unbroken positivity.
Conclusion
L. confided in me and gave her permission to share her story. She only asked to make an emphasis on the happy side of it, showing to my readers the importance of positive, grateful approach to life. She mentioned several times that love saved her sanity, and optimism of her parents, being contagious, helped her to get better physically and emotionally.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of positivity. The most deplorable and irreparable results come from deeds made in a state of pessimistic rejection of bright and jolly in life. Whatever comes your way, allow it to be, but experience it with inner belief in a good outcome. A positive approach to life helps you to be preserved and unbroken. It reminds you that what seems distressing at one point in time is a blessing at another.
To be the butt of everyone’s ridicule could be a symbol of all that is truly beautiful and stylish… – Olya Aman
Introduction
A. had the territory of curves, the acres of curls, the meadows of fresh grassy aroma all about her, and the domain of a bit sarcastic but still kind attitude towards life. There was no way I could forget that tremendous display of the whitest teeth on Earth and a lovely cascade of laughter. Of all the fine people on board of Eleanora, the cruise ship going to South Africa, A. swaggers in my memory as the finest.
On the board of that liner we shared the adjoining compartments and for some strange coincidence, the door between them was not bolted. The very first day of our voyage I tried it and slipped right into her room just at the time A. was getting ready to go out to have dinner. She laughed approvingly, saying that she was just thinking to try that door herself. We had dinner together that evening and all the consequent ones that followed.
The definition of beauty breaks under the test of each individual. Out of this word one forms numberless associations and correspondences. The countless varied impressions, experiences, concepts are formed by society. Out of these materials, every woman strives to take the best to be considered beautiful by society standards.
1) Pursuing Status and Popularity Throughout History
19201960
We invented a game to amuse ourselves during our meals and strolls, solving imagined mysteries and inventing detective stories with crimes and murders. A. had a peculiar mind, reading people and situations promptly and to the point, never being in the wrong. And I was the Hastings to my Poirot friend, always naïve and always in the foggiest to what was truly going on.
It amazed me how A. turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to all those demonstrations of society accepted beauty standards. A. always wanted to partake of the forbidden pleasure of being remarkably loud in her self-expression. She was inhaling the judgmental fragrance coming from other people, and I doubted if ever she was quite through with it. A. enjoyed it, not able to toss the desire to shock out of her heart. It is my opinion that people judged her boisterous manner because they envied her bravery.
Debbie ReunoldsDoris Day
The history of makeup is charged with a constant change in society. Exquisite soft colors of the 1940s and post-war 1950s are rippling in our memory. Sweet ladies, such as Debbie Reunolds and Doris Day, recall in a flash years of longing for simple, natural, clean and conservative beauty.
Peggy MoffittTwiggy
Later in the 1960s and 70s, the splash of idealism and feminine protest required to see instantaneous, fleeting, and slightly boyish faces. Twiggy and Peggy Moffitt pretty nearly summed up the philosophy of that time. The views of masculine touch in a woman’s appearance grew habitual to everyone.
Falling early into the 1980s and 90s, and into loud and louder everything about the face. All that little sense of propriety in makeup was laughed out of that time by a hardened, bright, colorful specter. Doubting how to distinguish men and women one needed to accept eyeliner, big hair, and lipstick on both sexes.
Tyra Banks (2000 – 2017)
Alessandra Ambrosio (2003 – 2017)
Doutzen Kroes (2005 – 2017)
Daria Werrbowy (2004 – 2015)
In the 2000s, women started to feel the wide world. Technology and the internet started to make them dream of the heights they never thought possible for themselves before. Ladies escaped the clutches of seriousness and added a female touch to their business look. Who could be timid in the presence of glossy, glamorous and sexy in a smart way businesswoman? Healthy, organic air prevailed in the makeup industry.
Gliding neatly and softly into today, a beautiful woman is striving for a healthy look and a healthy life. The trend was started in 2000 and was culminating in now. The exterior is natural. It resumes the contours of normality. The interior is enhanced by workouts and good food. We do still see the hurls of the 2000s somewhat heavy looks, but more and more additional genuine light is brought into the lives and on faces.
Today we strive to believe that any troubling feeling is flitting. Sadness, fear, frustration like a storm, cannot last forever. As our experiences broaden and deepen we tend to see the beauty in absolutely everything and everyone. This inward knowledge creates freedom of expression. A woman looks within herself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the inward and outward beauty.
2) Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries
There were many men and women on board our vessel. All dressed up and, so to say, made up. The company was diverse: European women were stunningly attractive, high hills on dainty long legs, red lips on oval faces, big lashes on colored sparkling eyes; Asian ladies had unusually white complexions, Western beauties were tanned and blushing with rouge on their cheeks.
A. was an accomplished woman with enough means to be able to buy all the makeup possible, and yet, she never bothered to wear any at all. She looked quite all right without it, as far as I could judge, with all those unruly locks, thick black eyebrows, and long shadowy eyelashes.
Being successful at investing her own money and advising others on how to deal with theirs, A. possessed the brains of a wise man. She could not care less for the opinion of others and loved to be in a company of strangers, people who didn’t know who she was, and thus, looking at her very often disapprovingly. She loved to trace the signs of transformation. It solaced her mind to see how people, almost against their will, were eventually attracted to her, admiring her truthful nature.
There might be some allowance for error in depicting the looks in different countries. To avoid it I will only try to point the way for the beauty qualities that are considered attractive in some distinguished places.
For the lovely ladies of the US suntanned skin, fuller lips and the longest eyelashes ever seen are a splendid example of attractiveness.
The bulk of Brazilian woman strives for a natural, effortless look with the most significant accent on a bold matte lip that commanded over light and harmony of naturally colored skin and eyes.
The colors that count in Canada are beige nudes and deep reds. Here the secret of attraction is in brows. Bold or barely there, they present a perfect addition to the color choice for the lip.
In the UK and France women are willing to be natural, more real. The forces of makeup are now equally with contouring and highlighting that looks less artificial and more enhanced.
Anyone can trace here that the secret inner wish of every woman from every country is to display the treasures of their personalities. Smoky in India, dramatic in the Middle East, intense in Mexico – eyes tell a volume about female vitality. Red and beige, loud and dense, expressive and accentuated lips feel and tell, whisper and shout about a sensuous force of every woman’s nature.
What a glamorous masquerade is this makeup business. It entices women to sail forever in the abundance of color with sense and feeling and mind to be her selves and yet different, to imitate and be unique, to be seen and most important – remembered. The secret inner will that controls this industry is a fateful desire to make the time still and our nature silent, to preserve the beauty and to fool the life.
3) Makeup as a Tool for Gaining Lofty Titles and Increasing Self-Importance
A. sensibly tasted the sweets of living without deceitful colors on her cheeks and looked somehow visibly more honest than others. She considered makeup an instrument of woman’s destruction. I was not of the same opinion; we argued with zeal and friendly passion. I spent quite a number of years selling makeup and I loved to play with colors, although I got tired of it long ago and at the time wore nothing but for a bit of mascara and a liquid liner on my eyes and a trace of lipstick on my lips.
A. had sense, and energy, and spirits, and character – she needed not any additional color to the abundance her personality presented already. A.’s universal good-will and contented temper attracted people not from the first glance, that was for sure, but from the first conversation. With her, every day flew away at a very unusual rate. Forming all those playful schemes in a perfect Agatha Christie’s fashion we made a lot of friends in-betweens.
The makeup industry is equally charged with the odors of camouflage and deception. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It is an art so wonderful and with such power of creating rather than enhancing, that to recognize an infinite nature that is hidden under it is almost impossible – a person becomes a new made-up incarnation of herself.
After the makeup is washed off, women feel insecure, as if an essential part of their character is missing. This sensation is close to the feeling of loneliness. It creeps over dear ladies with false statements that exquisite beauties cannot be discovered when makeup is not present.
Even such sensations as business success and accentuated beauty became undividable nowadays. Piling foundation on concealers perceived as professional and may very much likely to help a person to be more successful.
4) Media Troubling Representation and the Need for Importance
A. took delight in putting me wise on how things were and why she despised wearing makeup. You see, in her early days she had quite a taste of misery when working in an investment firm her vanity was not once pushed, or rather dashed down by her male senior manager in front of other female colleagues due to her ‘lack of femininity’. For some reason, he thought it would make A. more successful with clients if she had furnished her bag with necessaries of some beauty enhancing tools.
Eventually, A. called a council in her thoughts whether she needed to take the advice or toss it overboard – and did the latter, leaving the office and opening her own business. It was vain to sit still and wish to be yourself in the surrounding where you were pressed to be someone else. She encouraged herself to go beyond what she would have been able to have done upon staying in her firm.
A. was contented with the discovery that women loved to confide in her with their thoughts, and… with their money. The husbands, they thought, were in the safe, dealing with a woman with no makeup. It just happens so that men will not be nice to you if you are not good looking, and women will not be nice – if you are.
We lose imagination when an instinctive desire to follow the creed promoted by media is overpowering the other senses and emotions. It compels women to look for the pictures of accepted standards and try their best to be counted as “similar” and “like” the person on the cover.
If for some reason a lady cannot find her resemblance vividly displayed she feels left out, forgotten, not accepted, not beautiful. Seeking the favor of others, women strive to obtain the same shades for the eyes and lips. But the reality is that whatever approval is supposed to come her way will move her farther from her unique nature.
Pursuing the status of prettiness and loveliness, the natural flow of beautiful energy of independent mind and soul is often stopped. This chasing is alarming, regardless of the outcome. If you gain approval, you will become a slave to outside messages of praise. Do not let someone else’s opinion direct your life. Only when you adjust the obtruded belief to a heart-felt individual one, your understanding of attractiveness changes.
Conclusion
A. always had something to talk about that no one else had monopolized. She created a sense of power and incongruity. Being kind of shut out from the region of the beautiful, A. had a freer mind. She had not a smooth story to tell about herself, and who did? She played a game of life into her own hands with the help of her brains, not her looks. Her road to success might have been easier the other way around, but she would have been a different person then.
Makeup, as a tiny fragment of our life, is not as significant anymore. It still has a thousand hues that are blended in various substances. And women play with it, experiment, hide and sick themselves in the process.
Beauty takes shape of joys and sorrows. It has the poignancy of heart-satisfying inner emotions. A strive to achieve a way of life that guarantees integrity, joy, peace, and balance is depicted on modern faces.
When you create a family — you become one organism, breathing through one source, looking and moving in one direction. – Olya Aman
I formed the habit of sticking my attention into the venerable instrument of our diverse family. I feel the impulse to pull out our story of my head and heart because I know you can make better use of it.
My Afro-Asian husband
Everything about my husband is a bit stupefying. He has a large, square face, with a massive projecting nose and narrow greenish Asian cut eyes. Black hair brushed back from a broad but low forehead open two distinct parallel straight lines, that meet only at infinity. Grave and weighty in his manner and body, he does everything slowly and massively. Like a locomotive, he melancholy moves through life. Within his setting, I feel indolent and silenced.
Zac’s family, that is his name, is a unique example of the ‘cafeteria culture’. And the only idea of it is beautiful. His father was born and raised in Mexico in a Muslim family. While his mother is a daughter of a Methodist minister. They adopted Zac when he was 4 years old. He identifies himself closely with both cultures and religious beliefs, never feeling pressure coming from either side. The inner climate of their family is always mild and comfortable. They love each other and accentuate their family values on common grounds, minimizing the importance of the differences.
Our union
When Zac was 20, I got pregnant with our first child. We got married for love and forever, family values prevailing in Zac’s perception of the world. I am a woman of a European origin with deep cultural ties and beliefs. My cultural and religious sentiments are softly echoed by his acceptance and loving understanding.
Zac’s interracial, interreligious family experience made him flexible and adaptable to the changing world around. My family got to love this young-looking man with old wisdom lurking in his Asian eyes. Zac’s family accepted his choice with loving humor and serious understanding. The colors of our faces are diverse, the shades of our philosophies are controversial in many aspects — but we have a common universal understanding of the family values.
We have a family brunch once a month, to which all relatives bring their specialties. We celebrate our diversity and remain faithful to our histories.
What I’ve learned from my multicultural ongoing experience
Form a brilliant scheme to focus on shared pricks.
We are all enveloped in and on and under our histories. To make life easy, we slide gently through every circumstance, stressing our common patterns, and minimizing the importance of our differences. Close personal ties with each other are the sweets of life for all of us.
The focus on critical dissimilarities gives the bitter taste that disagrees with any family union. That is why we never cross the line and always stay in a circle of peaceful, polite conversation.
Rejoice at the contrasting blessings of your personalities.
Together we monopolize our differences and celebrate them with respect in our minds and love in our hearts. Because the family union is like a union between two countries — with unique histories and traditions, views and life principles. To maintain peace may be a laborious process, but it for sure is rewarding.
Respect has a lot of hand in building our family union. We learn to accept the cultural identity of each other and have judgment enough to distinguish between historical and religious differences that are important and those which are not. Any dissimilarities are not the instruments of destruction, but the triggers that move our curiosity forward.
Artlessly admit extended family connections.
We united the best blessings of existence when we decided to raise a child. We care a great deal for each other, that is why we are open to connect with members of our extended families and are eager to introduce our offspring to the variety of family relationships.
The chances are that the child will be a gainer if loved by many relatives and experienced in various cultural situations. Life with little and sometimes bigger difficulties and privations is not damaging but strengthening if you can look at your family and see the rock that will always hold you firmly on the ground.
To pursue a happy family union, everyone in it should help each other out of the deepest gulfs of human miseries. In the sequel of life, the family union is the only harbor that can give us the taste of happiness and peaceful harmony. – Olya Aman
I was beside her, wrapped around her, melting in my anger… – Olya Aman
I was almost abnormally fond of Adam.
The little dimples on his cheeks were driving me crazy. He was the only means of complete and ineffable happiness, the very essence, which I defined as Life.
His heart stopped beating and the Hatred to the person (who drove the car in a state of alcohol intoxication, killed my boyfriend, and remained almost unharmed) began to control my existence with innate satisfaction.
This experience turned my understanding of Hate and Hatred bottom side up.
I meditated on my hate, crying quietly, shouting inwardly. I was utterly desperate in my desire to inflict the same suffering upon a person responsible for that devastating emotional pain, soul-torture, the heartbreaking outcry of my whole being.
I will share my love story with you in a few well-chosen silences, and the story of my hate — in several emotional words.
1) Try to accord with the disturbing person.
The ghost of an idea to get to know that person better (and if not to forgive, but at least to free my spirit from a tormenting feeling of anger, that didn’t let me breathe fully, function satisfactory, and live bearably) invaded my thoughts.
I visited Mary in prison for eighteen months and four days after the car crash. The expression on her face told me wordlessly that I should (if I would be so kind) spend a moment in her presence, make an effort to not shout from inner pain, listen if she had anything to say, have a look into her eyes for just a fraction of a second… and just be quiet.
Mary’s apocalyptic face, whiter than Death’s itself, seemed incapable of even a glimpse of a smile anymore. I felt my hatred if not slipping away but for sure diminishing. In front of me, there was a woman that made a fatal mistake, a mother that could not be beside her kids, a wife that lost her husband’s trust and love.
I, for one, had her to blame. Mary had gone on every night without the consolation of exoneration.
2) Keep in close touch with your motives.
After the meeting with the person who killed my boyfriend, I was unhurriedly and calmly propelling myself toward recognition of my loss and acceptance of my fate.
I did not forgive Mary, I still felt the pangs of hate often. That was a huge step forward to a new life, where moments without this suffocating feeling were visiting me more and more often.
I had never in my life so perfectly understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) that state of hatred I lived in for so long.
But before that meeting, I had not even one-third the command over it. My ability to distract my thoughts and recover some balance in my feelings ranked better with each new day.
3) Thrust hateful shock upon a paper.
Although my loss was the unspeakable and the unwritable history of agonizing anger and bitterness, I created by some occult process of self-mastery a diary of perfectly cruel time in my life. I wrote about the perpetrated deed of self-distraction committed by hatred.
I wrote down my feelings partly because I wanted to get rid of that hate, and partly because I wanted to have a shred of evidence in the form of a written word of that time, to justify my desire to live when my lover was not among the living, to show him that I still loved and suffered tremendously from that loss.
4) Value trustworthy spectators and listeners.
I could not push this pain off or away, but I started to talk about it with people who cared to listen.
By doing so, I rose from the domain of the inner prison cell I used to live in one on one with this feeling of hatred.
I appeared on the surface where friendship and love of close people and consolation saturating from every encounter could help me recover and drift peacefully along with the current of life.
5) Breathe a tepid skepticism and sickly dislike out.
From all the indescribable I had known, definitely, the most intense one was the feeling of overwhelming loss, pain, and hatred mixed together.
This cocktail made me sick to my stomach and dizzy in my head.
I learned a special breathing technique to help me manage this dreadful inner hullabaloo tornado of disruptive feelings.
It helped me to diminish that absolute and incurable hysteria of emotions and, with time, to extract it from my life almost completely.
6) Ease your pain in the certitude of positive and healing forgiveness.
I visited Mary, the unfortunate driver who killed my boyfriend, only once.
I could not force myself to go to prison again. In one more year after our encounter, Mary was released.
When that piece of news was announced in an official letter, I felt bitterly disappointed. Were thirty months in prison enough to pay for the taking of someone else’s life?
I was despite myself with grief. The feeling of hate overwhelmed all my entire being all over again.
The authorities forced our second encounter on me. I needed to be present at the release meeting, where Mary would declare her remorse, ask to believe in her renewed self, and plead to be forgiven.
What a hellish thing it was to sit through it. I could not lift my eyes to see her talking. When most of the time elapsed, the door opened and two pairs of huge black buttonlike eyes entered the room.
A three-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. Mary’s husband divorced her while she was in prison, but being a good father brought the kids to see their mother on the day of her release.
The spectacle was refreshing for my feelings. Now I stared all eyed in the scene of devoted love of a mother and unconditional love of her children.
I leapt to my feet and made for the door to shut it and never see these people again, to close that chapter of my life, and be partially contented with the idea that I could not hate this loving mother anymore and hopefully would never see these people again.
Mary and her family moved to a different state, away from the memories and people who can judge her and bully her kids in school. Away to start a new life.
Let me tell you what I know for sure.
Hate is the most uncomfortable, impoverished, and disagreeable feeling to live with.
It sucks the life-giving energy from a human being like a hungry vampire from an unfortunate victim. It is inhaled together with humiliation, mistreatment, and a feeling of impotence.
As an artificially grown black rose, that you may buy to go to the funeral, this feeling cannot becomingly complete a bouquet of beautiful and kind emotions. It spoils the entire picture, sticking out and disgustingly protruding.
Forgiveness and compassion can help to avail this sickly atmosphere.
To say ‘No’ to distractive thoughts means to see better days. Start a journal of positive recollections and put yourself in a contented state every time you read it.
Sometimes things you write may be appalling and rereading those is inflicting even more pain. Tearing up or burning, though, on the contrary, is releasing yourself, freeing your spirit — making it flexible, prone to change.
Close, loving people represent all the vast conscious world of consolation, empathy, and emotional and physical support.
Relax in a company of a friend, the one you can talk a long time to, who will be attentive and intense, who will drink it all in and will help you release your pain, anger, and misery.
Keep washing away negativity with tenderly chosen words of self-compassion that you inwardly voice with each count.
The first note of peace will strike when you inhale in slow fives, hold for another 5, and then let it go with the final 5.
Treat yourself to a luxury of positive visualization.
Feel your detestation passing away with each breath.
I wanted to be a creature whom ‘Smart’ does not even slightly describe… – Olya Aman
Many years prior to the days of our acquaintance, my mentor was considered a dyslexic child. He had trouble matching the letters, struggled to read fluently and spell words correctly.
My mentor, Maks, can intoxicate every person individually with his great bright voice, hoarse and rich, sudden, and intensely accurate. Saying things enlightening and captivating, he can describe any event from his life and the life of the world around fully and without hyperbole and still catch unmitigated attention of everybody around.
My notebooks, one in particular, are covered with expressions of his wisdom. I’m the witness of his ineffable teaching — How to eliminate our troubles by growing a hunger to read.
I will put you wise using his own words:
Read a Good Book and Energize Your Brain
Reading makes our brain omnipotent. By processing written material, we encourage our brains to work harder and better. Almost like after a visit to a gym, when our muscles still remember the strenuous stretch and weight, our brain expresses a shadow activity at a specific region that was stimulated.
Maks has a great understanding of the brain and his learning disability. He explained to me that dyslexics are visual and multi-dimensional thinkers.
“Although I excelled in hands-on learning and was highly creative, I needed to put a certain dangerous effort into mastering the art of reading. I was long past the school-age when I finally could claim a label ‘normal’ for myself.”
Maks was hard, immeasurably hard on research, finding the best ways to rewire his brain. “I tried all kinds of remedial reading programs that could help me become a better reader. Every single day I was working on changing the way how my brain was processing information.”
Remedial Reading Helps to Diminishing Confusion in Our Lives
Reading decreases stress. You transport yourself into a different situation and positively affect your daily life with uplifting literature.
Maks made his Dyslexia (‘word blindness’ — how it is called sometimes) not an insurmountable obstacle in a process of education, but a problem to be solved — an opportunity to express personal motivation; a trigger to combat an enemy and win the battle on the arena of education.
“I’ve discovered the relationship between reading and stimulation of particular regions of the brain. Today it is a base for the emerging field of literary neuroscience. My life is an example that even a dyslexic reader can fix his problem with the right approach to a book.”
Maks often stresses that by challenging our brain, we keep ourselves upright together with our cognitive abilities. “There are many benefits in the ensemble of mind improving reading exercises. It even can ward off dementia.”
“Behind our eyes lives a world of undiscovered. And to start a journey of self-digging and improvement is never late. There are special techniques, new emerging programs, even specifically created fonts to help us become better readers.”
The Value of Close Reading
Reading is not just fun, it is beneficial for our mental health. Reading stimulates our analytical abilities, heighten our focus and concentration.
Breakthrough information emerges every day. Maks keeps finding new ways to improve memory, reduce stress, decrease depression, enhance imagination, improve sleep, and many more — all with the help of books, chosen smartly and intentionally.
“Reading every day not only makes our feet travel in countries not easily imagined but also explore the grounds of our abilities.”
Methods of Keeping Our Brain Active
When crossing the threshold of a new book you should think what benefit you are expecting to get from it. Making a choice in a library, you pick, quite literally, a kind of cognitive brain training, a way to use new brain regions, and it is in your power to decide where to put your focus on.
“Scientists work extensively, developing new ways to train our brain.” says Maks. “There are numerous books on simple math problems and short brain-training sessions with puzzles. By challenging ourselves, we strengthen the connections between brain cells. Devoting our time to learning something new and complex like a foreign language can protect our brain from aging.”
Conclusion
My mania for the world of reading results from the prolonged conversations with my mentor. I love the state of focus and concentration I feel every time we meet.
I think that being a victim of a great book is an honor, and I wish to get into such captivity often and do so at my leisure. There is about the entire process of reading something irretrievably and positively self-imaginary. It punctuates our lives with novel ideas and educates us in unknown areas of life.
By mastering a new field of study, we heighten our opinion of ourselves and our capabilities. Reading manifests refinement to our brain and enjoyment to our life.
A final work from Maks:
When working with great workout tools our body responds more quickly and easily to the exercise, the same happens with our brain when we chose a quality book to read. You may even feel a bit exhausted at the end, as if your body went through the exercise along with your mind.
Regardless of their size, every woman is an apotheosis of fashionable nobility
It was wholly unlike the ‘Permitted Style’, and she could see the people’s awe and distant wonder… – Olya Aman
Sasha is my best friend. We had, and still have, a tradition in our village school to welcome 1st graders with smiles and handshakes from 5th graders. Sasha was the one to take my hand and lead me to my class. From then on, we were seeing each other regularly in school and outside of it.
Being charming ladies in our 30s, now we have families and both live very far from our native place. Some favorable universal coincidence glued us to the same town, though, so we still keep in touch.
Regardless of Their Size, Every Woman Is an Apotheosis of Fashionable Nobility and Strives to Be in Style
The fashion industry should find a sympathetic response in our lives - treat everyone with dignity and respect. It must not suppress self-expression and creativity.
Sasha has a large, square face, with a massive projecting nose and long-lashed, pale blue eyes. When she is smiling to herself, her face shines pink and childish. She is like one of those extinct birds, the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, once found in northeast Brazil, because she wears that elaborate hairstyle of a curiously improbable shade of orange.
Sasha is undeniably slender, and ponderably light, and… proveably short. Even in school, when people wished to distinguish her from the others, they always called her the ‘miniature one’. Nothing changed these days in this respect.
Sasha used to dress as if she had no sense of proportion, and the colors were always pyrotechnical. That was not her fault. You see, she had a sneaking mania for a fashionable style, particularly when she saw a slender, tall body wearing it. But her reality was the indispensable crisis — she couldn’t find the same garments to fit her petite form. And Sasha felt empty-hearted heading to the kids’ section all over again.
Social Media Is a Majestic Influencer and You Can Manifest the True Body Image Through It
Social media kick starts trends in fashion, particularly when used to illustrate diversity and body-accepting concepts. Nowadays everything is ridiculously exhilarated, beautifully abnormal, and deliciously insane. Gradually our vision is gaining in focus, and we wear confident faces and elegant outfits.
One-day I found Sasha turning everything in her wardrobe topsy-turvy and inside out. The whole place was utterly destroyed, as if by an earthquake, but it was only her frustration burning. With half-shut eyes she was lying on the floor in the middle of that devastation in a perfect unrelaxation.
That day Sasha decided to make a try for Paradise. She decided to be happy, even if it would cost her all honesty and money. Sasha shouldered her way in social media. She crafted her own outfits, which added a rousing fashionable kick to the lives of women with romantically shaped but very tiny forms. She created her own line of “Fashion for Petite” driving change and building her own following.
Clothes Have About Them Something Irretrievably Thought-Provoking for People Around
Our thoughts take on the color of our clothing. One can look simple and charming, and that will strengthen the desire to connect with other people. And being very much aware that you look stunning can bring closer the desire to bestow a little attention to a beloved person.
Sasha regained her good spirits. She is in sympathy with her beautiful self now when she makes her own clothes. She adopted and promoted smart and elegant dressing habit. Her style sends messages to her mind and the minds of others about self-respect and body positivity.
Sasha feels that the conventional visual landscape of the beautiful person needs to be changed. I think she joined a contagious, great, and brilliant movement that broadens the very narrow rules existent for what is considered ‘beautiful’
Conclusion
Being petite myself, I used to be almost swept away by the continually unsuccessful shopping experience. We all desire to parade among our acquaintances in the outfits tailored handsomely and becoming. But we used to be constantly pained by the sight of the fashionable dresses and blouses with shoulders too wide and waists too low.
That wretched mental stupor, the fashion industry used to be in, finally seemed to lighten. Inclusive sizing becomes a good business strategy, even for many haute couture houses. Women of different shapes want to be true to the trend and be part of a modern fashionable movement.
Inclusive sizing is more than just the first subtle outcropping in the fashion industry, it is a re-creating mountain that is going to influence many things in the world. 00, petite, and plus-sizes should not be treated as problems to be solved, but as realities respected and rightfully enlisted in life and business.
To linger here or to feel that you belong… – Olya Aman
My sister Tanya is a lean, long-backed, large-headed girl, with surly tones of her voice and coarse features of her face. We scour the country together now and then: I — on my feet and her — on her wheels. Her wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by her mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by her flexible torso. You would never believe, looking at her expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over her just four years ago.
A rushing torrent of grateful feelings.
The dark night in my sister’s life started from an unfortunate fall from a high staircase. Her brain stopped triggering signals responsible for the muscle movement and she didn’t feel her legs anymore.
When starting to sit down to her meals, still dispirited and sad, she used to say to me, but truly to herself, “Nothing happens without reason. There should be a higher intelligent plan and purpose in it.” The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. It was holding her tight, not letting her slip into that despair completely.
My sister didn’t feel her legs anymore, but strains of overly agitated nerves of her arms and spine substituted that missing sensation. She strengthened her torso every instant she felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing control of her limbs. She got herself out of the bed and on her wheels with surprising speed.
Elbowing hard upon goals.
Before the accident, my sister used rambled at her pleasure, mostly spending time in the gym listening to her favorite music. Being 32 years old, she still had trouble finding her place in the grownup world.
It seemed a matter of impossibility to center her life around fitness and body healing strategies now when she lost control over almost half of it. But she couldn’t get rid of this idea. Tanya became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights she didn’t even think possible for her fully functional, healthy past-self.
Tanya set her heart firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. She learned with passion about specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. Her own experience gave her a psychological advantage to motivate people.
Issuing forth with a mentor beside.
She adopted this impressive stateliness from her mentor. The simplicity of her mentor’s life stirred her profoundly. Tanya used to preach to me, “This person is happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he is shining with heart strength and will-power.” Every trace of my sister’s essence strove to bring purpose and happiness into her life.
Power of giving others the heart to live.
My sister still has a sense of weakness and captivity sometimes. But she is recovering her life-balance by an effort of willpower and a desire to set an example for others.
Tanya always says to her patients that whatever happened to her was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. She teaches them to accept the condition and devotedly love their past and present selves. People in her clinic see a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on her helplessness, but being powerful enough to uplift her spirit and inspire others to do the same.
Olya Aman 