A trip of words.

Communication is a tool with which we exercise our influence on others, bring out changes in our and others' attitudes, motivate the people around us, and establish and maintain relationships with them. Communication is a social activity and a significant part of our active life. This social activity is pursued verbally through speech, reading, and writing or non-verbally through body language.

Hello, welcome to my blog, "Kitchen and letters."

We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are.

-Kissing Jessica Stein, 2001-There were so many things that caught my eye in this movie. Jessica was a journalist working for a small newspaper in New York City, living in a small apartment. She was in her early 30's. I saw my future self in her. I wanted to be her. I wanted her talent and the courage to write and work for a newspaper. Also, deep inside, she was searching. In her search, she found a woman. At that time, I only dared to accept it by watching this film repeatedly. This movie has so many emotional scenes. The actress that played Jessica became my favorite actress of that period. Jessica was this intelligent perfectionist who became confused and fell in love with the woman. At the time, I was confused at 22 years old. For the first and only time in my life, I set eyes on a woman—a farmer. A fantastic girl, and just as in the movie, I did not know what to do. I felt like a teenager, smitten for the first time.

This morning I woke up with this phrase in my mind. Last night, I had a long talk with a friend. To close the night, I continued to talk to another friend, from which my feelings are a bit confused; I dared to admit that last night.

We see a thing as we are- I am a writer who quotes movies, not books.

I close my eyes and let the phrase sink in; I want to remember everything shared last night. If we see things as we are, does it mean we have a short or broad spectrum of life?

As you know, if you have read my other blog entries. I was on a quest for six years. Now I know that I was not lost; I was just in between accepting as it was right and that I had to have the courage to live life as a writer, as a communicator, and as a Sociologist. I want to describe what I see as I see them. I want to take the risk to let ideas sink in, to jump. To write that book, to write the stories I had the pleasure to live, and to describe them as I remember them, with the memory. I have kept my memories so intact for years. I can focus, and as I take out a moment at a time in my life, all the scenes from that moment will return to life, from smells, sounds, people, feelings, and places. I can do that even for not-so-memorable situations.

I admired Jessica; her character is an image of who I wanted to be and, at the same time, who I was, which I still am.

The truth, more than ever, our goal is to communicate, to share what we see and what we feel. Communicating is a way we have as a society to survive and continue any legacy left of us as a human race. If there is something that we have learned from the pandemic, it is that we have to keep living. And to survive to keep the economy moving. We must have as many ways to communicate with others as possible. We need the immediately available form to share, whenever, instantly, where we are and what we are doing.

We are more than ever desperate to express our anxiety by posting every moment of our lives and feelings to millions of unknown people worldwide. Sharing makes us feel alive. More than in other periods of humanity, we have the talent to discover new forms of communicating with others and shrinking the world.

For weeks now, I have walked to and from school, seeing the layers in which we communicate. I look around, up to the sky, to the trees, to the street art, into my phone. I see how desperate we are and how much of what we do, we share. How we are controlled by supermarkets, our phones, social media, and the music we hear. In spite of that, this does not stop us from sharing. Even when we know we are being " controlled" and "managed." At this time when we feel so free when we have had the power to shrink the world and make it more complicated.

We have forgotten that at the end, when the day sets, we are human. We have feelings that are not unique. They have been there in all human history; the only difference is that we have so many platforms now where we howl it to the world. Yet, we are still amazed when we capture something different.

Our eyes are the best judge of what we feel and see. It is through our eyes that we express what we indeed are. If you stop for one second and look, take the time to see how people talk and communicate with the eyes.

Step out, look around, and what do you see? What is your body trying to tell you? What is your city showing you? What are the colors of the facades in the streets communicating with you? The music that you listen to? The old music, the new? Videos that we watch? The photos that we take? The words we write, the feelings produced by what we touch?

Our behavior, how we react to the situations, our trauma, our choices, how we interact, and how we remember the past. All communication is the form we use to express ourselves. Even how we try to hurt others by communicating what we feel, what we have felt, and how we have been hurt. The mechanisms we use to put to sleep what we think and want to hide. What we deny.

Despite this, we keep creating everything that is in our minds. We have the power as a society to transform our wants and needs.

This is what I hope never stops to amaze me. If we see things as we are, we will change and choose the things and situations we hide, just like I watched Kissing Jessica Stein repeatedly. Even now, when I watch it, it takes me back to that time. My personal story and how society was and a revolution was happening. I love this film. Is fantastic.

We choose to see and follow what connects the dots to who we are, not what our society thinks we should be.

As I finish writing this post, we also choose who we spend time with personally, what we share with our close community and friends, and what we communicate. It fascinates me!

We are so lucky to have infinite forms to communicate as the universe.

And just like that, let your mind wounder and look around,

with love,

Iliana Lanuza