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Who is your hero?
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/1yF1CrB.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /> By 'hero' I don't mean what Hollywood means. I don't mean someone perfect, superhuman, cool and always ready with a smart ass quip. By 'hero' I mean human beings who remind you of your own humanity and allow you to live with it in a profound way; I mean someone who inspires you with depths of admiration approaching love; I mean someone whose accomplishments, whatever they are, are so hard won and so beautiful that when you feel you can't go on or you're tempted to self-pity, this person both humbles and elevates you and gives you strength. For me it's the Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, my absolute hero, a gay artist who lived at a time when his way of loving and desiring was not only frustrating - which all of us can relate to - but extremely dangerous. He also suffered from depression, at a time when there was no medical structure for understanding and helping with that. Living in one of the most repressive countries in the world, torn between forbidden and melancholy feelings, yet driven by a precocious musicality, Tchaikovsky created what is still, to me, the most jawdropping piece of art ever made: his 6th symphony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDqCIcsUtPI......This symphony has been my 'go to' place whenever I feel that life is too much. In it I feel all of nature, all of love, all of the cosmos, all of mortality and infinity, all of the human spirit, all of sex and death, all of the struggle to be a person, all of pain, all of joy, all of wonder. It has rescued me so many times from ceasing to care that I can't count them. That this man - this gay man - under duress, lonely and sometimes in despair could defy all that and create what is to me the greatest work of art in human history is what makes Tchaikovsky my hero. Who is yours?
Considerated the greatest tactician of modern history and studied world wide still today. The true example of a Southern Gentleman.
they flee past like nightime shadows.
No one can know them, no hunter can kill it/shoot it dead
It remains: The thoughts are free!
I think what I want and what makes me happy,
but always inwardly, and as it suits.
My wish, my desire no one can deny,
It remains: The thoughts are free!
And if someone locks me in the dark/gloomy prison,
All that is absolutely wasted work.
Because my thoughts pull the barriers to pieces
and walls in two, the thoughts are free!
I want to renounce forever the worries/sorrows
and want to never again plague myself with whims
One can in the heart always laugh and joke
and think: The thoughts are free!
The thoughts are free!
Also, because Gandhi never lowered his head when addressing him as he expected, there were always "arguments" and confrontations.
One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University, and Gandhi came along with his tray and sat next to the professor. The professor said, "Mr Gandhi, you do not understand. A pig and a bird do not sit together to eat."
Gandhi looked at him as a parent would a rude child and calmly replied, "You do not worry professor. I'll fly away," and he went and sat at another table.
Mr. Peters, reddened with rage, decided to take revenge on the next test paper, but Gandhi responded brilliantly to all questions.
Mr. Peters, unhappy and frustrated, asked him the following question. "Mr Gandhi, if you were walking down the street and found a package, and within was a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money, which one would you take?"
Without hesitating, Gandhi responded,'The one with the money, of course."
Mr. Peters , smiling sarcastically said, "I, in your place, would have taken the wisdom, don't you think?"
Gandhi shrugged indifferently and responded, "Each one takes what he doesn't have."
Mr. Peters, by this time was fit to be tied. So great was his anger that he wrote on Gandhi's exam sheet the word "idiot" and gave it to Gandhi.
Gandhi took the exam sheet and sat down at his desk, trying very hard to remain calm while he contemplated his next move.
A few minutes later, Gandhi got up, went to the professor and said to him in a dignified but sarcastically polite tone, "Mr. Peters, you signed the sheet, but you did not give me the grade."