Bruno Blog

This term, the last one for kids at school, is one of the toughest for me. Summer is close but important Fairs are about to take place, lots of trips, and in record time, summer. After Easter’s break, it seems I’ve began a ride on a Ferris Wheel of which I can come out. Sometimes I feel vertigo, even though I am enjoying myself. The roller-coaster that is live is like a Ferris wheel, every lap may be different, unique, and reading a book like SHINRIN YOKU. EL ARTE JAPONÉS DE LOS BAÑOS DE BOSQUE has made me wonder that even the Ferris Wheel does not stop, I can try and slow it down up to the point to be able to enjoy every second of it.

Francesc Miralles and Héctor García, after their massive success with IKIGAI, translated into 40 languages, becoming a BESTSELLER in several countries and selling over 100.000 copies in countries as Turkey and Holland, are publishing a new book together, about the Japanese tendency that will help us seeing how nature improves our mood and eliminates stress and anxiety. It explains the origins of the tradition, how we can apply it in our daily life, especially those who live far away from nature and to whom contacting nature is a hard task. Nature which is able to maintain our balance, to feel we are part of a universe in which calmness, and the pursuit of happiness is possible just by following a set of very simple steps. Isn’t it exactly what we need to know? For those who live close to the sea or mountain, you will be able to learn the benefits it has, just by staring at your surrounding daily; and those who don’t, you’ll discover how to find it, enjoy it. A new book with the author’s trademark which gives us the tools to live longer and better.

I was convinced that the day I would write about Francesc Miralles and Álex Rovira’s new book, ALEGRÍA (Joy), I would do it with a smile on my face because it’s a book that, that using the letter format, gives you guidelines to discern what is really important in life and to overcome the adversities and sad moments we all experience at some point in our life. I must admit that this week I’m sad and I can’t write with that smile on my face because of all of that happened last Sunday in Barcelona. I’m not going to talk about politics, but I just want to say that violence has always saddened me. I would never accept it as I have always defended dialogue. To have this dialogue you need two interlocutors willing to talk to each other, but there are fewer and fewer people who want to do so, and fewer people who want or know how to listen, therefore I don´t think we are going in the right direction. This is why reading ALEGRÍA again has given me serenity, perspective and calm. I think we could all use a little in our daily life, this week.

According to the authors, many of us miss out on the small moments of joy looking for happiness, and they are right, because we do have these joys, however small they are, but it’s possible that sometime we don’t value them as such, so we should make a list of these joys to overcome the sad feeling that sometimes embraces us in such an overwhelming way that we can´t even think. This is why I´d like to share with you my own little joys, they are just small things that make me smile, such as watching the sunrise by the sea with my friends or meditating listening the waves. The smile on my son´s face when he looks at me also makes me happy, so does the fact that my friends are family are able to achieve their goals and fulfill their dreams, however small they are… The list could be much longer I assure you, since sometimes a stranger´s smile can also create joy. Since I´ve read the book, I think I have enjoyed these moments much more. I have been doing some of the exercises that the authors propose, thus turning the book into a small treasure that helps me getting up every morning with the conviction that there will be sad moments, but that I must know how to manage them because sadness is part of our emotions and we can learn to fight it and even to live with it, always with a smile which will open other horizons, because we must always look further and move forward.

Congratulations to Álex and Francesc for once again being a terrific duo with the ability of making us feel optimistic even in challenging moments, and of helping us to cultivate JOY. So thank you for a book like this, now and always.

Chasing what you need, and what you really want, is a challenge. It is like so because many times we aren’t brave enough to face our own truth, or we aren’t ready enough to listen to ourselves. However, reading IKIGAI by Francesc Miralles and Héctor García was the first step, for me, to understand why I get up from bed each morning, what is it that really brings me joy, what is my purpose in life. I must confess that I’m not sure I’ve already discovered it, because the hard thing, for me, is to find only one thing that inspires me. That’s why the publication of FINDING YOUR IKIGAI hits the mark.

A second book, by the same authors, where they tell you how to put into practice that theory or, if you already know which is your IKIGAI, Francesc and Héctor teach you how to embrace it and exploit it. In order to achieve it, they suggest thirty-five routes, with practical exercises and essential lessons to get what you want and reach that peace of mind that you truly need in life. This is the only way, according to the authors and what they’ve learned from this Japanese philosophy. Happiness and wellbeing, something that everyone wants to reach, can come up naturally within us. Penguin Random House and Ara Llibres publish this practical part, which isn’t a sequel per se, but an ‘extra’ to those who’ve already found their IKIGAI and want to have the tools to strengthen it, take care of it, and be honest with themselves to finally do what they really want to do.

It’s a path, a training session, but I can assure you that it’s worthy of it, and that the change, which doesn’t happen out of a sudden, it’s like a balsam that helps us live within this society –more stressed and convulsed each day that goes by. If you know how to use the right tools, that magic word that is happiness and that many people never get to discover, will appear in a natural way. We all carry it in our DNAs, but we have to discover it, uncork it and nourish it to the best of our abilities. We only have one life and we need to learn how to enjoy it. Today, right here and right now, not tomorrow. No one said that it was going to be easy, but it doesn’t have to be difficult either, you simply need to want it -which you can decide whenever you want. It’s in your hands, it’s up to you, that’s why Francesc and Héctor show us the way with guidelines, because it’s very easy to read the theory, but another thing is to put it into practice. But, trust me, you’ll be able to reach your IKIGAI and make it huge.

IKIGAI (Urano in Spanish and in Catalan) and EL MÉTODO IKIGAI / FINDING YOUR IKIGAI (Penguin Random House in Spanish and Ara Llibres in Catalan) are two bedside books to put in your backpack and travel with them. Reread them whenever you need to, because life is a rollercoaster and keeping balance is hard, but not impossible. You just have to go for it.

The school year is about to finish. Another year over, they all think, and three months ahead of holidays. I wish I could have them now! I remember saying to my parents, when it was summer that I was bored. Today I think that I’d love to have some time to get bored —look how things change! When you have a kid, who is almost a teenager, you start to see how important it is to them to be part of the group, and how with new technologies they’ve lost all oral communication, and are able to say many things through the phone, but nothing while looking on the eyes. This is a double-edged sword, and kids who are constantly doing this have to learn how to properly use these technologies, because in some cases it can be really harmful what one writes in a WhatsApp group. No one likes to be the weird one of the group, although maybe someone prefers it and it’s their choice in order to isolate themselves from something they dislike, as in the new novel by Francesc Miralles. In TÚ ERES LA NOCHE (‘You’re the Night’), we discover a group of people who can’t or doesn’t want to see the sunlight. They’re not vampires, but they live underground during the day, separated from the world we know.

The main character, Rai, meets by accident an undercover club that is frequented by those who have decided to live against the sunlight and live at night, among which we can find Lucia, an eighteen-year-old girl with self-destructive tendencies who Rai feels really attracted to. A week there is the minimum time to become an initiated, two weeks of access into The Cage of Darkness, a well under the Catacombs where darkness reigns and it’s possible to do the final test. Will Lucia be a part of the underground group? Will Rai be able to blend in for her, and leave behind his life?

This is a love story, about understanding and misunderstandings, that will appease all young readers and Miralles’ fans, who with his previous novels as well, such as PULSACIONES or RETRUM, talks about feelings of people who aren’t part of the ‘normal’. But do we know what is normal nowadays? That’s why I loved this novel, and I believe we all should read it, because Francesc, masterful as always, puts on the table really meaningful themes that will hook you in, and you’ll fall in love with the well-developed story between Rai and Lucia. Congratulations, Francesc, you’ve done it again. A delightful novel that can be dark at the same time, with the perfect dose so that everything happens for a reason.

There are still ads on TV of that trip that you could not do this summer, pictures of seaside villages, succulent hotels that make me feel longing for the holidays, while autumn is already knocking hard on the door. It is beginning to get colder, the first rains have already fallen, and the day is getting shorter and shorter and the sun, looser. But that feeling of nostalgia is positive, since it means I’ve spent a great summer, which is true, and that although the fall is not my favorite season, I know that good things are coming, because life has the color of the attitude with which you live, and I chose to see it green, the color of hope. A color that transmits calm and peace, but that does not make you lose the will to fight for things, or the illusion for every little step that you can take forward. That’s why, reading Francesc Miralles‘ new novel, UN RAYO DE ESPERANZA (a ray of hope), published by Plataforma Editorial, has been the icing on the cake.

It is a beautiful novel, where the characters live sadness, because life is not always happy, but they know how to extract the beauty out of this feeling and turn it into something positive. A poetic novel that gives you the keys to get away from situations that seem to be on the edge but they are not, no matter how we feel about them. And that novel gives you that glimmer of hope that we all need ever to convince us that if we want to, we can. Haven’t you ever wondered what you would take with you to a desert island? I’m sure you did, but here the question is: WHAT WOULD YOU SAVE FROM THE FIRE IF YOU COULD SAVE SOMETHING? Complicated and simple at the same time, we do not talk about people, but of one thing, material or not. The character realizes, on the last page, what she would save, and I can only say that I cannot agree more with her but, if you can to find it out, you will have to read this novel that comes straight from the heart, a heart like Francesc Miralles’ one, and we all know that is a guarantee of humility, humanity, and that is big.

Congratulations my friend, for that new novel with which we learn to be better and stronger in a world where nothing is perfect, in which we live very good moments but also very bad and inevitable ones, in which we suffer many disappointments, especially from people you wouldn’t expect … but so is the human kind, and we have to learn to live with this saddest part of life, without forgetting, though, that the most important thing is to change things up. Because if you want, you can do it. Each step is a challenge but, without challenges we would be dead, that’s why we have to look forward and keep on with a hopeful smile that, for me, cannot have another color than green.