As much as I dedicate my poetic core to colleagues, family, and friends, truthfully, I will never know their perception towards my reactions and my character, which after all these years I had to fight long and hard to capture the most admirable and dignified traits. I remember as a sixteen year old crying and crying over a catastrophic end to a relationship with my first girlfriend, who I had been with for approximately two years. I experienced individual emotional turbulence for the first time. Further, during this time of beginning heartbreak recovery, I learned of spinal degenerative disease that contributed to two herniated discs with excruciating nerve pain in my body. I struggled each and every moment to find love and faith for my self-esteem. Time stood still in tears, trying to figure out how and what I felt inside my mind and fragile unrecognized soul. Easily said, I did not think any one person could relate to my pain. I felt there was no time to listen to the experiences of my immediate family and friend environment, because I needed a speedy cure. I focused on outside forces that sold me love through fear, and I ignored those who always had faith and love waiting for me. I tried to grow up too fast without knowing it, I did not let my cocoon finish the transformation, and I wanted to fly or come out in a quick second, skipping valuable steps that innately I needed so bad. When I look back, was I born broken or simply misinformed, and what initial symptoms and feelings did I neglect all together?

          We live in a new media civilization that obtains its entertainment by a limited amount of artists and actors who sell love, peace, and security through many solutions of fear and violence. This big business entertainment is transmitted every day on online social networks, television episodes, movie theatres, music videos, and radio stations. Very few stories are told in schools, churches, or by our immediate neighbors. Where does the average human story go? Our stories begin with our guardians. Outside the attention of our schoolteachers, friends, and extended family, we feel the deepest love from mom and dad, and in most instances, we are literally born from a hanging out, cheating, hookin’ up, and a first dance sort of thing. Children often believe they are the product of a committed couple. As a child, I was fearful not to be beside them non-stop, next to their unified love during the high emotional periods. A child begins to idealize and mimic the relationships he or she sees, the intimacy in anger and rescuing for happiness, while growing up later to experience personalities of instant Internet platforms. Unfortunately, a growing experiment comes at the determinants of voices, faces, and physiques in most musical, theatrical, and news outlets propagandizing a standard desire to feel love. However, at what age and in what platform will a child become educated in genuine relationships and the fundamental code of respect and devotion?

          In these last ten years (2003 – 2013), from that point in time of my first individual emotional turbulence, I have learned there are a million different equations to equal a loving nature. Those equations provide answers to our everyday education and produce a desire to feel accepted through the formation of true love and faith. There are genuine lessons we never know we give to one another, and inadvertently, we will take teachings from those around us. As quick as time passes, sometimes just showing up, giving the chance for colleagues, friends, and family to physically see you (regardless of how you are feeling that specific day) ignites blissful feelings for others when you are there and later for them to keep your memory when you are not there. Voices and places shared may disappear from our instant mental capacity, but hearing that person again, reading what he or she wrote, or replaying that certain song, enables us to relive those moments we thought we lost. Pictures will always be precious and desperate to remind us of how fun or sad a moment was. When we actually express our written feelings during those slides show images, then that poetic-photo combination will be equivalent to the beats of our hearts.

          Those beats, that savior pressure of both good and bad emotions rushing to our hearts, are un-dying and remind us how fragile time is. Time is preserved in a smile, a laugh, a kiss, a frown, and a tear, which frequently hold reminder in a journey of a wrinkle. When expressed in written ink, you can put time in your pocket, on your wrist, up on a shelf, or save it and use it when you want to. Time is a refreshing strength exercise that releases unrivaled endorphins. Time can put that favorite color of make up while slipping on those high heels. Time becomes knotted in a necktie and dry-cleaned to that suit. But we must remember time should never fake the emotions you feel. Fake emotions are provoked by those mainstream media sources that sell propagandizing entertainment, which tell you how to feel and when to feel it. You can only make time and feelings live on through the compassionate reactions of your life. Time is always on our side, and you can shape it for those who come after you. It is our colleagues, it is our friends, it is our family, and most of all, time expressed in poetry for an entire world to recognize will unfold a photo, it will release a thoughtful lesson, and it will decode what your each individual heartbeat is truly composed of. Without hesitation, those heartbeats around us will share an invitation to discover a new world.

          I cordially welcome you inside mine. Welcome to Ignite Your Soul, Release Your Mind.

above book introduction excerpt © 2013 by Mario Gabriel Adame