Conversations with my twin sister
About love, purpose and wild horses
This is going to be my most personal piece till now. Not because of the content, more because of the context.
I have a lovely twin sister Sanne. We share some physical similarities, we share our sense of humour and our love for nature. But there is one difference; Sanne struggles to understand complex concepts and information.
That makes our conversations the most interesting I have. She has 28 years of life experience and faced multiple highs and lows, has thousands of questions, but needs a clearer explanation.
She can sometimes be like a 10-year-old kid that keeps asking why and does not simply take ‘just because’ for an answer. Questions about happiness, death, purpose, friendships, fear, anger and making decisions.
These are my answers, in all their imperfection and incompletion. I love the art of trying to explain deep questions in the simplest way possible, without room for fluffiness or jargon. But by using examples that are close to her heart.
So without further ado. Hereby a peek into our conversations.
- How do I become happy?
- Are we going to heaven after we die?
- Is there something we need to achieve before we are old?
- Am I special?
- How to make new friends?
- Why is it scary to dance when other people are watching?
- Why do I suddenly get angry sometimes?
- What is love?
note: these conversations are translated from Dutch to English
1. How do I become happy?
What a brilliant question. What is happiness? Are we only happy when we are eating ice cream, cuddling a dog or sitting in the sun?
I don’t believe so. I believe we are happy when we don’t have too many thoughts in our heads. When our heads do not feel like a stormy sea, but when it feels more like a calm, peaceful lake.
Our heads can feel like a stormy sea when we experience a lot of stress.
We feel stressed when we for example don’t know what choice to make. You really want the apple pie, but the chocolate cookie looks tempting as well.
Another moment of stress is when you feel you can’t be yourself. When you really need to be silent and serious, but you rather want to walk away or dance.
Or when you want something, but can’t have it. Yeah, like you wanting a little puppy. This all creates stressful thoughts and thus a stormy head.
But what to do about it? How to calm down the sea?
For me, it all starts with changing into a detective and exploring what thoughts in our head are causing the waves.
Because sometimes we create waves that are completely unnecessary.
Do you remember when I called you because I had a pimple on my face I was insecure about? Some waves seem huge, but are actually small.
When you can’t decide between the apple pie and the chocolate cookie. Maybe you can easily pick the chocolate cookie now, and the apple pie next time.
When we have explored all the waves in our head, it normally becomes calmer immediately.
We can do different activities to calm it down even further.
I like to sport, call a friend or write my stressful thoughts down in a booklet. But everyone has their own solutions, dad likes to bike, and mum likes to run. Some like to listen to music and some like to cook.
And some solutions are a bit unhealthier, like smoking cigarettes, scrolling on social media or drinking lots of beers. All are solutions to calm down your mind, but yes—some are maybe not the best solutions.
Does that mean I can’t get a puppy?
Haha, I can not decide that for you. We all need things we are looking forward to, but sometimes it is also good to realize that not everything you want is always possible right now.
And sometimes the alternative might be better. Idea! If you are going to the dog park you can still see a lot of dogs, but there is no need to walk them in the middle of the night. Win-win!
In short, happiness is calmness in our heads. This calmness arises when you don’t have too many stressful thoughts. Explore for yourself which activities work best for you to calm down the stormy waves.
2. Are we going to heaven after we die?
There are a lot of different opinions about what happens after we die. The difficulty of that question is that we can’t really research it. We can’t really have a phone call with heaven, do we?
But I can tell you what I believe.
I believe that life is one big adventure. We are born and we experience all kinds of moments; joyful moments, sad moments and we meet a lot of different and exciting people. And at a certain moment, our story ends and we die. Like going into a long endless sleep.
All people that ever lived, from kings to pirates, to famous singers and athletes, were all born one day and also died one day. And that is okay.
We can still remember all the lovely people that passed away in our hearts. We can be really happy that we were so lucky to meet and get to know them.
And maybe I am wrong and we actually do move to another place after we die. I even hope to be wrong, because it would be nice to see everyone again, wouldn’t it?
3. Is there something we need to achieve before we are old?
I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that after a certain age, someone is coming to inspect our lives and give us a final mark. That would be crazy, right?
Everyone is allowed to figure out their own path. You can decide where to live, to study something difficult or not, to become a dog trainer or to have or not have children. There is no right or wrong.
However there is more to it. Cause how do we make choices?
I believe we all have superpowers. Just like superman in the movies. From singers to the people working in the supermarket. Yes, also you and I have superpowers.
But we all have different ones. I can be calm and creative for example. You can take care of animals 1000 times better than I can. That is one of your superpowers.
Because maybe there are even more. Often your superpowers are activities you really like and almost come naturally, but that others find hard or difficult.
Imagine that we could all use our superpowers every day, wouldn’t that create a way cooler world?
4. Am I special?
I believe we are all alike. All humans on earth need to breathe air, need food to eat, and a bed to sleep in. We all like to be loved, we like to smile and we want to feel safe.
Everyone needs this, no matter if you are rich or poor. Or if you are living in Australia or in Holland. We are all humans. Like all dogs are dogs.
But you are also unique. No one is exactly like you. As a matter of fact, we are twins and even we are different. I am a bit taller than you, we like different sports and you are way funnier than I am.
So I guess, it is both true. We are all the same and we are all unique at the same time. Does that make sense?
5. How to make new friends?
Making new friends can feel hard, right? I have struggled a lot with that. But I also thought about it.
When did we make friends easily? When we were young and going to kindergarten. We were playing outside, playing hide-and-seek or football and making friends went naturally. Simply because we were playing together or sitting next to each other at school.
But now we are grown-ups and we don’t really play or jump in peddles anymore, it becomes harder to make friends.
Also because you are spending less time together. Look at us. We used to sleep in the same room as kids and now I am living in Portugal and you are in Holland. It’s harder to stay close.
So how do I make new friends?
I think making friends goes in 2 steps. First, you explore what you really like doing. Is it walking, painting or visiting a dog park or petting zoo? If you don’t know for sure, you just need to try new things out.
If you really like visiting the petting zoo, you will automatically meet others that really like to come there as well. And if you come there often enough, after a few weeks you will automatically start making friends.
No need to worry about it.
6. Why is it scary to dance when other people are watching?
Dancing is really fun, right? But sometimes it can be scary to let ourselves go if others are watching. We can be afraid they are laughing at us.
While if we see a little kid dancing it is just extremely cute. And it doesn’t really matter if they dance really well or not. It is always cute.
But it becomes a lot harder once we are adults. We are afraid others think we are weird.
But I believe that deep down we actually all want to dance like a little kid. I believe we all want to not worry about our dance moves, the rhythm and what others think of us.
So if you feel like dancing, go for it — and dance.
7. Why do I suddenly get angry sometimes?
I believe this has to do with the stress in your head again. Do you remember the story about the sea and the waves of question number 1?
Sometimes we have so many thoughts in our head that it feels like our head is overflowing with waves. Sometimes there are 1000+ thoughts in our heads that give us stress.
Only one tiny extra stressful wave comes and makes our head explodes.
And if our head explodes, we explode ourselves as well. And we are getting angry or sad.
And that isn’t bad, we are all angry or sad from time to time. We all have sometimes an overflowing, exploding head full of waves.
8. What is love?
Love. Love is more than relationships and weddings. You can also love your pets, your parents, or you can love your brother (hehe). You can even love nature, chocolate cookies or the city you live in. We all love other things.
How to love?
So, how to love? Imagine you see wild horses. You love wild horses, right? If you really love them, what do you want for them? You want them to be happy, to be able to run around and to have horse friends.
You don’t want them to be put in a zoo or have them as a pet. Because they are not wild horses anymore. They become pet horses.
I believe that if you truly love someone, you want to help them and make sure they can be their best selves. So that wild horses remain wild.
I love you.
Jeroen
