DiscoverTo Whom It May Concern by Bubamarrë
To Whom It May Concern by Bubamarrë

To Whom It May Concern by Bubamarrë

Author: Bubamarrë 🐞

Subscribed: 1Played: 2
Share

Description

This podcast is an intimate exploration of the Self, the Other, and everything in between.

Deep dive into the world of a highly sensitive thinker as I explore the intricate web of thoughts, emotions and ideas that shape our human experience. In each episode, I read from my personal journal, using them as prompts to jump-start reflective synthesis. Drawing from life experience, my journey in psychotherapy, and background in games and systems design, I connect the dots between the personal and the universal.

This is a space to reflect, relate, and grow. You're welcome to join in the flow. 🐞
19 Episodes
Reverse
Today's journal entry has prompted today's reflective synthesis to be about a most powerful, indescribable feeling: Love. Love, I believe, will be my life’s work to understand. It already is at the center of everything that I do as a creator, in all its shades and shapes and sizes. My perception of it has been actively evolving as I grow older and especially through psychotherapy. My fascination with this sheer force of a feeling is only growing deeper, the more I grow through life. A force that drives connection, an act of radical acceptance of our differences, a glue that holds communities and societal structures together... and can it be taught? Without love, we probably wouldn't have evolved at the speed with which we have evolved into the individuals we are today. At least, that's my theory. But I am also known to be a hopeless romantic, so, there's that... Join me in this flow, and may you find something in it to feed into yours. Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Straight into the Journal 00:50 Journal Entry: On Love & Loving 04:41 Journal Entry #2: The Phenomenon of Human 06:17 Digesting the Journal Entries 07:31 The Meanings of Love & Loving 10:03 Empathy: Recognizing the Self & the Other 13:06 The Need for Connection and Community 13:37 The Role of Empathy in Love 15:38 Accepting Differences in Love 19:55 Love and History 23:35 Learning to Love, Ourselves Included 27:48 The Role of Love in Entropy 31:34 Epilogue: Finding & Sharing Our Authenticity
Unlike our typical deep-dives, this one explores a more recent journal entry, giving you a much closer look at my current state of being. Anxious, confused but aware, I had to explore a concept that's been recently haunting me: what does being safe mean, and what how does it affect my view of the world when I'm not? Now, how to even get there is an entirely different topic. If safety is about being able to be ourselves and feel secure in our identities, then I am still exploring identities in which I feel safest in my being. In shedding narratives that had me stuck in cycles where I exposed myself to unsafe environments, people or situations, my identity is shaken to the core. Do I even know myself safe? How do I consciously allow myself to feel safe where I am, or recalibrate my homeostasis to accept safety as a new norm? I explore these thoughts as I lock into new narratives that serve as a compass into a better reality lived in, but also am aware and acknowledge that I must take all parts of me with myself. That means meeting myself where I am today, so we can walk into a more stable tomorrow. Join me in this flow of vulnerability, and may you find something in it to feed into yours. Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Exploring the Concept of Safety 01:39 The Relationship Between Safety and Home 04:14 Creating Safe Spaces and Homes 06:16 The Essentiality of Safety 17:29 Journal Entry: On Feeling Safe 21:23 Creating a Safe Space 24:00 Identifying and Addressing Unsafety 30:11 Starting with Oneself 36:14 The Power of Caring 41:39 Inspiring Positive Change
Hello - and welcome back to whatever this is, or isn't, or will be. It's been a long, long time and a lot has changed. In me, around me, you, the world, and the tools we use on a daily basis. I'm trying something different, For now, I just wanted to get back to into it, without giving it too much thought.⁠ I experimented with Spotify's new tool Riverside and seeing if I'll like it enough to stick with it. The longer we think about doing something, the longer we take to do it. Sometimes, we just have to go ahead and do it. Thank you for being here. May you find something in this to feed into Yours. ⁠⁠🐞
[This Episode is Recorded in Albanian, the brief introduction in the intro (2mins) describes the talk before the episode transitions into the Albanian language. I've decided to record Albanian episodes and launch them as-is, for my fellow Kosovars, as we need to break into core topics in our society which we do not discuss out in the open, nor do we dive in too much depth about. We will see where this road takes us. Perhaps one day, I will be able to prepare English translations of the transcript of the conversation. Until then, enjoy the other To Whom It May Concern episodes in English!] Epizoda e parë në shqip osht' shumë e frikshme, për mu. Mukes, krejtë ky muhabet i erdh shumë lehtë, si herën e parë (fatkeqësisht e painçizume, po fatmirësisht që jemi njoftu me këtë shpirt prej njeriu), si herën e dytë. Mukja na qelë dyert, sytë e zemrën në nji profesion, që gjithësecili Kosovar/e që kalon, ka kalu, e osht' t'u kalu nëpër sistemin tonë të edukimit, osht' prekë prej saj... pedagogjia. Vizioni i sistemit të edukimit, varet prej pedagogëve që e implementojnë. Me e ditë që ka njerëz si Mukja që sot studiojnë e e shtyjnë para me plot pasion, dashuni, dashamirësi e njerëzillëk, ma mbushë zemrën shpresë për nji Kosovë t'ndritun.  Mukja na sjellë eksperienca personale, na jepë perspektivë të pasun mbi gjendjen e sistemit edukimit e të nevojave shoq'nore që i sheh, qysh kishim mujtë me nisë me i zgjedhë, e ku kishim mujtë me shku prej këtu. Oh bre, çfarë muhabeti!!! Nuk ka thonë Naim Frashëri me pahirë: Punë, punë, natë e ditë, që të shohim pakëz dritë! Ngojeni bisedën me Muken, shoq'ni, e mbushuni shpresë e njohuri.  Deri n'herat e ardhshme! Falemnderit që i jeni bashkangjitë kësaj rrjedhe, gjet'shit në to çka e ushqen të juajen!
Welcome to yet another guest episode with a friend made in interesting circumstance: Artan came from Skopje with the sole purpose in mind of joining in this Flow. Honored and humbled to have dived together, as merely strangers, deep into topics of our social brain and how we cannot seem to help re-enacting our social blueprints no matter how disconnected from a mentality we feel, and emerged connected in earnest. Where do we begin this process of bringing our cultural blueprints up to date? Does it begin with being aware of the fact we're operating on them?  Most probably. Join us in this Flow, and may you find something in it, to feed into Yours!
Today's episode is brought to you by fortunate misfortune - a call to adventure this restless spontaneous spirit of mine had to answer this invitation into the fray.  In a small village near Thessaloniki in Greece, Giannis is in his workshop crafting his beautiful instruments. A soul of a Maker, he tells us of how he took the path of a Craftsman, learned to make guitars (a passion he's known he was called to do since he was 16), and through where this path of life has taken him. [Did you know that a guitar craftsperson is called a Luthier?] There was always more to learn about Giannis - from him building his own home from the ground up, to growing his own vineyard and making wine for friends, to making music with his people... this conversation has left us with much to think about long after it happened. The epilogue inspired a little poem reading, from this gift of a collection of poems called "A Poem for Every Spring Day". Let this little quirky poem be a surprise. Join us in this flow, and may you find something in it to feed into Yours! 🐞
This very special episode, we continue on the path of exploring the series of "I don't know how to connect with You, and here's why", as we connect with the owner of a very interesting Instagram page called DeepThinkingDaily - founded by Frank "Cic" Mellace.  It all started when Cic - after possibly years of posting only content from his page - had decided to post a picture of himself, explaining the work he's been doing with the DtD, and the new website that was just created (which you should for sure check out, here's a link: https://deepthinkingdaily.com/). We're so used to seeing these Instagram content pages be just that - content pages - that we forget the humans that are behind the work, in their own path of exploration of connecting to us on the other of our screens, to our narratives, to our snippets of fleeting attention.  Cic was so kind as to agree on this conversation - which quickly spiraled into some deep thinking. We talked about the effects of social media in this growing societal disconnect, a growing pattern of what we observed as a sort of illusion of connection and vulnerability, and most importantly, this path of coming into our own. These words really stuck with me - long after our conversation with Cic, I kept noticing patterns in how these words were coming to life, or I guess, how I was myself coming into my own, and what that truly meant to me in this path of growth and becoming. This, for sure, is another episode in-and-of-itself.  Cic left us with a note that leaves me hopeful he will return with new truths uncovered and unraveled as he reads a 10-year-old letter he wrote to his 30-year-old self (which he turns this spring!) when he was 20. I'm curious what this letter will reveal in his path of coming into his own self, as I'm sure this will leave a lot of you thinking the same.  The monthly newsletter (DTD Sundays), his book (The Humble Good), and additional DTD Originals can all be found on the website. The daily quotes page is still run by Cic who plans to continue to share a wide array of quotes that will help us all think a little deeper. JOIN US IN THIS FLOW, and may you find something in it to feed into Yours! 🐞
I haven't been processing much, these days. Between a deepening understanding of myself and the world we live in, and a growing web of connecting with people from all walks of life and wonderful stories to share - I haven't really been diving internally, much. This is a return to the original purpose of this tool - a process of self-expression and discovery through which I expose my patterns of being.  Thank you for joining in this flow, and may you find something in it, to feed into Yours. 🐞
I find myself wondering what the Status Quo is a lot these days. Since I am travelling a lot these months and am unable to sift through and carefully deconstruct bigger topics, here's a cookie-bite of a Flow exploring this thought a bit deeper, for what time permits.  * I will try to introduce more of these Cookie Bite flows. Stay tuned for more Guest Episodes!  Thank you for joining in this Flow, and may you find something in it to feed into yours! 🐞
Never in my life did I believe the time would come for me to have to record this episode. I have buried these feelings deep, no matter how many times they attempted to resurface. This time, however, with a looming threat of an escalated war into a global affair, I believe we've had enough of pretending we didn't see these events coming. We need to stop thinking that we have outgrown war. That we have understood its effects. That we will NOT do it again. Because every-time we do, somebody proves us WRONG. My heart aches with the realization that we have yet again begun a cycle of destruction and hurt, on a mission to assert the ego of madmen that have long lost touch with their humanity. People who are in power because we cast our vote for them as they cast curtains over our eyes. We need to accept the effects of war, such so we can begin to understand them, and thus begin a long yet conscious process of healing. This could be our path, of perhaps helping humanity evolve into the kind of humans we hope and crave to be. Peaceful. As a citizen of a nation that has experienced war - a nation that has survived genocide and attempted ethnic cleansing - this open letter is a call to understand this deep trauma. A trauma that sits silently and quietly takes over our minds, our cultures. A trauma that was ruffled and brought our nation to an emotional stand-still and overwhelmed by the war in Ukraine - in seeing parents hold a strong grip on their children, fleeing from their countries and their futures brought to a full-stop, we saw ourselves. It is not the first time I've seen this image, not the first war that's happened since. It is not the first time I saw my 5-year-old self in every picture of a child shown escaping into the safety of neighborhood borders. We do not understand how to preserve peace if we do not deeply understand what it means to destroy it. To lose it. It becomes our duty to understand what happens to us as human beings when we experience these transgressions over our identities, our livelihood, and peace. It is us to understand what happens to us when we survive circumstances we were not meant to - or even worse, we were not intended to. Our next step of evolution outside of these crude methods of establishing dominance can start now - or we wait until we do it again, worse each time, as technology precedes us and our imagination feeds into the egos of humans that represent a broken vision of humanity that we do not wish to perpetuate into our future. We have asserted our survivor's instinct, and we have grown into true survivors, with real grit and integrity. We now need - as humanity - to lean into safety and comfort, lean into love and care. If we as humans can share in each other's pain - then for sure we can also share in the light of safety and comfort, into the path of healing.  And it all begins with awareness and understanding.
Welcome to 20S2, opening a new season of the podcast with an introduction to a series called:  I don't know how to connect with you... and here's why. In this episode, I dive into the topic of connection, or lack thereof, and how deeply it affects us as human beings. As per usual, the thread of the flow starts within - a feeling of disconnect to my environment, as I navigate this new path in a new country with a foreign culture, and attempting to establish a sense of belonging in this new long-term home, the one I carry with me in my heart, and my true northern star, my country of origin - Kosovo.  I found these feelings are more than meets the eye - a pattern of being human. Bear with me as I attempt to deconstruct in this flow and identify what are these core values of ours that drive us to meaningful connection. The more I think about it, and the more I connect with people on this topic, the more I understand we have a lot of work to do here. Slow and steady, and explore this topic one episode at a time. Join me in this Flow, and may you find something in it to feed into Yours. 🐞 - // [Read more about the series below] \\ - A new year begins, and with it, we start a new season of this podcast. I took the past couple of weeks to let my mind wander free and give it time to hone in on a topic that has been gnawing at me: connection, or rather lack thereof, this most natural trait of all creatures of emotion. How is it that us, also creatures of thought-processes and machines of rationalization, have created systems which were meant to enhance connection, and long since has lost its meaning, in our attempt to simplify, automate or nowadays even monetise.  It feels as though we as humanity have run ourselves into a hyperactive treadmill in an attempt to somehow overclock our own evolution, we have created a system which reminds us of our deep disconnect. To bridge this deep chasm of disconnect, we rely on cyclical dopamine rushes to feed our craving selves. We are only now beginning to learn how our brains form new connections, and I'm having a lot of fun with this endless source of metaphors to help understand our current Society.   We as humans so easily connect to one another on a substantial level, if only we skip past surface level interactions and approach each other with genuine curiosity and compassion. We find ourselves too emotionally, physically and mentally overwhelmed however, pressured by an environment designed to keep us performing, that we forget what it means to be curious and compassionate. If this pandemic situation has taught humanity anything, is that everything falls apart if people feel disconnected from society. A book by Jonnah Hari, "Lost Connections", masterfully depicts (pre-pandemic era) how the true cause of depression isn't simply chemical (although there is a correlation), it is when people are at deep disconnect within themselves that depression levels rise as its most jarring symptom. Dopamine economy shows us that feeding our ego's desires and only helps it grow in over our heads. I would further argue that mental illnesses (ruling out those caused by chemical imbalances) are a direct result of our growing lack of self-awareness and a symptom of various deprivations of connections with our authentic selves. For now, however, it has become my mission to uncover our pattern of connection, by trying to understand this natural process of ours, in my own capacity, through the books that I read and those of the people I invite on the podcast.  - Will we succeed?  WELL, 98 & 3/4% GUARANTEED! 🐞
20S1: Prologue

20S1: Prologue

2021-11-2034:49

Exploring podcasts as a medium of expression and exploration of thought. Let's see where it goes from here! Anchor makes it really easy to make this first step - so I did not give myself time to think myself out of doing this. Yet to find some sort of flow or run into the "nature" of what podcast could be, bear with me in this process.  This 0/0 episode takes me down the lane of comparison of the self before and after exploring narratives of self-hatred. Curiously, the two journal entries in the "journal raffle" I decided to play, ended up mirroring each other, offering a moment of self-reflection.  I don't know, I kind of like it. I hope you find something worthwhile in it. 🐞 Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and the Power of Journaling 05:36 Childhood and the Impact of War 06:23 Reading the First Journal Entry 10:42 From Self-Hatred to Self-Acceptance 15:09 Journal Entry: "You have never loved me." 21:47 The Importance of Writing and Self-Expression 24:22 Reading from the New Journal 24:59 Entry #2: "Apathy" 27:53 Post-Entry Thoughts 28:15 Gratitude for Supportive Relationships 30:06 Writing Therapy
We are closing this end of the year with a tough topic that I feel confident I have gained a boundless understanding of - and I can only hope that this shared flow will provide you with some respite or a healthier path of thought into exploring your own. Join me in this flow as I define the meaning of boundaries, why they are important to us maintaining a healthy balance in life and inner stability, exploring the ways the poetry of our own bodies shows us the path towards that growth.  I realized, in the middle of this podcast, that within us there is an infinite capacity for growth. If only you think of the fact that your brain can establish a quite literal infinite number of connections between its hundreds of billions of neurons, leaving us with the mere realization that we are infinite in expansion. Internally, that is, and as we expand externally we connect to the people around us, to our loved ones and strangers alike, affecting each others' existence and day to day.  So how about we begin with getting to know ourselves in depth, and understand how we connect outward from there? Come join me in this Flow, and may you find something in it to feed into Yours. 🐞
This was truly a difficult one - starting off with one of the toughest questions I have been asked a lot these past few months. It took me about five days to edit this, and then decide to completely go back on all of it, and post it as raw as I could keep it.  This episode's Journal Entry which happens to be about family, belonging and upbringing, wraps up one of the hardest topics to tackle for me:  How do our narratives, these stories we download from our surroundings since we are birthed into consciousness and then iterated upon for the rest of our lives, actually shape the boundaries within which (or through which) we apply ourselves into the world? Having gone through multiple ground-breaking, life-changing events in my personal life, my perception of self and my personal boundaries have been shaken to their core. This week's flow sends me deep into the spiral of understanding their relevance, processing the economy of our social health, and becoming more self-aware of what/how we give/take from our surroundings.  Part (2) of the discussion will come next week. Join me in my Flow, and may you find something in it to feed into Yours.🐞
Seen these little red-and-black-polka-dot creatures before? Most likely you have noticed them in my entries, and if not, you will now.  This week's episode, this week's flow, I allow myself to get carried away into my history - where we come from can help us understand a lot of what makes us who we are. There seemed to have been a reason ladybugs have been on my mind and that is - to help me deep-dive into an ocean of a topic: Vulnerability - what does it mean to you? Vulnerability closes the chasms between our human differences, allows us to connect and understand our suffering in another one's reflection. Today's entry takes us down memory-lane, beyond reading a journal entry on time, exploring the power behind our human inclination to assign meaning to things that must teach us, remind us, or even guide us through our internal coping mechanisms, and growing processes. Mine happens to be a 🐞.  What's yours? Welcome, and may you find something in my Flow, to feed into Yours. 🐞  
This episode takes us down a swirling path of exploring feelings of being deflated. I don't know how to break down my world any other way but through metaphors - and what started off as a silly metaphor about balloons, became a revelation nailed down by the succeeding journal prompt that landed on our lap. We must tend to our narratives through which we filter our days, and accept the ephemeral state of our moods that are in constant flux. Some interesting things I was exploring:  What is Mood?: A collection of feelings under one category of thought. We can experience different moods at once, I compare it to inflating balloons and observing their life-cycle as they inhabit the space of our minds. What does this feeling of being "deflated" mean?: A full cycle of a mood - a build-up of feelings collected over a period of time - coming to an end.  What are our Narratives?: Our understanding of things through which we build our context - our unique Theory of Everything, which we craft and update every waking day. Things to go back to: "Personality" Tests What's up with this Narrative thing Flow: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory and Games 
Today's episodic thoughts treat the subject of vulnerability, or as the train of thought revealed it to be, exposing our narratives. Why is it the centerpiece of this podcast? What happens when we make our point of origin ourselves? And as the journal entry happened upon a special page on Doing the Right Thing, what does it truly mean to do the right thing for ourselves?   Come join me in my flow. May you find something in it to feed yours. 🐞 To jump straight to the Journal entry, go to 33:36.
Tonight's journal entry brings up the topic of Flow. What does it mean to observe ourselves in-between a moment of Then to a moment of Now? What if instead of a chunk of time, we see process? More on this on a future dedicated-topic episode (see below). Tonight's late-night talk feels a bit of a blue-ish green to me, which happens to be a favorite color these days. It's got a bit of the ocean, the sky, the lakes and the gushing rivers of thought-processes mixed in-between. Maybe you're up for an adventure of thought.  I hope you find something of use in this experience. 🐞 -//- AS I ITERATE THROUGH THIS PODCAST -//- So far, there are three veins to this podcast I'd like to explore:  Guest Episodes: Episodes with friends, people who want to share their journals, poetry, or in any other form share their narratives with us. Journal Episodes: Free-flow talk. I take my journal, To Whom It May Concern: Pikë (Albanian: dot), for a spin, land on a page at random. It seems to take us places.  Dedicated Topic Episodes: I'd like to, at some point, come back to certain topics and talk about them in-depth. I'd like to give myself time to gather my thoughts, feelings, opinions, and knowledge on the subjects, and come to a sort of conclusion. This episode, for example, inspired me to come back to talk more about flow. I'll keep it in mind for the future.
To Whom It May Concern

To Whom It May Concern

2021-11-1900:53

Join me in my Flow, and may you find something in it to feed Yours! 🐞
Comments