Walking out of the jet bridge into the belly of the airport, the first thing you are thrashed with is the smell of cigarette smoke. An emotional heaviness starts to pull you down and into it, like quick sand. And the first thing you notice, is that no one is smiling. Driving from the airport through the city in combative stop and go traffic, you see that the facades of so many buildings and houses are in various stages of sheer dilapidation. A byproduct of so many traumas. From wars to earthquakes to poverty to revolutions to the introduction and dissolution of communism.

During communism, the pre-war architecture was often demolished or repurposed to make way for large utilitarian buildings made of concrete and large residential neighborhoods. During this time, businesses and private property immediately became property of the state. Owners were forced into rooms in their own houses, as other people were moved in with them. After communism collapsed and 42 years had passed, ownership was not simply given back to the original owners. Rather, ownership was divided up amongst the current tenants and according to internal sections of the house, leaving no clear ownership regarding the exterior of the houses. The city now stands like a silent testimony of decades of pain. Trauma has a way of freezing you at the moment of impact. In this same vein, Bucharest seems frozen back in time. In Bucharest, trauma is like a stain that has seeped into every stone and into every person, making them seem harder. It is a stain that is so much a part of the place, that no one notices it anymore. The experience is arresting. But when you call Bucharest your home, you become acclimatized to all of this. You are normalized to what comes as a shock to people coming in from other places in the world.

I was impacted enough by being immersed in this drastic and immediate decrease in vibration for my first act in Bucharest to be walking out into a city park to lie flat on my back in the tall grass beneath a collection of Russian Olive trees. Russian Olives are seen as an invasive weed where I come from in North America, but I have always dearly loved them. I knew they were in the park before I even spotted them because of their smell. The smell of the Russian Olive Tree is a holy trinity of buttered kettle corn, stale bubble gum and gentle tropical flower. Its creamy yellow flowers emerge from a bud at the base of its silver-sage colored leaves. If these trees could speak, they would be the teachers of “It’s ok, even when it isn’t ok.” They are masters of comfort in hardship. And they are masters of thriving in harshness. But truly thriving, not just muscling up into a state of resilient survival. It is interesting that they have sharp, woody thorns because they have such a very deep, soft, welcoming and reconciling energy field. It was an awesome dichotomy. To sit beneath these beloved trees, in the spillover of their heavenly fragrance with the backdrop of the cold tyranny of the Palace of Parliament building and the historical legacy it represents looming behind me.           

In order to arrive at my energy diagnosis for Bucharest, I spent several days walking through the city streets, going to local markets, taking historical tours and talking at length with people for whom Bucharest is home. Somewhere over the course of this experience, I have picked up the people of Romania and placed them in my heart. And I am never putting them down again. This has become the beginning of a very special relationship.    

The dominant negative vibration of Bucharest is: Brow Beaten. The people of Romania are beaten down. They have been slammed over and over and over with traumas. They have been bullied and intimidated and demoralized and disheartened and oppressed and subdued. This has happened at the hands of outside forces. It has happened at the hands of their own leaders. And it has happened at the hands of eachother. In this process, they have slipped into submission as well as developed an inferiority complex. Though the roots of this dominant negative vibration reach far back before communism, its flowers (whose fragrance spills over the city today) are with the communist era. The fall of communism happened in my own lifetime, in 1989. And the reality is that despite having a democratic and social republic now, Romania is still in the transition phase out of communism. People seem to think that communism is over the minute a revolution starts and a new system of government is declared. It isn’t. It lives on inside people as a mentality and as a way of existing that people have had to adapt to. It takes far more time to undo communism as well as the scars it leaves behind, than it does to impose communism and force people to adapt to it. And it is a very, very hard transition to make.

The dominant positive vibration of Bucharest is: Hunger. Hunger usually has negative connotations. But hunger in this usage is powerfully positive. The people of this city are piercing and intense. And in this intensity, they are hungry. They are hungry for everything. Hungry for information. Hungry for growth and progress. Hungry for love. Hungry for awareness. Hungry for success. Hungry for standards. Hungry for stability. Hungry for selfhood. Hungry for opportunity. Hungry for integration. Hungry for a strong voice. Hungry for a quality of life. Hungry for liberation on all levels. Hungry for the potentials of human existence. This strength of desire is like a gravitational force pulling people towards the future. This hunger creates a grip on life within the people. Quite the opposite of the powerless resignation you usually see in places that have seen such trauma. Especially surprising to see in a place with a dominant negative vibration of brow beaten. I also got to experience this hunger on the day of the workshop. The crowd was literally drinking me in. Drinking in my energy and information with none of the resistance that I have become so accustomed to dealing with in this era of distrust for spiritual authorities. This is especially surprising given that Romanians are brimful with distrust and with very good reason. It felt like heaven to feel that pull instead of that push.

In alignment with this hunger, the Romanians have asked me to tell them my impression of them and their culture. So here it is: Romanian culture is a walking contradiction. There are so many contradictions, it is a Rubik’s cube to navigate. To give you a taste of what I mean, Romanians are proud and want to be seen in a good light and yet, they suffer from inferiority complex and love to hate on themselves and their own culture and country. In Romania, patriotism and hatred for Romania go hand in hand. Romanians love rules. But they don’t follow them. Rather, they relate to rules much like bumpers to the side of a bowling lane. Having them there provides a sense of security, regardless of whether they ever listen to them. They don’t want to be controlled. But they want to be told what to do. They value honesty, but they cannot be truly honest because they feel they must hide their vulnerability. Weakness is not to be shown. They want their strength and power to be seen. But they want rescue from someone stronger and more powerful. They want things to be better and different and are also creative. But they resist change and innovation. They love foreigners and reject them at the same time. They profess to be deeply religious but there is a significant disparity between those who profess faith and those who actively live a religious life. They are deeply hungry for everything, but they are hopelessly attached to personal restraint, viewing desire and personal gratification as somewhat wrong. Family is at the heart of everything. Family offers support and at the same time, one’s family is at the core of one’s suffering and is in constant need of support. They are conflict avoiders. But they love conflict. This leads to a constant dance between avoid, clash, avoid, clash. The culture is a collision between warmth, friendship, passion and coldness, distrust, pessimism. These contradictions which are everywhere, are the byproduct of fragmentation, which is the result of trauma. The way Romanians cope with the pain of the traumas in their life, is through humor and self-irony. Preferring to subdue their anxiety about whether one’s life experience and future can be controlled or not with consistent busy-ness. Romania is a place where the future has been periodically stolen from the people. Where no dream was allowed and where people were consecrated to unhappiness. But especially in the younger generations, they have turned towards the future again. Their sight is now set on what can be. This is an intoxicating new-ness that is rising from the rubble of what was. It smells of the perfume of hope.

As I write this, a rainbow has appeared right above the city and on the day the people vote for who is to become the next president. It appears to be crowning the colossal parliament building. The Palace of Parliament was built as a symbol of the power belonging to the communist leader Ceausescu. The building of it was a massive undertaking, costing billions of dollars as well as an unfathomable amount of resources and manpower, all of which the country of course could not afford. And so, this rainbow hangs here like a ray of hope over a symbol of tyranny.

In my own way, I will be leaving Romania with a piece of this rainbow. Unbeknownst to them, it was given to me by the people. The last three years have been the worst years of my adult life. In that suffering, the future was stolen from me. But, across the course of so many poetic interactions while I was here, they have reminded me why I started doing what I do in the first place. And this has re-kindled my motivation. They have resurrected the north star of my own life, including the North Star of my purpose here. Because of this, so many of the things that I have yet to create, will in fact owe themselves to the people of Romania.