Guest Bloggers

From South America to North America, the Journey to find balance, required a Reset of the mind and travels around the world. Here is the story of Victor Moreno, part I.

PERSONAL THYME of RESET

Q: So tell me, where are you from and what was your upbringing?
A: I was born in Chile. My Panamanian parents moved to America while I was
still young. My father had to study his doctorate in Michgan, so I spent a few
years here then we went back to Panama for the rest of my
growing up years.
Q: What was it like growing up in Panama, especially as it related
to food?
A: Panama at that time, was melting pot of so many different cultures
and religions. There were Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and
Buddhists among others. The Panama Canal’s construction had brought many people
from different parts of the world and their descendants became Panamanians. I went to the best school of the country. It was Episcopal. Our SDA boarding academy was 8 hrs away. My father and
mother were cultured people. They wanted to give us not just
broader worldview, but the best that the world had to offer by way
of education and the arts. My parents, then, loved to entertain
when visitors would come to musical soirées. My mother would always be
making something for guests. Something I would always
remember, is that every gathering not only had lots of food, but
the food was very delicious. My mother believed that food had to
not just look good, but taste great.
Q: What did you do after you finished high school?
A: I wanted to follow my passion. From an early age, I fell in love
with music and with the piano specifically. For my parents’ peace of mind I double majored in Economics and in Piano Performance. After My Bachelor’s I started traveling annually to Europe, mostly to Scandinavia, to secure lessons with pianists. In Panama I met a German pianist whose husband was working on an international farming project. She encouraged me to go to Germany to study with her. I was teaching at a French school in
Panama, at the National Institute of Music and in the US Forces Chapels and all my earnings were allocated for my trips and piano lessons in Europe. I didn’t need a car or fancy anything. I
just couldn’t miss my annual trips. The Swedish government had informed me that I could stay the only as a political refugee which was not my case.
Q: At some point you made the decision to come to America. What was that decision like and how did you get here?
A: I had made the decision that I needed to get to a place for my career to take off. And so I considered moving to New York. I had been working for the military branches playing for all their chapels, but I knew that when the Canal would be turned over to Panama, the US Forces would no longer stay, and my income would drop significantly. I made plans, bought tickets and was in route to New York, when I stopped in Hinsdale where my cousin insisted that I say here as the choir pianist had left and there was a void in the music program. And so I took a detour and have never left. I landed on a Thursday and by Friday night I was playing for choir practice.
Q: Was health and diet an issue in your family history? If so, what were some of the issues?
A: As I mentioned before, eating was not just an event to socialize, but it was also to indulge the palate. My mom’s food was very, very good, and so we ate a lot. A lot of different foods and a lot of sweets and desserts. Again, I go back to excellence. Excellence not only in music, but also in food. I also witnessed lavished cooking and food wherever I travelled. In my family medical history hypertension and stroke was common.
Q: So you saw the health message from a high level, but what about down at your personal level? Did you struggle with food?
A: I had high blood pressure when I was young. But because of my youthfulness, I didn’t worry about that. I continued to travel and enjoyed what was set before me. When I came to America, however, my cousin ate differenrly and because she did not preach to me, I became a vegan for ten years. Growing up, I did not know how to cook, but I had been exposed to the best of the best.
Q: Well lets get into the “meat” of this interview. We are talking about taking a reset in our lives. Fairly recently, something happened in your life. It caused you to pursue a health regiment that transformed you. Can you tell us a little bit of the background story?
A: When I moved here to America, the levels of stress skyrocketed because I was on my own. I came here t be a classical pianist. I did not know all that entailed. There would be risks and challenges to face in order to make that happen. While on this journey though, I did have food as an outlet. I had good memories of food growing up, and it brought me comfort. There levels of dopamine were a good feeling. I was vegan, but I ate portions that were too large. That brought about an unbalanced physical body.
Also, I had a dysfunctional theology. I was not spiritually balanced. I had been raised by parents that performed with excellence and so I too had to perform and deliver. Living here also was a challenge because unlike parts of Europe and Panama, I had to rely heavily on my own car for transportation. Therefore, not as much walking. One thing led to another and eventually, I became obese. I was vegan yet obese.
In my 30s I started losing quality of life and my metabolism slowed down drastically. I was dealing with personal relationships, and even though I bought a book and tried the raw food diet, I was still unbalanced. So I went from one dysfunctional thinking process to another. My parents by then were officialy divorced and I just had a lot of compounded stress from my relationship with other family members.
Q: Had you ever made an attempt to regulate your weight before?
A: Yes, I had tried a raw food diet. It was brutal and it worked , but it was not sustainable.
Q: Why did the raw food diet not last?
A: because it was unbalanced I did not approach it the right way. I had had success, and then in an effort to help my mother, when she came to visit she stayed for a while and because of how she was feeling and thinking, I tried to get her on the raw food program. But she said no and started cooking for me. That was my banana peel. I slipped back. In just five years, I was back to being obese. I had sleep apnea. I got into accidents because I would sleep at the wheel. I know I needed a life change.
Q: Who was in your corner attempting to help you to change or why did they not say or do anything?
A: Nobody did an intervention. It was mainly because of culture. But it was also my undoing. I knew how to cover it, dress it and mask it. I hid the fact that I was overweight very well. At my height and build, no one could suspect the problem. Those that tried were unsuccessful.
Q: What made you say no more?
A: I became very ill. I was not feeling well. My body was blaring warning signs of something very, very serious. I was fixated on the fact that maybe I had cancer and I had been ignoring it for some time. It was at that point that I understood the symbiosis of mind, body and spirit. I realized that we need to keep all three in balance.
So I prepared to die and I told myself that I would die the healthiest. I couldn’t afford to go to the doctors in America because there is no social health care like other places I had been to. So I told myself that I’m going to go back to eating greens and juicing.
Q: What official diagnosis did you have that said that you were going to die?
A: The bleeding.
Q: Who diagnosed you?
A: Nobody

His story is not finished. Stay connected with us and look out for the rest of Victor’s story on how he made his reset. When you discover his secret, you will realize that we all have what it takes to make a life change for the better.

A Time Beyond Time

From the book “A Tale of Two Cities”, Charles Dickens writes “It was the best of times it was the worst of times”. We read from the website called Literarydivices.net, that this opening line “points out a major conflict between family and love, hatred and oppression, good and evil, light and darkness, and wisdom and folly. Dickens begins this tale with a vision that human prosperity cannot be matched with human despair.” One pastor notes that marriage is bliss, but it comes with the blisters. I proport that family is bliss, but it also comes with its share of blisters.

Back in the 1965, a group called the Byrds released a song entitled Turn! Turn! Turn!. The song goes through a litany of quotes from a famous author and book. The authors name is Solomon and the book is called Ecclesiastes. Here are a few excerpts from Ecclesiastes 3;

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die;
A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, And a time to heal;
A time to break down, And a time to build up;
A time to weep, And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, And a time to dance;

In 1988, a series called “A Land Before Time” was produced by Universal Pictures. It was an animation film that depicted adventures from the eyes of dinosaurs. This series had one thing right and one thing wrong. First, I do believe in large animals that lived a very long time ago. However, I do not believe that these animals lived before the creation of man, or time for that matter. According to the bible, God created animals and man on the same day. Therefore, if these films are to portray an earth in which there was no human before animals, then its all wrong.

The reason I bring up this film, is simply becasuse of the title. Was there every a land before there was time? Certainly not! Time came before land. But those who read the Bible might find something very wonderful. The Scripture teach that God is outside time. It also reveals that after Jesus returns, “time” as it were, will be no more. What I take that to mean is that we will not have clocks, watches, alarms, or even birthdays.

While doing the research for my doctorate, I found that a major reason why young black men are at a disadvantage regarding their academics, social/emotional quotient and their future hopes, is becasue of the lack of time spent with them from a caring, adult male. A high percentage of young women that are involved in risky habits, can trace their problem to the lack of time spent with a safe father. Even marriage are terminated becasue of the lack of time spent together.

When I think of a time beyond time, I envision life free from the constraints of time limits. If I want to spend 10 minutes or 10 hours, it really doesn’t matter. My father passed away and our time with him came to an end. We cannot talk to him, he cannot see or hear us. He is sleeping according to the Bible. But we live with hope. And this is the hope we have for all humans. It is a hope found in the Bible. It states in Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God has put eternity in the hearts of man. That means then, that when we get to heaven, we shall experience a time beyond time.