Three for twenty
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”…our fear of losing always corresponds to our desire to have.” — Hannah Arendt
For the last several (https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=4a7937845a) years, I’ve made a habit of taking stock of what I’ve learned over the previous year so I can keep cutting a path forward in life with a sense of purpose. For me, these aren’t resolutions, because those are just impulsive promises that get broken and buried by excuses.
Rather, this three-word exercise is how I construct trailmarkers (https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=88fedfe16d) of where I am right now and where I think I’m going.
Over the last six years, it’s been an exercise that’s helped give me answers when I had an awful lot of difficult questions—both personally and professionally.
No sense in stopping now. So here’s three for ’20:
FOOLISH You are fortunate if experience teaches you just how often you have been profoundly foolish. And will be again. The only irreparable mistake you can make in life is to not know both of those facts.
FAMILIARITY Pay attention to what you pay attention to: that’s what poet David Whyte is getting at when he writes: “Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.” Life presents itself as linear when in truth, much of it is governed by cycles. Some of what comes around again is important. Some of it is not. For every behaviour and habit that needs to stopped, there are just as many that need to be reinforced and made part of you and of your process.
SAUDADE This Portuguese word has no literal translation. Pronounced as “so-DA-jeh,” it’s roughly the feeling of melancholy of missing someone or an experience you once had. But as only Portuguese wisdom can instruct, we do not to flee from this. Nor do we curse its arrival as some affliction. Rather, we make room for it and name it as our oldest friend. We allow saudade as the price paid willingly for the privilege of living and loving and of being witness to life.
Very best, Patrick
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