Along the road of life

We are constantly changing: habits, feelings and beliefs. 

I’m certainly not the same person I was 10 years ago. Back in 2007, almost three years after graduation, I moved back to Lisbon and rent a small apartment with a friend of mine in Benfica. I remember packing up and driving happily towards what I believed was my freedom. Still, I was so trapped inside my own ideas of what was right and wrong that I'm sure I missed many opportunities but back then that didn't seem to bother me. When we are in our 20´s we like to believe we have all the time in the world to make amends. The perspective changes when we are in our mid-30’s. We are expected to have achieved a certain number of things that will show other people just how successful we are and how perfect our life is. 

We are always in a never-ending quest for the perfect job, the perfect relationship, the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect friends. Why not be grateful instead for each glimpse of consciousness, awareness, understanding and clarity that is brought to us by our imperfect jobs and imperfect relationships and imperfect families? 

Part of our success depends in our ability to learn from the past and do better in the future. It’s easy to understand and tremendously hard to do. 

Accepting our own failures is hard and it takes courage.

Acknowledging we are responsible for our failures is hard and it takes courage. Are we brave enough?

And even after we accept what needs to be accepted or acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged, it may still be difficult to move on. Moving on means setting the wheels in motion and sooner or later we’ll have to go through the same challenges all over again, we'll have to try again and maybe, just maybe, we'll get things right this time. And by then we may be in our 40´s and everyone is there reminding us that the clock is ticking.

This is life. We cannot put it on hold and we cannot rush it. She has her own pace, and so have we, so has nature.

Two things I've learned. First thing, time is our ally not our enemy. There's a saying that goes like this: "practice makes perfect". Yoga has taught me that. Mastering an asana takes two things: doing it countless times for a certain period of time. The same goes for every aspect of our lifes. Experience is our best teacher. And it's ok if it is taking much longer than we would like to.

Secondly, we can handle almost anything. There’s a part of us that will never surrender despite the pain and sorrow. There's a part of our soul that will endure every test. There's a part of our heart that will never stop believing even if things have turned to be so different from what we had planned.

Ultimately, we are all searching for the happiness that we think we deserve. In the meantime, our personality is being shaped by everything that happens in our life.

Criticism, opinions, judgments or expectations will only hurt us if we let it.

There's a long road ahead of us. We'll be fine.