How Will I Measure My Life?
I believe that the path is much more important than the result. Not only because of the difference in duration between process and goal, but also because what happens during the construction of something is tremendously more valuable than the construction itself, regardless of success or failure. If I create a unicorn at the cost of harming hundreds of lives and killing all the good relationships I had, can I consider it a success? Of course not! But why is it that power, wealth and fame remain so powerful? Because we are fools. Or rather, because we ignore what really matters when we make those decisions. Is it not enough to see how many famous, wealthy and powerful people live sadly, lonely and depressed to understand that this cannot be the criterion of a full life?
So, more than a bucket list, I prefer to look at my life as different investment dimensions, as a series of simultaneous growth processes. Since I am included in the group of people who do not recognize absolute values because I do not recognize an authority that defines them (much less the so often wrong democracy), I have the laborious task of having to define them myself. Which is as scary and difficult as it is exciting. From everything I have lived, I would say that the search for Truth, Freedom and Peace is a powerful triduum as the compass of life. I would also place Love in the center of this triangle, as the fullness of the junction of these three axes together.
TRUTH
I find in myself a non-negotiable option for truth, for reality. This option seems obvious, however, it implies a great deal of coherence to give up the comfort of some convenient illusions and some very useful logical shortcuts. I am not satisfied with fallacious explanations or unfounded clichés, I look for the truth of reality in all matters. Thinking hurts, but I have this psychological need to want to learn everything.
Learn a lot, listen a lot. Nothing can be taken for granted. It is not just the external reality that changes very, very quickly. Everything gets complicated when our own perception of reality also changes dramatically. Everything becomes much more unspeakable since everything is re-learnable. A great opening of our horizon is necessary to avoid closing doors to people with whom I disagree with, trusting that this will result in a possibility of growth, if well-lived.
The danger in the search for the truth, and into which so many great thinkers have fallen, is to absolutize the life of the head, the theoretical life in search of meaning. To focus only on philosophy and psychology, study and research is to ignore the importance of living one’s own life in order to apprehend its truth. Life cannot be understood in a very complete academic definition. Life is also (perhaps even, above all!) poetry, travel, conversations between friends, family joy, laughing and crying. I need to live seriously to get to know life seriously too.
FREEDOM
However, the search for the truth will be in vain if it is not accompanied by a continuous process of growth in freedom. To be freer is to expand my ability to choose the good and the truth. It is not so much about having a lot of options or doing what I feel like doing but building enough structure to make humane and coherent decisions. It is not doing everything I want but wanting everything I do. It is about gaining control over my reactions to life and letting go of the automatic and simplified responses that my biology and culture incline me to.
Having the power to free myself from illusions and gain awareness of the hidden (or obvious) pressures to which I am subjected, seems to me a path of fullness and humanization. Social pressure has a much greater force than we can apprehend (and only those who have tried to contradict the majority’s opinion know this). My biological and psychological structure is fragile and limited and often have more power than reason and will. The fullness of my life seems to come from an increasing personal appropriation of the decisions I make through an inner strengthening. Being less and less hostage to the conditions that surround me and more and more fearless protagonist of the world that I want to see grow, this is the freedom I crave!
PEACE
To Truth and Freedom comes Peace. As a comprehensive criterion when accompanied by sensitivity and courage. The sensitivity needed to welcome the inner movements of pacification and consolation. The courage needed not to be content with comfort and absence of waves but to dream of a bigger, more generous and bold life. Pacification is a process of calibrating between desires and tensions, what I can do and what is too much, the search for the balance compatible with my initial programming. Peace of conscience is much more valuable than any economic benefit for someone as hyper-sensitive as I am. The inner turmoil and unruly life cause so much friction and depletion of energy that pacification becomes a vital issue for me.
As in the Freedom process, Peace presupposes self-knowledge combined with a continuous dedication to interiority to recognize what disturbs and what animates and to make decisions consistent with that perception. We are tremendously forgotten and if I am not having generous times of awareness, life becomes aimless navigation. Without reflection, life will become a continuous experience of bumper cars, with no evolution in the cushioning of impacts and in the wisdom to escape the most violent blows. And, again, peace is not apathy, it is not running away from difficulty! Serious peace is about being strong enough to face what I really want.
Simplicity, minimalism, knowing how to take advantage of the situations, living gratefully with little. The absence of this is the most immediate path to continuous dissatisfaction for what I have not yet done, I am not and I do not have. A deep appreciation for the present, a refined ability to taste and take advantage of everything is an excellent path to pacification. Growing in resistance to pain and suffering both rationally and through reflection on one’s own life is also a necessary path.
LOVE
As the climax of Truth, Freedom and Peace is Love. Exponentiating Love, this is the ultimate criterion to which all others submit. The love I speak of has nothing to do with cheesy love, it has to do with wanting to be committed to the good of the other, to focus on the other to completely oppose selfishness. Growing in knowledge and growing in your career are beautiful exponents of love as they are used as a tool for service.
Depression is loneliness without a future and the greatest joy only happens when it is shared (as taught by Supertramp in “Into the Wild”). Many wise men after a long reflection reach this conclusion and the longest psychological study ever done (by Harvard) confirms: the happiness (or at least its perception) of our life is in the quality of our relationships. This is where the greatest treasure is! We found it out, now we must only invest and grow here. Look for ways of life with the necessary attention to recognize, taste and be all present in the treasures that each day, each phase, each human interaction always hide.
Human relationship, the most beautiful and the hardest of human life, the one that most destroys us and the one that most builds us. It is very important to talk about love seriously. And, I’m sorry to inform you, there are people who are very difficult to love, there are destructive people with tremendous power to wear us down. Today’s life coaches preach that we should distance ourselves from people that harm us. I understand what is behind it, particularly the recognition of our fragility. However, I aspire to universal love, to want the good of everyone, whether I like the other or not, I want your good, your joy. This is much more difficult to do than say, but this is the world that excites me, the most human world I dream of.
Communication is key to love. Empathetic and non-violent communication implies a continuous effort of selflessness and generosity to want to listen to the other. Gratuity is also a key word to embrace love, I love not because I am going to get it back in return, not even because it does me good. I love, I build relationships regardless of everything because I made that decision, because this is the world I want to build. Living love as a service and not as a feeling or currency, this is my horizon.
CONCLUSION
I hope my approach to this question has not been too personal. In fact, for me, business life is absolutely inseparable from my personal life. In a sense, it seems unwise to speak of work-life balance. Life includes work and work is part of life (and even more so for those who have the privilege of being able, to some extent, to choose it). So, wishing to be consistent with everything I just wrote, I want to work to build organizations and teams centered on Love, in an intelligent and courageous way. I think the consequences of such an approach will in themselves be valuable. However, due to my experiences with life, love has endless consequences that make this management strategy more sustainable, solid and powerful.
LAST NOTE
It is also important to recognize that life is limited, it ends in death. This has to sound deafening and it has to turn everything upside down. All attempts to mask this truth are an outrage on the complete and true life. Living coherently with this fact is practically impossible for us as finitude robs all possible meaning, therefore all motivation for action. Thus, I recognize that these criteria of life serve for, at least apparently, increasing humanization here on earth. However, no matter how hard it is to affirm, death ridicules all this in a sweeping way bringing insignificance to everything that was so full of meaning and joy. It seems that all non-believers in the afterlife have agreed to live in the hope of meaning, against all evidence. This is the most powerful story mankind has created and the most difficult to let go of.
