In the very moment this post is coming into being, I’m lying in a hammock stretched between two lavish olive trees. They lean over me, casting shifting patterns across my bare legs, tanned by July sun. Shapes appear and dissolve—larger, smaller—as the wind blows, and the wind has lately swept in whenever I wondered whether I should write. So it does now.
But unlike so many times before when inspiration would rush in like a warm tide, this time I got up, reached for my laptop, created a new document—and simply began to write.
Sometimes inspiration kicks you out of your hammock.
Born into warmth
I was born on a scorching August day when the air is heavy and thick, the grass golden, crisp and short, the earth dry and thirsty for a drop of water. And still, life bursts in every form and color; all beings are awake and restless, fruit trees offer their sweetest fruit, and the sun wraps all living things in its endless, warm, comforting, golden arms. That was the kind of day I was born, and that is how the sun has held me my whole life.
And that is why I remember most of my summers so vividly. I recall those seasons as the happiest ones, even when—realistically—they probably weren’t, weighed down by various, more or less painful events. Yet still, when I close my eyes searching for that comforting sense of safety, I see myself running barefoot on the hot stone floors of my childhood home. The salty scent of the sea hangs in the air, and if I walked to the very end of the street and climbed the tall fence of the last house, I could see it—vast, fierce, stretching out beneath me, far into the horizon, maybe even beyond.
And I remember, with absolute clarity, the quiet conversations I had with life itself—with the world around me. Gentle dialogues with insects and birds, with stones and branches, with wind, rain, sun with myself. I can describe, exactly, that feeling of safety that followed me everywhere: a crystal-clear, solid, weighty sense—steady as rock—that the world is a safe place. Magical, even.
But from then on, slowly but surely, I began to forget.
The sun and I have always had a bit of a mutual admiration club going on.
Everything I have forgotten
I forgot the color of my own voice and the tone with which I speak to myself and to the life around me.
I forgot that the world is a living fabric, a pulsating rhythm aligned with my breath and the beating of my heart — which reacts to every subtle, invisible change within my body, my thoughts, my emotions, and my feelings.
I forgot that I am a part of that system, of that infinite, indestructible energy, without beginning and without end.
Trust the process
It took many years, many experiences, and an endless amount of suffering for me to wake up and recognize two things: first, life must be more than this, and second, it cannot be this hard.
And truly, beginning personal change is not difficult, nor should it be painful—I know this now. But although it isn’t difficult, it does demand persistence. It asks us to remind ourselves every day:
“hey, you said you would dedicate yourself to yourself and this.”
Self-work isn’t hard — remembering to do the self-work is.
Because we are accustomed to being guided by everything we have learned from our surroundings, by information we received from who knows where — perhaps passed down by ancestors, perhaps told to us by others, perhaps someone said it about themselves and we took it as our own truth. We have become so strongly habituated to surrendering ourselves to the unrestrained current of other people’s beliefs, thoughts, experiences and conclusions, that our once intense and everyday sense of gentle co-existence and reliance on the feeling of being in that magical space we call life has almost entirely vanished. Almost. Because fortunately, it never truly disappeared — it kept quietly crouching beside us, occasionally shyly making itself known and reminding us that it is here, that it loves us forever, and is ready whenever we are ready to take the lead again.
Life keeps nudging us — we just pretend we didn’t see it.
But that can be corrected. And it is a process — beautiful, powerful, endless and opening — but still, a process. And I have begun to believe in the process.
A home for the soul
So, I decided to write and to share everything I have learned within this process, and everything I am still learning every day, as I witness profound changes that return me to my path — my path alone, the one I am meant to be on — and I know this because I feel more secure than ever, and the feeling of safety I once knew so well as a child has become much closer again. I reach for it more often now, very consciously and with great joy. That is what I wish for everyone who reads this.
Let this space be a gentle reminder that the life so selflessly gifted to us truly is a perfectly conceived and intricately detailed process of discovering and fulfilling oneself — while, in doing so, contributing to everyone and everything that, just like us, is here to give life its meaning.