Health and well-being are earned through habits.
Six years ago I was at the peak of physical disarray — bad eating and alcohol abuse — thinking that was what being young meant. And of emotional disarray too, from working too much. Burnout burned away the pleasures of my life while I thought that was what being responsible meant.
I realized I needed help. I looked for therapy. Halfway through the first session, it hit me. The next day I was already out walking. I got it: I had to help myself.
Many other habits were incorporated over these years, little by little. I didn’t have some big goal — what pulsed in me was a great longing I didn’t even know existed.
Back then I would wake up and, before even opening my eyes, feel my heart racing over worries and fears of my own invention, thinking that at any moment a client would be the end of me.
For six years now, walking has accompanied so many changes in my life. And I keep walking, because the path is made by walking.
The cactus
This cactus has been with me since 2015, the year I had a burnout at age 25.
I felt that nature’s tempo could help me. Having a few little plants, caring for them while they could also care for me.
From then on I began to understand the tempo of plants — they don’t grow overnight, they need watering and repotting. Tenderness.
And that’s how I’ve been trying to understand my day-to-day. What separates my tempo from theirs? Only my racing mind, leaping from subject to subject, branch to branch — and if I don’t treat it with tenderness, it won’t bloom good thoughts.
When I found this cactus I had no idea I would go live in the middle of the mountains… And how good it feels today to sense how far this cactus has come with me, and how much it has already taught me.
There is something that runs through the whole universe and makes everything move in synergy.
Our reason doesn’t need to calculate for us to admire scents, colors, flavors… what we need is to know how to admire. That’s enough.
Originally published on my Instagram in June 2022 and August 2023.