The Pythagorean Storyteller: About me

Photo credit: Monica Galera

I might lead off with my name1, my provenance, and follow with an exhaustive account of my daily round but I won't. Albeit these platitudes are juicy food for gossipers, honestly I don’t think you would grasp something out of them anyway.

If you really want to know me, my Dear Reader, let’s cut the bullshit and go directly to the hard core: my values. They are the beacons that sustain and guide my life. Over the years, they have switched positions within a hierarchy as a result of a deep reflection on my experiences.

Today, here are MY FUNDAMENTAL VALUES; each one flows into the other like a waterfall.

First: Awareness. The awareness brings me to understand and accept the Truth, the reality, despite how harsh sometimes this is. The reward of facing the Truth is that frees myself and at the same time encourages me to make life choices according to who I am.

Second: Freedom. Since I’ve been responsible to be myself, I became free.

Third: Healthy living. Like it or not, we, humans, face one Big Problem: Death. And the dreadful situation is not that death occurs, nor that can come anytime, even without notice, but when one has missed Life. If you ponder carefully on it, you’ll agree with me that through the journey of time, the rest of human issues that we encounter in life are just ramifications of the same Big Problem. Since I’ve truly been aware of Life, health has become one of the most fundamental values. And by healthy living, I mean not only the physical well-being, but also the psychological and the spiritual.

Fourth: Love. I understand it as an intimate union where two people are true to their own path and surrender to their relationship giving to each other and expanding their ability to love unconditionally. However, before creating that union, one must be love. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke said some beautiful words that I’d like to reproduce here. He talks about “the individual ripening, to become something in ourselves, to become world, to become world in ourselves for the sake of others.” Be Love.

Fifth: Passion. I have passion for Life in all dimensions, and I have fearless explored (and I am exploring) who I am in order to choose what brings me joy, what I’d like to create with my time, even if that means to break down some high barriers.

Sixth: Creativity. Creativity demands confidence, self-respect, and freedom, and can be expressed through any act. Inquiring in the jungle of life allows me to see the world full of wonders, above all in the simplest acts.

Seventh: Adventure. We can move through life at a different tempo, from largo (very slow) to presto (very quick), passing by intermediate intervals. What determines my largo-to-presto personal evolution is the time I am spending in the stretch zone2-the one that requires a great deal of open-mindedness, determination, and courage. The longer I am in the stretch zone, the quicker is my personal development. I call the stretch zone, Adventure.

Success. The above values lead me to be in the path of personal fulfillment.

(1)Hey, if you are reading this, you already know it.

(2)Unlike the comfort and panic zone, the non-profit organization Outward Bound has demonstrated that the stretch zone is the optimal pace for people to learn and grow.