Tag: Poems
My Mom
On September 18, my mom, Jorgina, turned seventy. It was a wonderful celebration, even though the other half of the family that doesn’t live in the Azores participated only for a few moments via a video call.
Seventy years made me think about the inevitable, the inescapable, the undeniable. Death. Make no mistake. My mom is a badass. She’s easily got another thirty years in her, and she will definitely not go gentle into that good night. But still, it will happen, and it doesn’t feel nice.
This past Saturday, after my coaching sessions at IESE Business School, my colleagues and friends, Conor Neill and Tony Anagor, and I stood in the parking lot and chatted under the beautiful Barcelona sun.
We talked about how we sometimes struggle to slow down, to stop, to do nothing. Tony said he recently listened to a podcast that suggested we read a poem to help us become more mindful and slowdown. This is the poem:
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Be here. Not there.
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That’s the poem. Be here. Not there.
Back to my mom. So grateful for this poem! If I’m there, at the future moment of her death, I’m bound to worry and suffer. If I’m here, at the present moment of her seventy years, I’m bound to celebrate and feel happy.
My mom will die. I will die. I don’t know what it will be like. But it seems pointless to stop living the present to worry about a future I can’t change. So for now, I choose to stay here, happily celebrating her seventy years.
Love you, mom.
Deeply Loved?
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Loved in the inflexibility of my ideas,
Loved in the unlikelihood of my wildest dreams,
And loved in the repetition of my everyday stupidities?
Loved in the glare of my greatness,
Loved in the impoliteness of my impulses,
And loved in the scars of my fuckups?
Loved in the sweat of my sacrifices,
Loved in the song of my pathetic moments,
And loved in the smell of my self-judgment?
With whom do I feel deeply loved?
A Poem on Demons and Life
This evening I will be running our Toastmasters Club meeting. Toastmasters is about communication and leadership. Part of my job is to choose a theme for the meeting. My friend Florian Mueck suggested I go with exorcisms (don’t know where he got that idea).
It is also my job to ask everyone with an active role in the meeting a question related to the theme. This was my question: If I were your exorcist, what demon would you like me to get rid of?
Asking myself this same question, I started playing with a few ideas, and ended up writing this rather philosophical poem. It reflects the irony of how we can sometimes work so hard for something and end up with the opposite, and how life has her way of waking us up to see this.
Though nowhere near his, I’m dedicating the poem to fellow philosopher, David Whyte. His poems have recently reignited my appreciation for the reflections poetry prompts. The audio file is a recording of me reading the poem.
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IMPERSONATION
To David Whyte
In a pretension to be another,
as if cursed by gods,
possessed by a demon,
or haunted by ghosts,
I come to believe I truly am who I seek to be,
just like a dream.
But life strikes,
unexpectedly and hard,
the pain of the blow waking me from the dream.
Shedding the elusive skin of my pretension,
I see the true nature of my predicament.
Who decided who I would dream to be?
Who has such power to enslave me to this dream?
Who?
Life strikes,
unexpectedly and hard,
and I see the true nature of who,
I see the gods that cursed me — the gods of perfectionism,
I see the demon that possessed me — the demon of my ideal self,
I see the ghosts that haunted me — the ghosts that think it is never enough.
Life strikes,
unexpectedly and hard,
and I hear its soft whisper,
“You are not the person you dreamt to be.
Stop impersonating the ideal you.”
In my pretension to be the best version of myself,
I impersonated not another,
but an idea,
the idea of who I wanted to be,
and so I came to believe I truly was who I sought to be,
just like a dream.
But I am not the person I dreamt to be,
I am the dreamer.