Rishad Tobaccowala’s most recent missive “Six Ways to Be and Feel Better” made for interesting reading, particularly the way he phrased his first one.
“Accept the 3Ls of loss, love and learning.”
The first thing that came to mind when I read the word loss was death, and almost immediately followed by loss of friendships. The worries and news of the last few days/weeks is likely just below the surface of my consciousness, and the associations are lightning fast.
I spent much time today learning too. I found myself in the zone doing code exercises with CSS, feeling instinctively the syntaxes there – and struggling really to compose them into the actual stylesheets. Accepting that I didn’t know what I was doing, and then taking a few steps, first in one direction, and then in another wasn’t as paralysing as it has been during previous attempts.
There was a lot of reminders about how much love is around me too. Accepting it exists has been something I’ve had to learn over the last couple of decades. Not only romantic love (didn’t the Greeks have names for various types of love?). Noah, our 8 month-old neighbour, has been the latest addition to the mix. His big blue eyes as he stares wondrously at the little world around him, especially when his mum walks him through our garden. His cooing I hear through my window while they amble around after his feed.
Hope is powerful, even when everything appears to be diabolically desperate.