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Lente do Amor (Lens of Love) is a song by Gilberto Gil. It is not be among his most famous compositions, so chances are you nver heard of its clever lyrics, which go more or less like this in English:

(…) Through the lens of love
I see the color of pleasure, I see the face of pain
through the lens of love
I see the boat sail through the waters of evil and good
Show the doctor, face it,
Heal your wound
Transcend through the lens of love
Chant the mantric
Pay the karmic in the deal
Transcend, through the lens of love

Pretty ingenious, right? I love the idea of celebrating what goes right in life, while “paying the karmic”. Great works acquire new meanings every time we look at them, and maybe that’s why Lente do Amor comes to my mind right at this moment when, for various reasons, I had to abandon a project.

If you also work with projects, you know how difficult it is to get any idea off paper and turn it into a decent project. After that, there is a whole phase (which always seems endless) of gathering documents and signatures, followed by anxiety until the final result .

When the result is positive, it seems that the world is conspiring in our favor, that everything will work out, etc. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Life is full of such karmic moments and it is always difficult to overcome them. Well, this is where the unsurpassable Gilberto Gil method comes in: transcend, through the lens of love.

Through the lens of love, what has been conquered becomes clearer and even the painful path of returning to zero point, which we so often have to do, seems less arduous. Through the lens of love, it is also easier to exercise forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness, so necessary to heal those wounds that no one sees.

Giving up should never be the first choice and nobody wants to be called a quitter, whether in a personal relationship or a professional task, but what to do if there is no other way out? And how to know if there really is no other way?

My tip is to stop and think about all (or at least a good number) of possible outcomes of the two actions. By better understanding the impact of giving up or continuing, it will be much easier to make a decision. It is even worth drawing or using some kind of mind map, if that kind of tool works for you.

Once your considered decision is made, my last suggestion would be: play Gil and enjoy!

Be seeing you!

G.F.


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Do you consider yourself an organized person? I would love to tell you that I have my whole year planned in advance or, at least, the entire month, but instead I have to admit (with a little bit of shame) that despite my efforts to classify my priorities in short, middle and long ones, in terms of sticking to a pre-schedule list of activities, I barely reach a week.

How come? Well, if life happens while we are busy with our little things, sometimes it throws a big flaming ball on our direction. “Catch it!”, life says. You know you are going to hurt yourself anyway, but what can you do? You simply try not to drop the flaming ball, than you handle it (and your burns) the best you can, and when it cools dows a bit, you keep playing the game.

Some call the flaming balls “problems”, but I´d rather prefer to describe them as big things. All right, I know we learn to remember and cherish the good big events in life, but let us be honest: we all know that there will also be lots of rainy days, some storms now and then and, eventullay, even biblical floods.

“It is allright, if it is going wrong“, sings Ed Motta in the refrain of his 1997 song Vendaval (Windstorm). Gilberto Gil reinforces the message in Retiros Espirituais (Spiritual Retreats):

In my spiritual retreats
I discover certain banal things
How to have problems,
Be the same as not
Resolving to have them, is to have them,
Resolving to ignore them, is to have them

Last week I got one of those flaming balls thrown right in my face. Lots of burns, probably some scars. Needless to say, my weekly schedule was (again) totally ruined, but gee, did I manage to handle it well! Now, dear life, it is my turn. Catch it!

Be seeing you!

G.F.