Kunal Gupta's Blog, page 6

How to Shower

‘I’ll shower on it and get back to you.’

These words have been etched to memory for me, for well over a decade now, as they were mentioned to me during a business lunch long ago. I think the words have stuck with me as they were a surprise to hear, yet at the same time, so truthful and relatable. 

Many insights and breakthroughs have come to me while in the shower. Regardless of the domain of life, be it business, health, or relationships, I am often pleasantly surprised to find answers to problems after ‘showering’ on them. Oftentimes, answers to problems I wasn’t even aware of that I had.

In a way, showering feels like a form of mindfulness, where my attention is not being pulled away from any external stimuli or distractions from screens, or even people. It is me alone, with my thoughts.

The physical repetitive routine of showering is quite mindless in fact, requiring very little mental effort. This is why my mind can focus on more interesting or important topics, without the pressure of trying to be productive.

I continue to feel a sense of awe and wonder of how the answers I am often looking for outside of me, be it from friends, therapists, books, or teachers, are more often than not already sitting within me. All I need to do is to listen for them.

And that’s often the most difficult part. Learning to listen to myself. Which requires overcoming three obstacles. 

The first obstacle to listening to myself is getting distracted by the noise outside of me. 

With the availability of endless content, be it from professional social media personalities, self proclaimed self help gurus, life coaches, researchers turned YouTubers, and more sources, it can feel easy to forget that we know ourselves best and know what we need.

Thinking that the perfect answer is out there, and all that I have to do is find it, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It’s pointless and can be painful. 

The second obstacle to listening to myself are the many voices in my head. 

They are often the voices of my parents, my partner, my sibling, my friends, or my colleagues. Trying to solve my problems through the sole lens of what those around me will think, believe, support, or accept, is a common problem I know many struggle with, as I know I have at times as well.

It takes a belief in oneself to back oneself. To accept that not everyone around me may agree with my choices. And that’s okay. It’s difficult at first but becomes easier over time. 

The third obstacle to listening to myself is a fear of failure. 

What if I’m wrong? Then who will I have to blame? At least if I followed some generalized best practice from a researcher, or listened to a family member, if it doesn’t work, I can point my finger out the window. And although I may still have a problem, I at least don’t have a bigger problem of feeling like I was wrong. 

The reality is that if I listen to myself, I will be wrong at times. The same goes if I listen to some person with credentials or some person I have a relationship with. No one, not anyone, can know or control my life. Not even me. 

Learning not only to make mistakes, but to own the mistakes I make, is the prep work I have to do to be truly open to listening to myself. 

Only then, after I’ve tuned out the external noises, the internal voices and the fear of failure, can I truly start to ‘shower’ on my problems and connect with my deeper wisdom.

And that is how I learned to shower. 

How to Left Side

I went to turn on the car, and then realized I was sitting in the passenger seat.

It took me a second to remember that down under, they drive on the other side of the road, and their cars sides are flipped.

Having recently arrived in Sydney, I rented a car as I wanted to more easily explore this beautiful city where I plan to winter this year. 

Taking my first left turn out of the garage, I noticed myself perched forward on the car seat, extra vigilant of both the left and right sides of the road. 

‘Left side, left side, left side’ I kept chanting to myself quietly, driving for once far below the posted speed limit, carefully staying within the lines and turning even more carefully. 

My heart beating a bit faster, my palms a bit sweaty and my eyes open a bit wider, I was nervous and a bit more anxious than I had expected or prepared for. 

On my second day, I considered taking an Uber instead to save myself the discomfort, even though it was only a 10 minute drive away. As I was about to request the ride in the app, I caught a glimpse of the rental car keys lying on the table and decided I needed to get comfortable driving on the left, and the only way was to face the fear. 

It wasn’t so bad the second time around. 

And on the drive back to where I was staying, I found myself actually enjoying it. I turned the music on and found myself smiling for the first time behind the wheel. 

Within days, what I had feared had become a chance for growth and a source of needed confidence on the road. 

As I reflected one morning in my journal, I began to appreciate just how adaptable we are. Oftentimes, like I had experienced, our minds get in the way. I know my mind is trying to protect me and keep me safe, yet at the same time, my instinct to challenge myself, do what makes me uncomfortable and experience something new is the reason for most of the best adventures in life. 

Feeling fear can be a signal that it’s time to lean in, versus lean away. 

In business, relationships, health and more, I have often felt fear and when looking back, I have never regretted not facing that fear. It isn’t easy, but totally worth it. 

What makes it a bit easier is to believe in myself. Without the self-belief that I can do something I feel fear about, I don’t stand a chance. With the self-belief, I am now tapping into an inner resource and spring of energy that propels me forward. Forward into my future.

And that is how I learned to Left Side. 

How to Inside Out

Often children stories we think are helpful for children, but watching Inside Out recently was a reminder of how much more relevant the children stories can be for adults, as we have more life experiences to relate and apply to. 

In the Inside Out movie, which one day I imagine my future kids will refer to as a classic, different characters inside a young girl’s mind each represent a different emotion. 

Meet Joy. Cheerful and always positive, she is clearly the emotion “in charge” in this young girl’s mind, setting the tone and everyone else followed. 

Meet Sadness. A bright blue blob that initially comes across as a downer, always expressing some negativity. 

Meet Disgust. A bright green cool looking character with slick hair, who often resists what is new or different. 

Meet Fear. A scrawny skinny character with big glasses, always hiding and forever scared. Of everything and everyone. 

And finally, meet Anger. A short but plump bright red character always ready to yell and scream at the slightest discomfort . 

Initially, I resonated with Joy, as she was the one keeping the rest of the emotions in check and maintaining a positive mood. And I found myself getting frustrated with the other characters. 

However, seeing the respective emotions work together as a team and the interplay between them began to sit in as more real and less imaginary. 

Each emotion serves their own purpose. And I could relate to each emotion.

Sadness for example, initially annoying however overtime I could see how this emotion was the root of empathy and feeling for others, and that in turn created the opportunity for connection. 

Or take anger. While at the surface feels counterproductive and mindfulness teachings encourage us to not feel this emotion in particular as intensely, sometimes this emotion is what becomes the catalyst for change. And rapid change. 

Many of these emotions, other than joy, often feel unpleasant and are easy to avoid. However, avoiding them is a fool’s game as the emotions only grow when left unattended, and by the time we have no choice but to face them or express them, we have no clue what the initial trigger was to begin with. 

Children experience and express a range of emotions frequently. Adults also experience the same range of emotions but do not express them very frequently. 

Children don’t know better than to allow them to show, but as we grow older, we get conditioned to hide them. 

Emotions are core to who we are, and shape our experience of life. It’s been a journey for me to become more comfortable with my emotions, and through therapy, journaling, reflection and meditation, I feel I have some of the tools to continue to work with and through them. 

At times my mind becomes an emotion-making machine, an endless stream of thoughts and feelings that floods my day. Those are the signs that I need to take a moment to pause, and check-in to see what’s going on, inside. 

It is so easy to look and point outside as the reason, or cause, of what I am feeling inside. However if the same shared external cause, be it the weather, politics, the stock market, a sports team, triggers different emotions in different people, then it is clear that the feeling has more to do with what’s going on the inside versus the outside. 

And that is how I learned to Inside Out.

How to LEGO

The bright green base was no bigger than the size of my hand.

The pieces were sprawled out on the floor, and we each took turns, quietly laying them brick by brick on top of one another.

My mind started to wander, no longer present with the mindless activity of laying LEGO bricks in a straight, uniform, multi-colored vertical tower.

Until I saw him lay a piece that was half on the base, and half off the base. He layed another one on top of this piece that now overhung the rest of the otherwise perfectly straight vertical tower.

I stopped laying pieces and continued to pass him pieces, encouraging him to see where he would place them next. In not too much time, the vertical tower was now growing horizontally, in all directions. It started to take the shape of a giant ship that was narrow at the bottom, where it meets the water, and wider at the top, where it meets the sky.

As I watched him quietly break the artificial boundaries of laying pieces in straight and organized shapes, it was a mirror for me on how much I had fallen into the artificial boundaries of day-to-day life. This LEGO activity quickly became a silent nudge and guiding hand for me to think beyond the artificial boundaries that my mind has become comfortable, and at times numb, playing within.

There is no one way to LEGO. It’s a collection of brightly colored plastic bricks, with endless combinations of constructions possible.

Similarly, there is no one way to life. It’s a collection of uniquely beautiful experiences, moments, connections and learnings made possible through curiosity and desire.

The new LEGO kits these days come with instruction manuals, and despite them turning into objectively more interesting and intricate sculptures and scenes, the process leaves no space for creativity or judgment. There is only one way to assemble it, and it involves blindly following the instructions to a tee with absolutely no margin for error.

Life just isn’t like this though. We may think and at times search for the instruction manual, hoping that if we just follow someone else’s steps, that we’ll get to where we’re hoping to get to, but in reality, there is only one path for each of us, and it is unique to us.

The LEGO structure my three and a half year old nephew and I built together is one-of-a-kind, and can never be replicated. Nor does it need to. The next time we sit down together to build LEGO, we get to dream up something completely different.

This is what makes life so interesting. The endless possibilities and limitless potential in every moment to create, discover and learn. And thanks to my nephew, I was reminded to think beyond the artificial boundaries of my mind.

And that is how I learned to LEGO.

How to Adventure

It was three years ago this past week that I had moved spontaneously to Portugal, without much thought, without knowing anyone and without a plan. 

I guess my plan was simple: go on an adventure. 

Part of taking an adventure that I love is the adrenaline rush and thrill of not knowing what will happen. Not knowing how I will react and respond to what comes my way. And not having a particular agenda or purpose, other than to be curious and open to see what might unfold. 

So much of life at times can feel meticulously planned, carefully architected and plotted to try and get the best possible outcome. However when reflecting back on my life, the best outcomes have been when I haven’t planned, haven’t researched and haven’t set specific goals. 

Having fewer expectations has been a recipe for feeling pleasantly surprised, and as a result, highly satisfied. And this has been the primary lesson of my three years as an expat in Lisbon.

I had no plan or desire even to make a lot of new friends. At this stage in my life, I felt satisfied and full from the wonderful friendships I enjoy. However little did I know that I’d discover a completely new set of friends, with a similar expat open-minded approach to adventure, and who also identify as global citizens. I really cherish these new friendships I’ve built over the past three years, probably because I had no expectations. 

I had no plan or desire to learn a new language. Within a year, I was conversational in Portuguese, and more interestingly, my dusty French improved and I found motivation to improve my Hindi. Being in a different culture helped me rediscover a passion for languages. 

I had no plan or desire to invest in real estate. However landing in Portugal, at the time I did, felt like the right place at the right time. I quickly learned a new industry, built a professional network and made some solid investments. More importantly, I’ve taken an interest now in real estate in other countries when I had never imagined myself getting into the asset class. 

I had no plan or desire to focus on my physical health. Keeping the forever young and invincible mindset, living previously in cities like New York and Toronto where physical health takes a back seat to financial health, I had never consistently worked out. Or paid attention to my protein intake. And now I spend at least a few hours per day looking after my physical health, in a variety of ways that I find interesting and effective. 

The list goes on. All of the many ways my life has changed during the past three years. 

Portugal hasn’t changed my life. Choosing to go on an adventure is what changed my life. 

Going on an adventure has meant saying yes to the unknown, and going into it fully open, ready to embrace what’s come up on the inside and outside, while staying curious. 

What an adventure looks like for you will be different than what it looks like for me. And what I’ve learned is that it’s less about what the specific adventure is and more about how one approaches it. The same goes for the adventure called life. 

And that is how I learned to adventure. 

How to Swiss Alps

The destination was a Michelin star restaurant that stood quietly alone near the top of the Swiss Alps, but I had no idea that’s where we were going until I got there.

To celebrate a recent birthday, I was away with a few close friends for a weekend in the Alps. Normally a winter spot, it was decided by the others to give it a try during the summer. Fewer crowds, beautiful vistas, lower prices and a quiet and peaceful atmosphere.

It was also decided that the details of the weekend would be kept a surprise from me. And that we’d all be mostly phone-free for it.

That morning, our journey started with a local train near the hotel, which was already at about 1,000 meters above sea level. With everything in German, I had no idea where we actually were and where we were going. And no phone to pull up Google Maps to track the blue dot, that would often give me so much comfort in knowing. I had nothing to do but to admire the gorgeous views from the local commuter train. It was breathtaking.

Now at nearly 1,800 meters, we waited in a short line and bought one-way tickets for a gondola ride. It took us from the train station even higher into the mountains. I was quickly reminded that a fear of heights I thought was part of my past was clearly present for me. I smiled and gracefully took in the entire experience, sights and frights.

As we disembarked the gondola quickly, otherwise we’d end up going back down, I realized we were now at 2,600 meters. The air crisp and clean, the 360 degree views of the Alps standing majestically tall and the valleys shining bright green with tiny villages appearing far in the distance in between, inspired a silent awe as our small group had no words.

Then we started a hike, along a fairly horizontal trail that walked alongside one of the mountain edges. After not too long, we crossed paths with a group of elderly people, smiling and laughing, looking and sounding ever more youthful than us. A little further along, we saw a few women rock climbing the face of the mountain and a few men down below cheering them on. And then saw a couple having a picnic on a patch of grass.

It was a completely other world that existed far into the sky. 

We finally got to the restaurant, about an hour later. It was nestled alone into one of the mountain tops and sat down at our table. There was only one problem: I was no longer hungry.

Having no idea where we were going, and not realizing the peak experience of the day was yet to come at the restaurant, I thoroughly enjoyed the train, the gondola and the hike, and savored every moment. It was all deliciously satisfying for my spirit.

Not knowing where we were going forced me to enjoy the journey, as there was no destination. Had I known there was somewhere to get to, I would not have been as present and curious along the way there.

So often in my day-to-day life, I have blinders on and forget to enjoy the way to wherever I am going. My focus on not only getting a specific outcome, but also as efficiently as I can, drains the journey of any value as it is a means to an end.

As I sat there at the restaurant, with fancy looking food sitting on my plate that I was not that interested in, I felt this calm energy throughout my entire body. The joy of not knowing, of discovering more of the world, and as a result, more of myself, that was made possible thanks to not having a goal.

The weekend away, with its surprises and silent beauty, was a reminder for me to slow down and to let go of the need to control every detail. Life’s most memorable moments often come when I least expect them, so why am I trying so hard to create them? 

The next time I’m rushing towards an arbitrary goal that my mind gets stuck on, I’ll try to remember this moment in the Alps. I’ll take a deep breath and remind myself that sometimes the most productive thing to do is to pause, look at the view, and enjoy it.

And that is how I learned to Swiss Alps.

How to Map

“Over 100 countries”, he said when I had asked him how many places he had visited in his lifetime. He didn’t even appear that old. 

This was last month, while I was in London for a close friend’s wedding. I was strolling the streets near the popular Borough Market, south of the Thames river, on a sunny weekend morning. I was walking alone, without my phone in hand, having left my hotel with the intention to get lost and with the curiosity to see what I might discover. 

A beautiful old school map caught my attention in the window of a tiny little shop. Without thinking, I walked right in and began touching the paper. It was soft, almost felt-like, and pleasant for my fingertips. I then noticed that it was a map of the world, drawn in 1797.

This was a time before air travel. Before satellite systems. Before electricity. Before cars. Before Google Maps. 

I began to marvel for a brief moment at the ingenuity and intelligence previous generations, centuries ago, demonstrated. I can hardly remember my own phone number or figure out how to turn off some annoying feature on my iPhone without first asking chatGPT for step-by-step instructions. And I studied Software Engineering at a good school, and ran a technology business for fifteen years. Yet over two hundred years ago, someone was drawing by hand a map of the entire world, likely by studying hundreds of versions drawn by people before.  

“Where are you from?”

My train of thought was interrupted by what I assumed was the owner of the map store I was silently standing in. 

“Canada, although originally my family is from India,” I told him with a smile. 

He turned and walked over to the other side of the tiny shop, flipping through beautifully designed decorative envelopes and pulled one out enthusiastically. 

He walked back to me and quietly opened the large envelope, took out a folded piece of paper and began to open it slowly. It was a map of India from the early 1800s.

I had never seen one before. This was India under British rule. This was India before partition that created borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh. This wasn’t the India I had grown up learning about and visiting often. I was curious. 

As we started to chat some more, and the many cities and countries I have lived in started to come out, new maps were shown to me. Each one captured my curiosity, showing me something I didn’t know about a place I thought I knew. 

“It’s a different way to look at things,” he remarked, not realizing that I received his casual comment not literally but metaphorically.

So much of my experience of life is based on my perspective of life. And so much of my perspective is shaped by the culture, community and conditioning that I choose. These influences, like the old hand drawn map I was holding in my hand, show me something that I didn’t know. And they are full of biases, and that’s totally fine. 

It’s less about trying to find an unbiased or objective viewpoint, as that may not exist, but rather to understand the biases and subjective nature of everything that I encounter. 

This thought may have been deeply concerning for me even a decade ago, as the culture I had learned in school taught me that there must always be a single right answer to every question. I have since learned that’s not fully true. 

Learning about the map store owner’s passion for maps that had taken him to over one hundred countries in search of the most rare and interesting maps, only to be redesigned by him in his unique style, I can’t help but think of the different lenses in which we view the same thing. 

For example, if I find a cookie disgusting and you find it delicious, which one is it? Is the cookie disgusting or delicious? It depends on who’s asking. There is no single answer. There may be a popular answer, but it is a subjective question that deserves a subjective answer.

I have long appreciated the wisdom ‘pay attention to what you pay attention to’, meaning everything is less as it seems and more as I seem it to be. My intention is to choose my influences and biases, versus trying to eradicate them. All the while being open to discovering something new about something I may perceive to be old, like what a map of India looks like. 

Looking now at a map of New York City from 1859 in my hand, I could spot immediately the street I had lived on and the one where I had an office. But they seemed a lot further from one another in proportion than I remembered from just a few years ago. Drawing a map without the technology and tools we have today was clearly a subjective exercise back then. And I suspect everyone was fine with that. 

I then saw a map of New York City from the early 1900s. Here the proportions started to look more inline as I had experienced them to be. An evolution of still a subjective exercise.

Learning to tolerate different perspectives, like different maps of the same place drawn at different times, requires a deeper understanding and belief in the inherent subjectivity that exists everywhere. It is this understanding that is the root of the tree that allows a society to flourish and grow strong together. 

Everyone is not going to think and believe the same things and waiting or wanting them to is a recipe for frustration. We all have our own subjective perspectives, influenced by the unique circumstances and conditions that we find ourselves in. Be it place, time, or people. They are all unique, and shape us in unique ways. 

The same goes for me as an individual. What I thought, said or did a decade ago will be different than how I am now. And dare I say how I will be in the future. 

After all, the universal truth that I was reminded of looking at different maps of the same place is that everything changes. I may not be in control of how, or when, or even in which ways, but I can accept that everything changes. For me, maps are now a symbol of change. 

And that is how I learned to map. 

How to Heat

“Do you like the heat?”

I shot him an angry look unknowingly, as I was changing into my bathing suit at the beach. He was renting me a standup paddleboard at the beach and it was a blistering hot day already, despite it being only ten in the morning.

“Yes…but not this much,” I responded and the conversation didn’t continue very far. The heat was getting to me, and I was already starting to lose some of my cool.

This now being my third summer in Portugal, I should be used to the drill, but I’m not. Every summer there seems to be one week where the temperature turns particularly unbearable. It’s the kind of relentless, unforgiving sticky heat that turns daily life into a low-key endurance test.

I tried everything I could to stay cool, inside and out.

First, I thought being on the water might do the trick. It didn’t. The bright white paddleboard was reflecting back the Portuguese sun back onto my body, making it feel even hotter.

Next, I thought being in the water must be the solution. A normally frigid Atlantic ocean dip did not feel cold enough that day for me. And seconds after stepping out of the ocean onto the beach, the contrast from cold to heat felt brutal.

Once I got home, I took a long cold shower to wash off the sand and to attempt to cool down. Again, despite the shower tap being turned all the way to the left on cold, the water felt warm.

Then I had the brilliant idea to use my new infrared red light panels. They are about five feet tall and mounted on the wall in one of my guest bedrooms. Putting on my noise canceling headphones and red light goggles, I stood bare in front of them, trying to heat my body on the inside to feel cool on the outside. 

Within seconds I began to sweat more than normal, and after a fifteen minute session, I noticed my body excessively warm for the next hour. That was a failed experiment.

I started to feel hungry. I first tried a cold smoothie with ice and a fresh salad with avocado, cucumber, tomatoes, and other cooling ingredients. That didn’t work.

Then I reversed the experiment and had warm foods. Some leftover tomato soup. A herbal tea. Similar to the red light, I felt worse. 

All the while, the air conditioner in my apartment was cranked up to the max. And at that exact moment, there was a power outage. All of the lights, electronics and appliances were off in the blink of an eye. It’s at that moment I realized I did not have even a fan in my place.

It was at that moment I hit a wall.

I sat down quietly on my couch. With the feeling of defeat energetically throughout my body. I had no choice but to throw in the towel. ‘I give up’, I said silently to myself.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And another. And another.

In an unexpected moment of silence, inside and out, I felt a shift in my energy. I had surrendered. I had stopped resisting. I had ended my crusade to control. I had finally accepted my reality as it was and was no longer trying to change it.

For the first time that day, I felt cool. An innocent smile appeared on my face. I no longer felt like I was going to die from the heat. 

I realized the idea of the heat was more bothersome for me than the heat itself. And then I started to reflect on how many areas of my life I react to the idea of something versus the thing itself. In relationship. In business. In health. 

The mind is such a powerful tool and it has the ability to generate ideas. Beautiful, creative and expansive ideas. And at the same time, fearful, destructive and unpleasant ideas. 

My entire day I had been reacting to the idea of suffering in my mind versus any sensation of suffering in my body. The struggle I had been feeling is what made things worse. There was a peace in letting go, in not trying to bend everything to my perceived liking and desire.

So often in my daily life I get caught up in trying to fix, control or resist what I perceive as uncomfortable or unwanted. It turns out that what is feared is not that bad and that I am a whole lot more resilient and capable than I realize.

‘Rain or shine, I’ll be fine’ is a mantra I wrote to myself in my journal later that day, as a way to remind myself that regardless of what happens in my environment, figurative or literal, I will be fine. That confidence, inner knowing and self belief is the real power of the mind that I’m curious to continue to unlock in my daily life.

There I was, sipping warm tea, sitting on my balcony in the sun, embracing the sweat rolling down my face with a smile, and letting the sun do its thing while I did mine. Sometimes the secret isn’t trying to change the world around me—it’s changing how I see it.

And that is how I learned to heat.

How to Olympics

I was in Paris for the Olympics recently, and the city felt like it had come alive in a way I’d never experienced before. 

There’s always a certain magic to Paris—but this time, it felt different. The city wasn’t just alive; it was buzzing, vibrating with the energy of thousands of athletes, spectators, and dreamers all in one place. 

I spent my days moving between venues, as these Olympics were spread out geographically in the different corners of the city. Each sport was its own universe, with its own energy, and each one left me with a lesson that felt both personal and universal.

Badminton was the first event I attended. 

It is much more than just a game of speed and precision. I watched a match where the players were locked in a fierce rally—powerful smashes followed by lightning-fast returns, the birdie was a blur in motion. And then, in a moment of pure finesse, one player hit a delicate drop shot, the birdie barely clearing the net before falling to the ground like a feather. The crowd gasped, and then burst into applause.

“It’s not just about power. It’s about knowing when to be gentle, when to let things fall into place,” the spectator next to me whispered.

It made me reflect about how often in life I rely on force—pushing harder, working longer hours, trying to control outcomes—when sometimes, what’s really needed is a softer touch. A pause. A moment to let things unfold naturally. That drop shot was a perfect reminder that life isn’t just about how hard I hit, but about knowing when to let go and let the moment carry me.

Swimming was next, and the energy in the arena was electric. 

I watched as one race unfolded in a way that was almost poetic—a swimmer who started strong, building momentum with each stroke, carving through the water like a knife through butter. But then, in the final lap, something shifted. Another swimmer began to catch up, their strokes gaining speed and power, while the leader seemed to fall behind, their rhythm breaking ever so slightly.

The finish was close—too close to call without the help of the replay. As the times flashed on the screen, the arena erupted in cheers. The swimmer who was leading for most of the race had lost by a mere fraction of a second. It was heartbreaking to see.

It made me reflect about how often I can lose momentum in life because I start overthinking, doubting myself, or getting caught up in the fear of failure. Confidence is a delicate thing—it can carry me forward like a wave, but it can also be easily disrupted by a single moment of hesitation. Watching that race, I realized that maintaining momentum isn’t just about riding the highs; it’s about trusting myself even when the finish line is still out of sight.

Athletics brought a different kind of reflection. 

The stadium was the same one used for the opening ceremony. It was massive, with a sea of spectators filling every seat. I watched as runners, jumpers, and throwers gave everything they had, their bodies pushed to the limit, their faces full of determination. And then, during a medal ceremony, a Canadian athlete stood on the podium, gold medal around her neck, the Canadian anthem playing in the background.

I felt a rush of pride that surprised me. Even though I no longer live in Canada, seeing that maple leaf flag rise and hearing the familiar anthem play brought me back home instantly. There coincidentally was a young woman draped in a Canadian flag next to me. “It’s like a piece of home is here with us,” she said, beaming. 

In that moment, I realized that no matter where I go, a part of me is always tied to where I came from. Portugal may be where I mostly live now, but home is home. The Olympics, with all their international spirit, had somehow brought me back to my roots, reminding me to appreciate the values and experiences that had shaped me.

But beyond the medals and the records, what really stayed with me was the way the athletes treated each other. There was one moment after a particularly grueling 400m race where the winner, instead of celebrating, turned back to help a fellow competitor who had collapsed at the finish line. He knelt beside him, offered a hand, and pulled him to his feet. The crowd, which had been roaring just moments before, fell into a respectful silence.

It was a silent gesture that spoke loudly. Competition doesn’t have to mean rivalry. It can be a journey with mutual respect for the effort and dedication that everyone brought. I thought about how beautiful it would be if we had more mutual respect for each other in other domains between competitors, such as politics, business or even while sitting in traffic. We often view others as rivals, people to beat, rather than as fellow travelers on a similar path.

As the days in Paris went by, I found myself not cheering for Canada, but cheering for every athlete who stepped onto the field, the court, or into the pool. It wasn’t about nationality or even about who won the most medals. It was about celebrating their effort to strive for something greater, and admiring how they found meaning in the pursuit of excellence.

The Olympics had inspired me. It wasn’t a sports competition between countries; for me it became a reminder of what it means to be alive—to strive, to compete, to respect each other, and to appreciate the beauty in both victory and defeat.

And that is how I learned to Olympics.

How to Pasta

“Thank you for your request but the restaurant has the day off today”.

I smiled and laughed gently out loud.

After the failed attempt to book a restaurant, I decided to just walk into town to find a spot for a late lunch. To my surprise - nothing was open.

Here I was, in the midst of the Italian summer, during peak tourist season and everything was closed. I was surprised. 

Across Southern Europe, the culture to prioritize the passion for summer over profits comes through loud and clear. Much of the continent shuts down for business in August when everyone takes extended summer holidays.

In most parts of the world, I’m used to a culture where the priority is to maximize profits. Businesses would be open no matter what, and they’d find people to work.

It all works somehow though in Europe, even if it appears less optimal to me given my North American upbringing. 

That evening, we ended up at a local Italian woman’s tiny third floor one bedroom apartment for dinner. 

We would be cooking dinner. 

It was a cooking class, in someone’s home. On the menu was two types of pasta, bruschetta and my favourite, tiramisu. 

As we began cooking, we began chatting and learned more about her story. By the look of her, we wouldn’t have guessed that she had grandchildren.

We were cooking in the same home she was born in. The once family home spread across three floors had been  in her family for generations, and now had been split into no less than six apartments. Her sister lived next door. Her nephew is on the floor beneath. And so on. 

I was struck by the simplicity and warmth of the experience. The aroma of fresh basil, tomatoes, and garlic filled the small kitchen, mingling with laughter and stories of the past. It was a reminder for me that sometimes, the best moments are the simplest ones, grounded in tradition and shared with others.

As we kneaded the dough and stirred the fresh pasta sauce, I couldn't help but think about the slow pace of life here. It's a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle I’m used to. In that small kitchen, I found a profound appreciation for the art of taking one's time. 

Making pasta from scratch takes patience and strength. Our pasta wasn't just a meal though; it felt like a ritual, a celebration of heritage and community.

Our host told us about how she would make pasta with her grandmother, learning the secrets passed down through generations. It wasn't just about cooking for her; it was about connection—connecting with the past, with loved ones, and with oneself.

In North America, where efficiency often trumps all else, this leisurely approach felt almost rebellious. But here, it is a way of life. It made me realize how much I miss out on my rush to get things done. Ironically, I am often in a rush for the fear of missing out. But when rushing, I end up missing. 

When the meal was finally ready, we sat down together at a small table overlooking the charming village below. The food was incredible, but what stood out even more to me was the sense of fulfillment we all felt. 

We had created something beautiful together, with our own hands, and it tasted of more than just tomatoes and garlic. It tasted of history, love, and patience.

That night, as we walked back to our hotel, I felt a deep sense of gratitude. Not just for the delicious food or the wonderful company, but for the reminders I had received. Sometimes, it’s important to slow down, to savor each moment, and to understand that the process is just as important as the result. If not more important. 

In a world that often feels like it's moving fast, there's a quiet joy in embracing a slower pace, in finding meaning in the mundane, and in recognizing that sometimes, the best things in life are the simplest.

And that is how I learned to pasta.