Untranslatable expressions: to pack light

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It´s been a while since I last dedicated a blog article to a phrase or expression from those that I call untranslatables, not exactly because they´re impossible to translate, but because they lose a lot of their charm (let´s say, their elegance) when translated from English into Spanish or vice versa.

Today´s expression is to pack light, and the problem here is not the word light, which directly translates as "ligero/a", but with the verb to pack, which in this context has a translation that´s long and clumsy, at least in the version of Spanish we use in Spain: "hacer las maletas" (in other versions of Spanish there´s the word empacar, which is shorter, yes, but sounds super weird to me).

In my opinion, the translation that best conveys the idea behind to pack light is "ligero de equipaje", and in both languages, the meaning goes beyond the mere act of packing: it refers to a way of travelling, and ultimately, to a philosophy of life.

(Picture I once hurriedly took of a person I saw in the street, or rather, of their bag. I loved that little drawing of the line going all over the place, anywhere but straight ahead, as a metaphor of the journey of life; it reminded me of the image I used a few years ago in this article.)

I admit I have never been a person who packs light, and I profoundly admire those who are able to. Even though I´d like to think I´ve improved slightly over the years, deep down I´m still the queen of "just-in-case"... So when it´s time to pack, I´m inevitably assaulted by doubts, and I lean too much towards the side of caution, which almost always results in me packing a lot more stuff than I actually need, with the corresponding extra load (both physical and emotional) associated to it.

All of this is coming to my head now because this weekend I´m travelling with the girls, one last little escapade before going back to school, and unsurprisingly, I filled up my suitcase almost to the top, while they had tons of free space in theirs! They could even have shared suitcases. I have A LOT to learn from them.

But there´s also another way to think about the concept of "packing light", and it´s in relation to our emotional baggage: all that weight we carry around, consciously or unconsciously (judgement, guilt, resentment...) that we would really benefit from getting rid of. That weight is not going to magically disappear, no matter how much we try to cover it or look the other way. But it can be lightened quite a lot through deep work involving awareness and personal growth.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you already travelling light? Or are you carrying a lot more than what you need?

Back to basics (again)

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It´s mid-August, and in Ireland (as I´m guessing is happening in Spain as well), there are "back to school" signs and ads everywhere.

I remember that, when I was younger, I really hated seeing them; I found it hard to accept that the summer was coming to an end, and that it was time to start thinking about getting back into the school year routine.

(Photo of a page in my square-gridded notebook.)

I guess nowadays I tend to be more philosophical with these kind of things; I find I can adapt more easily to the various cycles that life goes through (and that we go through as well). As they used to say in that old song, to everything there is a season... So, let´s focus on doing whatever it´s time to do at any given moment, and above all, let´s focus on enjoying it, and learning from it, instead of just resigning ourselves to suffer it.

Now that the beginning of a new school year is approaching, you may be experiencing the same thing that often happens to me: you already have a super long list of tasks, projects and assorted commitments to try and fit in the calendar, and you feel exhausted just by looking at it...

It´s the perfect moment to take a step back and go back to basics: make sure we´re taking proper care of ourselves, so that we can start the new school year with our batteries fullly charged, and armed with good habits that will help us to maintain our energy and enthusiasm.

How about you? Are you still in holiday mode, or in the process of coming back? What is it the time to do right now?

P.S.- "That old song", in case you´d like to look it up, is from the sixties; I remember it from the TV series The wonder years. The title is Turn, turn, turn, from a band called The Byrds:

To everything (turn, turn, turn), there is a season (turn, turn, turn)...

Generations

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I´m writing these lines from Barajas airport, getting ready to fly back to Dublin after a two-week holiday in Spain.

I´m coming back tired, but also happy: it´s been time really well spent. The holidays have been slightly chaotic, having to change plans a couple of times, but in the end, it has all turned out really well.

And the best part, no doubt, has been meeting Mar, the first baby of my family´s next generation, in person, in a place where the memory of her great-grandparents Ángel and Mari Carmen is always very present.

One more generation... I often have a feeling I find very interesting when I meet with friends, or even my siblings: that it seems time hasn´t passed and we are the same as always... Until we look at our children, at the next generation, and then we realise!

As usual, here are a few quotes to reflect on this topic:

Each generation imagines itself
to be more intelligent than the one that went before it,
and wiser than the one that comes after it.

George Orwell

We need to remember across generations
that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.

Gloria Steinem

What one generation sees as a luxury,
the next sees as a necessity.

Anthony Crosland

And one that I found very funny:

From the earliest time, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was, they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture. - W. Somerset Maugham

Closed for vacation (III)

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As it´s already tradition in this blog, I´m writing my vacation post from my happy place, where I´ve been very lucky to return once again this summer (you can read articles from previous years here and here).

(Photo taken today at sunset, from the "rock-house" where I used to play so often as a child.)

Once again, the old and the new get intertwined as I reacquaint myself with certain places and people: memories living alongside the here and now, creating a feeling of continuity. In a way, it´s always the same, but at the same time, it´s never the same.

Heraclitus said that you cannot swim twice in the same river, because neither you nor the river will be the same, with everything being in constant change. And this other quote goes along the same lines:

You won't find the same person twice,
not even in the same person.

Mahmud Darwish

I think this is a good reminder of the fact that we all change over time (whether we like it or not), and that we must give ourselves (and others) permission to grow, learn and evolve as a person, each of us in our own style and at our own pace, even if that implies not fulfilling certain expectations (I will tell you about "growth guilt" later on, in a future article).

But I also have to say that, similarly to what happens with certain places, even though people progressively change, there´s a certain continuity to them that stays over the years. A good analogy that can help with understanding this is a tree: a cherry tree can grow very tall or stay small; it can become quite leafy or barely have leaves, depending on different factors like the weather, sunlight, water, soil nutrients... But what it´s never ever going to do is become a pine tree, an oak tree or a palm tree.

Similarly, each person has a certain way to be, to show up,, which of course can mature and stabilise over time, but, save for cases like serious trauma and the like, broadly speaking, it´s going to continue the same. Our brain finds it really difficult to change, and it does so very slowly, bit by bit; that´s why it´s so important to have tools to help us make the most of that continuity (instead of fighting against it) and progressively become the best version of ourselves.

What about you? What particular places and people do you find simultaneously familiar and different?

Grandparents

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Today, July 26th, is Saint Joachim and Saint Anne´s Day, and many countries with a Catholic tradition celebrate Grandparents´ Day (Saint Joachim and Saint Anne were the Virgin Mary´s parents, and therefore, baby Jesus´s grandparents).

(Willowtree figurines that we once upon a time gifted to my parents and in-laws)

What a special relationship, that of grandparents with their grandchildren! A bridge between generations.

I got to meet three of my four grandparents; today they´ve been top of mind for me. And my daughters, thankfully, have met their four grandparents, and have been able to spend time with them over many summers and Christmases. I will always remember my father playing with Irene, my eldest daughter, shen she was about two years old: on the floor, building towers of megablocks! I don´t remember ever seeing him sitting on the floor playing with us. But that´s exactly what people say: the joy of having grandchildren is totally different to that of having children. Children are for you to educate; grandchildren, for you to enjoy.

Now it´s my brother and sister-in-law´s turn to enjoy being grandparents, and I have to say I´ve never seen them happier. I also hope to become a grandmother someday (though let´s make it clear that there´s no rush at all, OK girls? Let me repeat that: NO RUSH), so that, when the moment comes, I can enjoy that tender feeling and that complicity with my grandchildren.

What about you? What do you remember about your grandparents? Do you agree with these phrases?

A baby has a way of making
a man out of his father
and a boy out of his grandfather.

Angie Papadakis

Grandparents are the best kind of grownups.

(Anonymoous)

There is nothing like grandchildren in your arms
to put a smile on your face,
a lump in your throat and a warm feel in your heart.

(Anonymoous)

"Us" and "them"

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I´m writing these lines shortly after having watched the 2026 World Cup Final; congratulations, Spain!

(Drawing of the Spanish flag, coloured in by Eva when she was seven years old.)

Those of you who know me also know that I´m not a big sports fan, especially regarding football/soccer, so it´s not habitual for me to sit down to watch a match. But today, being the final, with Spain playing and Irene and Alicia also at home, we made an exception and took the opportunity to suffer it, that is, to enjoy it together (we missed you, Eva).

Needless to say, I´m really happy for Spain´s victory, I think they were the team that played best today. But I have to say that I ended up with a bad taste in my mouth; I saw a lot of bad vibes and confrontation, and very little camaraderie between the two teams, which makes me sad. As I don´t have much to compare this to (I haven´t seen anything else from the World Cup at all), I´m not sure how "normal" that behaviour is among players (and even the national team coaches); my hope is that this is the exception rather than the norm, but I´m not a hundred per cent certain...

What a stark contrast with the mid-time show, with its children singing about universal love and acting as if we are all friends. I couldn´t help but feel that it sounded false.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why, in general, sports competitions don´t appeal to me: I struggle with this confrontation mentality, the "us versus them", which is a very human and very natural tendency, but also a very dangerous one, or at least not very productive.

As I mentioned in my post about labels, there´s an evolution related explication for all this: human beings are social and tribal by nature. Belonging to a clan or tribe allowed our ancestors to survive and reproduce, as they were able to protect one another and collaborate to solve problems (hunt together, share the workload, specialise tasks, etc.).

But in the same way human beings are designed to collaborate, they´re also designed to compete. Because part of belonging to a tribe involves defending it from its enemies, that is, from other tribes, or even attacking those other tribes for the benefit of your own group. And that´s when we start to categorise people as "one of us" or "one of the others", creating a separation based on arbitrary rules, and that´s when the trouble starts.

If you think about it, those divisions and rivalries are everywhere: you can see them very clearly in the relationships between countries, but also between regions, cities or villages, departments or teams in a company, educational institutions, sports teams, sides of a family, and so on and so forth. And the level of distrust and animosity between both sides can range from harmless rivalry to a sort of entrenched hostility that instigates wars generation after generation, as we unfortunately see quite often.

This is perhaps the explanation for one of the major contradictions we human beings have. How is it possible that sometimes we´re able to show so much empathy and compassion, and other times, be so cruel and aggressive to one another? Well, because we´re not using the same standard for everything; unfortunately, the rule doesn´t simply go "you shall not kill" - it goes "you shall not kill... your own". The others are something different. The others are enemies.

Once, years ago, I received an excellent piece of advice at work: when you get to work with somebody, try to make them feel part of "us", because otherwise, they´re going to feel part of "them"; they´re going to perceive that distance, and there will be more resistance to collaborating. Today, I invite you to look around, paying attention, to discover those "us versus them" dynamics; how are you contributing to creating that atmosphere? And what can you do to "bring the others around" so that you all feel you´re on the same side?

15 seconds to imagine

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It´s almost mid-July; how´s your summer going? Is it too hot where you are? (If you´re in the Northern hemisphere, of course... I don´t know whether I have many readers from the Southern hemisphere, but I like to mention it, just in case.)

This weekend I´ve been taking it very easy, no rush at all, enjoying the feeling of being almost on holidays, though it´s still going to be a while until my real holiday begins. And, as one of the things my mind associates with summer holidays is reading, I took the opportunity to read a book, which is something I love to do and I´m striving to take up again, on the one hand, because I find it both entertaining and relaxing, it truly recharges my batteries, and on the other hand, because it´s a very beneficial exercise for the brain, enhancing our imagination, ability to focus, memory and many other cognitive functions, as well as helping to improve our language abilities.

Usually, I would also point out that an added benefit of reading is that it gives us a break from the ever-present screens, but paradoxically, as it turns out, this particular book I ended up reading on my phone, because my Kindle is ancient and can no longer connect to the wifi to download new books. Sigh.

Thinking about this whole topic of screens and how much we depend on them nowadays, a memory came up from when I used to watch TV as a child. If you were also a child in Spain during the eighties, maybe you will remember this as well.

It was a segment in TVE´s legendary programme the crystal ball (la bola de cristal), and it went like this:

"You have fifteen seconds to imagine..."

(For fifteen seconds, a blurry image was shown on screen, along with a sound similar to a clock ticking)

"If nothing came to your mind... Maybe you should watch less TV"

Astounding. Even back then, the adults were concerned that us children spent many hours watching the "dumb box", as some people called it. And their concern was probably justified.

(Picture of "Bibothy", proof that in my house, at least for the moment, we don´t need to worry about a lack of imagination...)

But nowadays, far from improving, the situation has worsened. There´s no longer just one "dumb box" per household; you can find all kinds of devices, often several per person, constantly fighting for our attention. And not only at home: in the street, in the car, in shops, bars, restaurants... It´s a constant bombardment of information, a never-ending source of stimulation, and our brain is not prepared for such volumes.

The mind needs a break every now and then. A break from screens, and also from other sources of stimulation, like, for example, a pair of earbuds playing music or podcasts hour after hour. Our brain needs periods of silence in order to be able to function properly. To be able to process the information it receives, and also to be able to move from a more passive and consumerist mode to a more active mode, the one that allows us to create, imagine, solve problems, etc.

But, of course, those silent periods don´t just happen magically; we have to create them ourselves, and that´s not easy, not even remotely. Because the screens provide bursts of short-term satisfaction that our brain loves, making it crave more. And almost any other thing we set out to do, in comparison, will seem plain and boring, at least at the beginning; that´s why it´s so easy to get carried away by the screens, and so much willpower is needed to break the habit and set out to do other things.

This is the same that happens, by the way, with diet and exercise: our brain is optimised to help us to survive in the short term, and following this logic, it prefers foods that are rich in fats and sugars, and prioritises saving energy by reducing effort to the bare minimum. This way, our own brain sabotages us; it plays against us because it understands very little about long-term decisions.. But we do understand it; we understand that, in order to have good health in the long term, we need to make a different kind of decisions and acquire a different kind of habits, even if it´s tough at first.

So, today, I encourage you, if you´re not doing it already, to start creating an oasis of silence at some point in your day, or, even better, at several moments. Your future self will be grateful for it.

Welcome, Mar!

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I´m a great-aunt!

Mar, the first great-niece in our family, was born earlier this week, and today we´ve been lucky enough to see her via videoconference. She´s a gorgeous baby, with a lovely name ("mar" means "sea" in Spanish). Welcome!

(Photo of the sea, of course. Or rather, the ocean, at Monterey beach, in California)

Seeing Mar today and talking to her parents and grandparents reminded me of my own first few days as a novice mother, when Irene was a newborn. That was... almost twenty years ago! OMG. Some of you may remember reading my adventures and misadventures as a new mum in a predecessor to this blog.

Then, two years later, after a little sibling who was never born, Alicia arrived, and five years later, Eva, who´s been the youngest on our side of the family until now. The experience was different with each of them; even the deliveries were different (although the three of them were born in the same hospital, and on the same day of the week!)

But all three of them, each one in her own style, brought us lots of love and joy, and also lots of learning. Each baby is unique, irreplaceable, and the family changes and adapts to each new member as they arrive.

To be honest, I think this is a beautiful season in life, becoming a mum or a dad (especially, I have to say, a mum), but it also tends to be a somewhat complicated time, as emotions bubble to the surface. There´s a lot of joy, of course, but also fears, confusion, tiredness... A true emotional rollercoaster, and it gets you no matter what, even if you try to prepare.

So now it´s the time to exercise patience, lots and lots of it. With the new baby, of course, who has no concept of timetables or social norms, having just arrived in this world. But also the new parents with themselves, with each other, and probably with other people as well (namely, family and friends).

I was looking for a nice quote I could use to congratulate the new parents, and I remembered this phrase/advice; I´m not sure where it comes from (apologies if it has an author and I haven´t been able to find it), but I think it´s very appropriate: Ana and Javi, congratulations!! Enjoy every moment, every phase, for the days are long, but the years are short.

I´m speaking from experience: one day you´re changing nappies, and the following day, the girl is having a sleepover with her friends, or looking for a job to get some extra money, or studying for her driving license...

What about you? Do you have children, nephews/nieces or grandchildren? What advice would you give to new parents?

Labels

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June is Pride Month in many countries, including Ireland, and on Saturday, I attended the Pride parade in Dublin. As in previous years, I loved the good vibes and the joyful and inclusive atmosphere one can feel on these occasions, where everyone is welcome to show up exactly as they are.

Afterwards, at home, I was chatting with my daughters about the multitude of identities included in the LGBTQ+ compound (apologies, I´m probably missing more letters), and I came to think about this thing people love to stick onto themselves, and to others: labels.

(Sign seen on a disabled toilet door in Ikea Dublin. My guess is that it´s a neutral gender toilet, but I haven´t been able to confirm this. To me, it looks like a person carrying two Ikea boxes...)

The topic of labels is quite complex; I can see how one could argue for or against them. But before we get deeper into this topic, it´s good to remember that our brain is not designed to help us be happy, but to help us survive. And in order to ensure this crucial mission is accomplished, it has evolved to optimise its functions, developing patterns that allow it to make decisions very fast with while keeping energy consumption low.

This ability to quickly interpret and "classify" situations (and people) has been tremendously helpful to us humans across many generations; at the end of the day, we are alive today because all of our ancestors managed to survive at least enough to reproduce, that is, on multiple occasions, they were able to identify potential problems and move away from them. And that included evaluating each person they found as "friend" or "enemy", as "one of us", or "one of the others".

Another positive side of all these patterns and mehchanisms is that they help us to understand the world around us; we could say they arrange to put together a model, a set of stories, that give us a highly simplified but very understandable version of a reality that can be very, very complex. And that makes us feel good.

The problem is that the exact same mechanisms get us into trouble sometimes, for several reasons. First, because, in order to simplify, our brain needs to necessarily alter and reduce the information, through generalisations, distortions and omissions, which may not matter much in certain contexts, but in others, it does, paving the way for prejudice, stereotypes and misunderstandings to appear (in a future article, I´ll get into more details on cognitive biases, a very meaty topic!)

Second: following this logic of trying to increase the chances of survival, our brain benefits from not being too trusting: if I bump into someone I don´t know, and I mistakenly classify them as an "enemy" when they´re not, that´s OK, I will survive regardless, but if I mistakenly identify them as a "friend" and it turns out not to be... The consequences can be terrible.

And a third point that´s also related is that humans are tribal beings, it´s in our blood. In terms of evolution, belonging to the group, to the clan, provided you with protection, this way increasing the chances of survival. And we have inherited that tribalism, seeking to fit in with the group, judging how others fit in or not, highlighting our similarities with "our people" and accentuating our differences from "the others".

After explaining all this, let´s get back to the topic of labels. I hope the reasons why we use them so much are a bit easier to see now: simply put, we are wired to do so.

But the fact that we´re programmed to do it doesn´t mean we do it well; today´s world is a lot more complex and sophisticated than that of our ancestors, so we need more sophisticated thinking tools, as well as learning to know when to get out of autopilot mode because the occasion requires more attention and intention from our side.

That´s why investing in our own personal development and growth is really important, so that we can make more conscious decisions that bring us better results in any aspect of life (or rather, in all of them).

And as we make progress in our path of self-discovery, we will find words and concepts that will help us understand ourselves better, adding nuances and explanations to our identity. The concepts included in LGBTQ+ may be some of those labels, as are the personality profiles described by the Enneagram, and so many other things...

Giving things a name helps us understand and accept them, and from that point of view, labels can be really positive at certain points in time. But the important thing is not to cling to our labels too tightly, not to identify with them too much, because then they stop being a point of reference to become a limitation, and in many cases, an excuse.

What do you think of this? Are you in the process of putting any labels on or off?

Quarterly planning

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Once again, we reach that moment when, in the Norther hemisphere, we enjoy the longest day and the shortest night of the year: it´s the summer solstice. And once again, we got lucky with the weather, like last year: it´s been a gorgeous day here in Ireland.

Now that I think about it, all season changes have something special,, don´t they? Very often they´re moments of change also within us, or at a minimum, a great opportunity to take a step back and assess how we´re doing.

(Photo taken at Malahide beach, exactly one year ago)

In previous years, I wrote about small rituals you can perform on days like this, like, for example, during Saint John´s Eve. This time, however, I´m afraid my proposal sounds considerably less glamorous and more bureaucratic, though I hope you will find it equally inspiring, and above all, useful: doing quarterly planning.

This is something that, in many companies, including where I work (at least in the technology-oriented areas), is a well-established process, and, coincidentally, our team is due to do it this coming week, although we´ve already been preparing for a couple of weeks. The basic steps we follow and the questions we ask ourselves can be used for all kinds of projects, big and small, personal and professional:

The first thing we have to do is clarify priorities:

  • What would we like our main focus to be in this coming quarter?
  • When the quarter is over, what would we like to have achieved?
  • What else would we like to at least make some progress on?

Let´s remember some basic rules when it comes to prioritising anything: if everything is equally important, then nothing is, which makes the word "priority" lose its meaning, rendering the whole system completely useless. What definitely works is estabilshing an order of priorities,, ranking them so that no positions are shared. So, to ensure the first priority is actually the first one on the list, the rest of tasks, projects or goals have to necessarily be placed underneath.

A technique that can really help here is distinguishing between tasks, projects or goals that absolutely need to be in the plan for whatever reason (also called "must-have"), and the ones that it would be nice to get included, but that are not indispensable as such (also called "nice to have"). This distinction can clarify a lot for us, making the rest of the process a lot more straightforward.

By the way, I want to say that I´m generalising a lot here; when I refer to "tasks, projects or goals", it can be literally anything that´s important to us and that we want to give time, energy and attention to. For this summer quarter, for example, one of the top priorities may very well be to rest and go on vacation, which is absolutely necessary in order to maintain a sustainable pace later on.

Once priorities are clear, and knowing the reason why the top priorities are at the top, we move on to define the work:

  • How much work is involved in each of these priorities?
  • What is the work? What needs to be done (roughly)?
  • What resources do we need to do that work? Do we already have them, or are we dependent on others to get them?

The idea here is to understand the scope of each task, project or goal, getting to a level of detail that allows us to roughly estimate the effort. We should also have a good understanding of whether we depend on others, or others depend on us, to successfully complete it.

Now that we have a relatively clear idea of the work, we can move to calculate capacity:

  • How much work can we tackle this trimester? (taking into account other factors as well)
  • Does everything we were hoping to fit in, fit in?
  • How can we adjust the plan so that we maximise the results?

And here is where the rubber meets the road: evaluating capacity against workload. We all have a limited amount of hours in a day, and in the majority of cases, other tasks and obligations to attend to, so this step is fundamental: how realistic is to try and cover everything we´re including in the plan?

Finding the answer to this question can be a little tricky sometimes, and it may require negotiation with others or with ourselves if, after doing all the sums, it doesn´t all "fit in". But that´s exactly why doing this exercise is so fundamental; to be able to, on the one hand, adjust and optimize the plan as required, and on the other hand, manage expectations (those from others, and also our own). All this is what is going to allow us to increase our chances of success.

What do you think of this process? Do you see yourself doing this for your personal life, or maybe a creative or professional project? I have a few things I want to move forward this summer, so that I can start strong in September.

What about you? What´s your plan?