It’s one of the most spoiled terms of today’s language. Writing ‘to do lists’, listening to podcast and videos about how to do more in less time, reading books about how to cook while doing something else and so on. The Western world is always on the go and we forgot how to actually make our time valuable without doing at least things at the same time. We think that this is called balance, that if we can work while doing something else it's just a win-win. But what would it feel like if we took a step back? Do we work to live or do we live to work?

The way we interpret the word "productivity" is the biggest key: the standard human being can actually only do a few things really well at the same time, and some of them will not be perfect anyways. When we force our brain to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, we get stressed and we don't actually manage to do them all as well as we would like. Is that really considered productive? Do we really want to do a bunch of things badly instead of choosing a few and do them really well? In fact, I would say that that is the opposite of productive.

Do we really not have time to adjust our ways? Sometimes the best thing we can do is to stop for a minute and think about the quality of what we are doing, how it can benefit us, and once we've cleared that out, keep going at a pace that we feel comfortable with. Sometimes it really comes down to quality over quantity.

Most of the Western world is so fond of its stress and fast pace that it often takes a huge event, like a heart attack due to too much stress, for people to understand that this is not the natural way of living. In fact, it’s not even pleasurable. Have you ever heard about stress addicts? They are those people who thrive on tight deadlines, who purposely leave things until the last minute and who can’t physically have one minute of free time in their day. They think they are being productive, they are very proud of themselves and fairly they are probably succeeding in life. But at what cost? Are they even able to enjoy what they worked so hard to achieve? Is it actually worth it? Well, the answer is, when you’re too busy tackling all your chores in the list, you are probably not getting the whole experience of life. And yes, you might be productive in the sense that you are doing a lot in your day, but no one is going to give you a golden star for that. Sometimes you just have to give it to yourself by enjoying what you work for.

We could restore the true meaning of the word ‘productivity’, therefore re-learn how to live and thrive not only by putting effort in our inputs, but also by enjoying the outputs.

There was a small snake in my house. It was hiding behind the couch. I try to let it outside through the window in the living room, but it wouldn't go. I hate things that slither.

It moves very fast to the kitchen. I try to follow him. There is some bread baking in the oven. The snake goes inside it. I turn off the oven and carefully open it. I am astonished: several snake skins lay beside the perfectly baked loaf of bread. One is red, one is purple and the other one is blue. The snake has vanished.

I wake up.

13th of April. My father tells me and my brother to come to the living room, he has something to tell us.

“Mum couldn’t make it through the night.”

Those words hit us hard. I thought I had just imagined it, or most likely I hoped so. Suddenly the world felt like something I was not living, but rather watching from outside, like a powerless witness.

Cancer is a unpredictable. There is no way of knowing how it is going to develop. It’s not like any degenerative illness, but the healing process is degenerative itself. It strips you and your family of all your energy, and you just have to power through, without even knowing whether you want to fight anymore. This fight can last months, years, decades. No one knows, not even the doctors, when and if it will come back.

As a 14-year-old who had just started to understand how life works, that was a tough introduction to the world.

Before that moment, I already knew that something was going to change.

My mum had beeen sick for almost three years. She had ups and downs, but we were still able to enjoy our time together.

I remember the last time we went on a holiday together. My family rented a house with a pool in a beach town near Rome, so that she would have no problem going to the hospital whenever she needed to. We were happy there. My mother was often in the shade by the pool - she couldn’t lay in the sun due to her chemo.

She was beautiful even though her hair was gone. We were always joking about how that look actually suited her.

Unfortunately, her positivity wasn’t enough to beat cancer, and in the months after summer it developed quickly. She was hospitalized.

She had already been in the hospital for a couple of months when my dad brought me to see her in the night. I knew it was the last time I would see her.

She was laying in bed, in pain. She was not awake, yet I could hear her suffering. I started crying and the nurse gave me some juice. She died that same night.

That episode would come to haunt me in the night during the following years. It’s never easy to realise that your parents are not invincible, let alone to see them in such a vulnerable state.

In the days after seeing her, I would wake up in the morning expecting to see her making breakfast, hoping that it was all just a bad dream. It was not, and my life had to go on without her.

#Mother #Loss