Meaning and courage to begin again

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about one word:

“meaning”.

Last Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. Some of you who have followed my writing may already know that, on that day, I boarded an American Airlines flight at JFK Airport in New York at approximately 8:12 in the morning. I was headed to Los Angeles to cover the second edition of the Latin Grammy Awards. While we were in the air, four commercial flights were hijacked. Our flight was diverted to Indianapolis, where I remained stranded for four days.

They say there are no coincidences.

This past Friday night, my wife and I were driving home in the rain, caught in the enormous traffic that had brought Mexico City to a standstill because of two demonstrations. As we were traveling along a fast-moving avenue, I saw something cross the road that at first looked like a mouse. When I looked more closely, I realized it was a tiny kitten, lost in the middle of the street.

I told my wife, who would rescue every dog and cat in the world if she could. Without hesitation, she stopped the car in the middle of the avenue, got out and went to rescue the kitten. In seconds that felt like an eternity, we watched a truck come close to running over him. Some cars continued speeding by while others stopped. It was as if everything had paused and, at the same time, was moving in slow motion.

We already have two six-year-old cats at home, and for months my wife and I had been debating whether to bring home a third. I kept saying that we should wait until next year. And then this happened. We now have a third cat. We took him to the veterinarian that same night and were told that he was approximately one month old.

I have stopped so many times to question what September 11, 2001, has meant in my life. It felt like a second opportunity: to live, to notice, to become more conscious and to truly understand that life is fragile. As Sting reminds us in his song Fragile, how fragile we are.

Throughout this week, I have felt especially sensitive. I do not doubt that part of it comes from the body’s memory awakening in response to events from the past. Many years may have passed, but memory holds on to everything.

For some reason, this kitten, whom I decided to name Grey, has touched something very deep in me. He could not have known how fragile his life was when he crossed that avenue, perhaps searching for his mother, food, shelter, protection, companionship or something else. Something unexpected moved him, and something unexpected altered the course of his life.

What does all of this mean?

What gives your life meaning right now?

How can you contribute to making this world better?

Perhaps meaning is not something we find. Perhaps it is something we create when we respond to what life places in front of us.

In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm suggests that love expresses itself primarily through giving, rather than receiving. That is what my wife did without hesitation or a second thought. Something in me simply moved me to shout that I saw something defenseless and innocent, exposed to everything without even knowing it.

For a moment, I saw myself in that kitten: doing what instinct tells us to do, without always having the awareness or maturity to understand the risk involved. Sometimes we cannot see what lies in front of us, yet we convince ourselves that we can.

Call it God, life or luck: September 11, 2001, was not the day my life ended. Something allowed me to remain here and, as Gabo might say, live to tell the tale. That same force has now allowed Grey to have one more day. I was 38 years old then. Grey is one month old now. Perhaps the number does not matter. What matters is the awareness of doing something with the life you have today, while you are still here.

Beginning again does not mean rejecting or erasing everything that came before. It means being willing to look at your life with new eyes, question what no longer fits, learn what this moment is asking of you and integrate everything you have lived into a new form of contribution.

Experience can become something we protect, or wisdom we put back into motion.

This is why I do the work I do. I help experienced people who sense that one chapter has ended, even when they cannot yet see the next one. I help them honor what they have built, recover meaning and agency, and become apprentices again, without waiting for permission, so they can create their next meaningful contribution.

Perhaps life does not acquire meaning until we decide to give it meaning through what we do, without conditions, guarantees or expectations. Giving is giving, as Fito Páez would say.

That force has all of us here today. And perhaps this is the moment to give your life meaning through one simple act: give, move and do something for someone. It does not matter whether it is a person or an animal.

That is what I am thinking about.

If you find yourself standing between what you have already built and what may be asking to emerge, I leave you with these questions:

What is life asking you to learn now?

And what might become possible if you were willing to begin again?