Every person’s life has an unpredictable but inevitable alternation of ups and downs. Moments of splendor that we would like to eternalize, intertwined with others of pain that we fear we will never overcome.

Idealized well-being It does not consist of only seeking moments of glory and fulfillment but of knowing this alternation and learning to live in it – not with it but in it.

We often talk about learning to detect and intensely enjoy each of those wonderful moments that life has in store for us. Others, not so many, take care of bringing to light the issue of knowing how to cope with difficult moments.

Guidelines to overcome failures

Today I would like to walk with you on a path that takes us a little further. I would like to be able to point out some guidelines that help us “befriend” those moments of frustration or failure.

It’s not about resigning yourself to fate of eternal Prometheans, condemned like the mythological hero to push a huge stone uphill knowing that the rock will roll from the top to the place from where we started, to force us to repeat the useless cycle of the ascent.

In the life that I know and that I like, even when the stone many times rolls down due to a slope, it always rolls forward and the point of restart is always better than the starting point. When we think about mythology, I think that the image of our existence that I intend to convey is more similar to the one emblematized by the myth of the Phoenix.

The legend of the Phoenix bird

The Phoenix was a wonderfully beautiful bird that lived in paradise, along with the first man and the first woman, whom it followed everywhere. When Adam and Eve were expelled, an angel carrying a flaming sword was appointed to guard the gates of paradise and prevent the couple from returning to Eden.

Driven by love and loyalty, The Phoenix tried to prevent the doors from closing permanently for his friends. Then, a spark jumped from the guardian’s sword and the bird’s beautiful plumage ignited, ending its life in a multicolored flare.

Maybe as a prize Because it was the only beast that had refused to taste the forbidden fruit, or perhaps because it was unfair that an act of love ended in such a death, the fact is that all the angels agreed to grant the Phoenix several gifts, such as healing the wounds of other living beings with its tears and eternal life.

His immortality was manifested in his eternal ability to return to life by rising from his ashes.

According to legend, when it was time for him to diethe Phoenix bird made a nest of spices and aromatic herbs and laid a single egg in it. After hatching it for a few days, one night, as the sun set, the Phoenix spontaneously combusted, burning completely and reducing itself to ashes.

Thanks to the heat of the flames, The egg was finished hatching and, at dawn, the shell broke, and the Phoenix bird re-emerged from the still smoking remains. It was not another bird, it was the same Phoenix, always unique and eternal, although always younger and stronger than before it died. Always wiser because he also had the virtue of remembering everything he learned in his previous life.

The myth of the Phoenix bird exists in almost all ancient cultures; And not only in the oldest sacred traditions of the East – Egyptians, Hebrews, Sumerians and Chinese – but also in the myths and legends of the New World – Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and Mapuches – they have similar equivalents.

try again

In almost all latitudes it is an animal of good omen, guaranteeing the life and eternal growth of the breed. In China, it is a very important part of traditional culture. There it is classically described as a huge bird with the head of a snake, the body of a turtle, the wings of a dragon, the beak of an eagle and the tail of a fish, representing for some the five most virtuous gifts: justice, reliability, courage, compassion and humility.

Those of us who love stories know that, when a story is so present throughout geography and history, it cannot mean more than a universal and shared need, a teaching or learning that must be passed from generation to generation:

Learn from failures, try again what was not achieved, enriched by experience, and grow in adversity

A message from the ancestors that today we would define as a praise for resilience and that, for war strategists, is summed up in that well-known phrase that announces that losing in the cruelest of battles, but not dying in it, only makes us stronger.

Since Carl Jung’s work on symbols, the psychological world cannot ignore the weight and importance of the images that have accompanied humanity since the beginning of time. The idea of ​​the resurrection also appears there.

Thus, the mythical concept of death never represents the end fateful but quite the opposite. It is the expression of maximum change, of the cancellation of the old that gives rise to the new. It is the emblem of the most positive aspect of detachment in its most complete expression.

Tarot readers say that the arcana of death It appears in a spread always announcing a transformation that will necessarily – and not without anguish – lead to the dissolution of old conflicts and the overcoming of old problems, anticipating the end of the previous and the birth of something new and possibly better.

A difficult stage and lossesfull of pain and fear, but capable of freeing us from archaic ties. An open door that pushes us to say goodbye to what no longer serves us.

The history of my works

I would like to share in these pages a small personal story. It happened about two years ago. I had decided to take courage and do a small renovation in my little house in Nerja. My plans were not ostentatious, but I quickly realized that they involved demolishing two partitions and raising a third to expand the bathroom and kitchen, at the cost of sacrificing the second bedroom.

The work started on a Monday and my beloved den became, little by little, a temporarily uninhabitable place. On Thursday, one of the workers, who I had known for a long time, accidentally hit his finger with the sledgehammer.

Nothing serious happened But anyway, I recommended that he stop his work and put some ice on the area to prevent swelling. After improvising an ice pack and holding his arm in a sling, I poured him a coffee and made him sit down.

While he took it, I glanced at the mace, abandoned next to the wall.

-Can? —I asked the construction manager. «If you’re careful…» he told me, guessing what my intention was.

I hit the wall with the mace… And then another. And another one…

A piece of wall fell at my feet.

I realized that a mysterious pleasant sensation came over me.

An hour later, debris was all that remained of the partition.

I was looking at the blister that many weeks later it would still hurt me, showing red on my thumb, and I thought about the metaphor of the Phoenix bird.

Leave, abandon, die, let go of something that was once good, useful or enjoyable as the only way to make way for something better.

Today, sitting in the modernized and comfortable kitchenI look out the bright window, from where I can now see the sea, and I realize some other things to which I lived uselessly clinging for so long…

And some others that I still carry todayas if I did not fully understand that the path is increasingly better if we abandon the burden of what is no longer, if we conquer the certainty that we are capable of rising from the ashes of what we were: like my little house, today more beautiful than ever, born from the rubble of what was.