A querencia is a Spanish word that is difficult to translate. It basically means a place where we feel safe, a ‘home’. It doesn’t actually have to be where we live, it’s a place from which we draw our strength and inspiration. For example, in bullfighting, a bull may stake out a querencia in a part of the ring where he will gather his energies before another charge.
Where is your querencia?
Another difficult-to-translate Spanish word is friolero, meaning having a special sensitivity to cold. Being friolero doesn’t imply criticism. It’s like being double-jointed or lactose intolerant: it’s just a fact about you.
The word is affectionate. Some of one’s favourite people might be especially friolero – and therefore in special need of blankets and hugs. Which is me. And if truth be told, most of us.
How do we give ourselves comfort?
How can we make a little space in our hearts for every place that we arrive at?
Valentine’s Day might just be the perfect reminder to do just that. It’s like puling a thread from a sweater; the next thing you know you have a pile of yarn on the floor.
How do we solve the problem of how to love your life? (And your rooms.)
This journey to knowing yourself is lifelong work. We form bonds to be of service to others, not to ourselves. But service must be given freely. To give freely of oneself, one must know oneself. And when you know who you are and what you stand for, you stand in wisdom.
Everyone has their own paradoxical inner rain. When you really want to disappear, is when you really want to be seen. When you really don’t want to talk, is when you really want to be heard. When you really want to be left alone, is when you really want to be comforted. When you really want to run away from everybody, is when you really want to be found – by almost anybody.
The things that were. The things that could have been. The things you hoped for. The splinters in your heart. The rips in your sofa.
Do you use elegiac bedding that has been with you since university dorm days?
Do you wistfully yearn for stillness and languorous reading time, but don’t have a comfortable chair or proper lighting?
Have you been caught in the crosshairs meaning to get some pieces framed – and hung?
Do you long to bring some sentimental objects into a new story in your home, but have no idea what box they are packed in?
Do you treat yourself to fresh flowers or even one?
Have you made playlists of your favourite music?
Things can fail, but it didn’t necessarily mean that you have failed. You never fail if you can put your feet on the floor the next morning. And when you come to the end of yourself, that’s when something else can begin.
Georgia O’Keefe said that whether or not you succeed or not is irrelevant, as there’s no such thing. Success is an arbitrary measurement and it’s not always a victory march. It defines who we are, it’s uncomfortable, flowery and won’t always go well.
What if success was measured by how much better or worse you left the place than when you arrived?
What if it was measured by how kindly you’ve treated yourself and others, and how respectful you were of your emotions and experiences, and theirs?
What if it was measured by well you loved, and by how much grace and fortitude you displayed in the face of life’s challenges?
What if it were measured by how compassionate and forgiving you were with the unfinished diamonds of others who are on the same journey as you are? That you had the palatable, reassuring sense that it’s okay to be a human being.
What if it was measured by how much joy you brought to the table? (By the way, if I had read the above paragraphs on the inside of book jacket, I might have searched for a lightly used copy on Amazon.)
It’s no secret that we’re hardwired for connection.
Making a home in this world is a function of making time to love. It is taking time for yourself and for your family. It’s taking time and giving attention to being a good friend and to the forgotten neighbour next door with her meowing stray cat.
We have such a careless disdain of fate. We think we have all the time in the world, but sometimes we will never get the chance to see someone or some place again.
All we can do is make the moments we have matter.
Maybe now is the day to start.
We all need to develop positive yet challenging qualities like confidence, devotion, and faith in order to better connect to those we care about and accomplish the tasks we truly value. In order to cultivate these virtues, we human beings need regular reminders of their dimensions and importance.
Valentine’s Day can be this kind of ambit nudge, serving as a prompt so that, ideally, we can change and thus grow.
I’d tell you more, but frankly, I’m getting despondent about the whole thing. Maybe I just should take myself off to a small fireproof room. Or go in the other room and watch TV, but that would require moving and I don’t know I’m that motivated.
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