16 life lessons from Capdevila.

1. Limitations make us grow. That accepting limitations has a painful point and a liberating point. You lose weight and you can pour your body and soul into what you have left, if you learn to stop regretting what you lose. When you close a door, a lot of windows open by themselves.
2. Kindness is the best contagion effect . That kindness can be the most revolutionary idea. It has the transformative power of people who wear a smile, who transmit optimism, who make us laugh, who improve the environment wherever they go.
3. The body is like a dog . That instead of lamenting when the body complains to us and saying "damn knee", it would be time to value the years it has supported us and bent at our service. Instead of cursing the bones, we should celebrate that this skeleton does what it can and more to keep us standing.
4. That the Joy of living has no methods but it has teachers. It is advisable to approach, while waiting for contagion, simple people, who focus on kindness and the esteem and care of others, who go unnoticed in a world that rewards cynicism more than naivety.
5. We are here to take care of ourselves with great tact . That we have come here, although we hide it too well, to love and be loved, and therefore, to take care of ourselves. And that caring for people is the most important task in the world, and the least valued.
6. Never argue with an idiot. The key is to detect and stop them sooner, but this requires a mature and respectful society that ignores cheap provocation and admires values more than results at any price.
7. Why do we apologize for crying? That the person with whom it doesn't hurt you to cry and who keeps you the right company is necessarily a very good friend. Especially if you also know how to laugh together.
8. It is never too late to learn to walk because with the friend I walk with the most we are much closer friends since we walk together: you are more sincere, more direct, deeper.
9. That without trust there is no motivation, because trust often bears more fruit than vigilance.
10. That hard-working optimists are more seduced. Those who know that everything is a disaster and everything can go very wrong if we don't remedy it soon. And that's why they roll up their sleeves. And they maintain this point of naivety necessary to believe that they can. Because without trust there is no conviction and without conviction there are no results and without results there are no reasons to maintain hope.
11. That prioritizing means discarding. That in order to give the enthusiastic and possible yes to the one you want, you must say a forceful no and exonerate the one who doesn't fit.
12. That the worst thing about fear is when it drives us , when it settles on the steering wheel. Because fear can make us traitors and can completely paralyze us. The fear of the truth makes us liars, the fear of feeling strong emotions makes us cold, the fear of risk makes us throw in too many towels, and the fear of dying can prevent us from living.
13. That we are more what we do than what we say , we are more what we decide than what we think, we are when we act and not when we reflect. And as we have come here to relate, education is the sublime art and craft of learning while teaching and of teaching while learning. Only by being truly, from the heart and always can you learn and teach to be there.
14. That we need more bad temper and more hope. We have to be more angry and more excited. It is better for us to point out and denounce the culprits, look them in the eyes, not assume that this is the point, show them all the anger we feel. And simultaneously fix the day to day with your hands, from non-conformity, with ambition and with the absolute certainty that it is possible.
15. That they need doctors and teachers with a bedside vision, who instead of dedicating themselves to the assigned and sufficient bit, are able to distance themselves and take care of entire people, from head to toe. Caring is much more than healing.
16. That beauty is in the look, and there is no more beautiful privilege than being observed from unconditional love and the joy of living. There is no safer and more profitable investment than surrounding ourselves with people who love us just the way we are, who find us beautiful regardless of what the mirror dictates. They always look at us with good eyes.

Carles Capdevila (December 30, 2016)

Translated by Cristina Oroz Bajo

Original Source: 16 things I have learned in 2016.