The Pause #7: 🍫 I didn't feel like celebrating
Dear Chocolover,
When Románicos turned 25, I did not feel like celebrating. I felt the need to stop and take account, of what I had built, and of what I want now, for my life and for Románicos both.
Life moves so quickly. I can still remember the afternoon I decided to look for my grandmother's truffle recipe, just to see whether I could make it. Somehow, more than two decades have passed since then.
When you own a small business, it is very easy to give all of your energy to emergencies and to the responsibilities of the day. Then one morning you wake up and you are not as young as you were. There are celebrations you missed. There are friends you cannot remember the last time you sat with over coffee.
We postpone life, believing we will catch up later. Usually, we don't.
So this year I sat with a harder question. Not what I wanted to accomplish, but what quality of life I actually wanted to live inside of.
The answer turned out to be small, intentional actions; and deliberately making room for them. Out of that came a system I call MRCE. Fancy letters for four simple ideas.
M — Movement. Move every day. Park farther from the grocery store. Stretch before breakfast.
R — Refine. Improve one thing. Sew the missing button back onto a blouse. Replace a tired photograph on the website.
C — Connect. Call a friend. Say yes to the celebration. Make time for the people who matter.
E — Expand. Do one thing that takes me past the edge of my comfort. Speak to a stranger. Go to the place I have always said was too far.
MRCE runs on consistency, not on grand gestures that are impressive once and then forgotten.
The power to build a life on your own terms begins with intention, and the change has been real.
My weeks feel different now; fuller, and less like something happening to me while I am busy elsewhere. When I look back at seven days, I can point to what was in them: my body moved, something got better, someone heard my voice, I went somewhere new.
I still make my grandmother's truffles the way I learned to make them that first afternoon. There is nothing grand about the recipe. It is one small, careful act, repeated, and twenty-five years later, a whole life has grown up around it. It took me a long time to apply that anywhere but the kitchen.
Most importantly, I no longer feel that life is passing too quickly.
It is passing with meaning.
Life is only now. Tomorrow does not exist yet, and yesterday is a memory, not a place where we can act.
What could you do today to make your life a little fuller?
Who do you need to call, just to say hello?
With love,
Alejandra