Dear Reader,

A couple of days ago a beautiful realisation happened to me. However, like all the best things in life, it didn’t seem pleasant at all in the beginning. In fact, it looked like a colleague of mine, in an email, was attacking me for not being available, almost evasive, and for not following through some themes.

As you might expect, my opinion is that these “accusations” are false, but I may be a little biased! What it is true is that the email was so poorly written, so plainly acid, awkward and pretentious that at one point I realised the truth.

That email was not defining me. It was defining the person writing it.

Having understood this, I immediately relaxed and let go of all that trash talk.

I know, from experience and from reading something about Stoicism, that an event is not good or bad per se, but everything depends on our perception of it. But realising that we can not only work on our attitude but also shift the focus of an event from ourselves to the initial cause itself, gives us an incredible power to bring facts into the right perspective.

Moreover, as a physicist, I should have known better. The effects are studied to gain information about the cause, not about the affected matter! We look what his hit by light to infer characteristics of the source, not of the target. We look at the ball falling and bouncing to understand gravity, not the ground. We use a compass to describe the magnetic field of Earth, not the ship’s captain using it.

From now on, I will listen to descriptions to learn about the describer, not the object.

Until next time, calibrate the readings of your flying instruments carefully. You will fly above much rough terrain.