We’re back in Portugal for a third summer working on our house and returning always marks a time of change. Changing the scenery (goodbye cityscape, welcome forest!), changing our clothes, slipping into shorts and flip flops after months of dull winter, changing the routine, waking up with the sun and telling time by where the shadows land on our trees, and changing our appearance (goodbye freshly showered and groomed, hello scruffy!)
And then there’s changing the stakes—because we’re here to make things happen. I came across a quote from Elon Musk, the pioneering, controversial magnate who grabs so many headlines, that seems relevant when it comes to change. Musk, who admits he’s a workaholic, says, “nobody ever changed the world in 40 hours a week.” I agree because if you want to make fundamental, major, or systematic change in the world (at least your personal one), you have to devote yourself to it, committing to it daily like a top athlete.
Making change requires work: sweat, effort, determination, patience and yes, a few tears on those days nothing seems to pan out. Our project rebuilding ruins and revitalizing our land has meant a lot of work. We hoped that modernising an abandoned house would only take a few years then we’d be up and running a retreat center, welcoming guests. But it's 3.5 years later and the house is hardly finished. We replaced the roof, replastered walls and built new ones, installed floors with more to come, then there’s connecting plumbing, electricity, and heating, and all the stuff that makes a house livable. Forget the communal kitchen and dining room, that’s going to be few years down the road…
So this project involves work, logistics, coordinating, hustling to find skilled builders, juggling and stretching our finances, and physically hauling things like gravel, sand, and cement downhill in the heat. That’s work. But….
I once considered work a 4-letter word, but I’m starting to think differently because whenever you are passionate about what you're doing, all that labor, effort, and appetite for digging in isn’t focused on the results you’ll get at the end of the day. It’s about the process of creating change in the here and now; it’s about enjoying what you are doing while holding to a grandiose vision of the future. Like a 5-year-old enthralled by the beauty of music who practices violin 5 hours a day imagining a future audience. This deep enjoyment and stretching oneself to achieve something greater doesn’t feel onerous like “work,” it’s more like love, which is tireless. Our vision creating a peaceful haven away from the buzzing chaos and strife of today’s world energises us. It’s less like work and more like a mission.
Someone once told me “We’re not here to change the world, we’re here to love it.” I’ve been thinking about this again and again because I moved to Portugal thinking I wanted to change the world. I wanted to avoid (especially now) the amped up, aggressive collective that’s stuck in fighting over who’s right, and instead create peace and silence, become that profound space between notes.
But isn’t wanting to change the world a head trip or mental masturbation, because you can’t change externals, only yourself. Think about the verb change itself. You can change your mind, your hair, a password or the sheets, your religion, or attitude, but you can’t change anyone else’s. You can encourage, manipulate, cajole, blackmail, and force them to conform to your vision or rules, but you can’t change their heart.
So maybe thinking I can change the world is egotistical, because no matter how much time or life energy I devote to it, the world is going to change when or how it's supposed to. It’s too big, too dynamic, there are too many moving parts. So, if I stop trying to change the world and instead accept it as it is, or if I start loving what’s there, what’s present (especially in my world, which isn’t necessarily yours; it’s the one I inhabit, build and react to), well, isn’t it love that moves mountains?
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