The Power of Focus – ElPropósito7 min de lectura

Our son Gabriel’s arrival and a lesson for life

Thank you, Javi, for the photo 🙂 Adri, Gabriel, Rodrigo Jr. and me

This is a special post: about family, deeply personal and perhaps a little long. So thank you for staying with me this far, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading it. I hope to share something that makes you a better person without having to go through what we went through. This journey begins in December 2018, when Juan Diego, our second son, left this earth after fifteen days of life. JD left an indelible mark on my heart and on all our hearts, especially my wife’s, and on our whole family and our friends.

So much has happened in the more than a year since JD left that listing it all would be nearly impossible, and too much for one post. Perhaps the biggest thing was simply taking the next step. Which step? Toward where? How? How do you get your strength back? How do you carry the sorrow, the grief? Simply IMPOSSIBLE. Impossible to regain your strength without reliving everything, impossible to trust again, impossible to believe you can go on with life.

No strategy, path or advice can bring the comfort you need in life’s worst moments, especially when you lose someone so loved, so wanted and forever dreamed of. In that endless sea of turbulence, storm and anguish (right inside that IMPOSSIBLE), something emerges that I can’t quite describe: a prayer, a family hug, a friendship, standing shoulder to shoulder with my wife. Each one was the lifeline we so badly needed.

And then, just when you think there’s no energy left and no way out, when life feels so beautiful and at the same time so hard, cruel and merciless, hope, trust and above all Faith rise again. Matters (reasons) of the heart that, as the saying goes, "reason does not understand". A doctor appears who quietly put a bracelet on JD’s tiny leg (his wrist was far too small) so he would leave this world wearing it. He gave one to my wife and one to me, kept one for himself, and now those bracelets connect us all. A coach appears who inspires me and gives me the chance to train for an Ironman in memory of my son Juan Diego. A whole team of doctors, psychologists, coaches and friends appears, giving us their unconditional support to keep going.

So many people appear whom I may not have noticed before, and now I know they were always there, always looking out for us, always holding a lifeline ready to throw at the height of the storm. A friend appears who had already learned to swim with tuna and teaches me how. A friend appears who has the joy of flying every day, close to God and to JD, and who calls to tell me that at some point in the day he was thinking of me and of us.

Our family appears, who were and are both the lifeline and the ship that carried us to port. And then, all of a sudden, my wife appears. Like me, heart broken and thoughts just as shattered, or worse, she tells me one day, "We’re expecting again". The mind is infinite, and so were my thoughts, of every kind and at every hour. And here comes the lesson of my life.

Over these nearly nine months, a mind that for thirty-seven years had wanted to be and do a thousand things at once finally learned to concentrate on one single task: Gabriel. I’ve been restless since I was a kid, and I had never enjoyed (until now) the calm of focusing on one result and setting aside everything else I long for. This time I wanted to do things differently from how I did them while everything with Juan Diego was happening, and one of those things was learning to focus. (I should clarify here that my son JD was born premature and left us 15 days after he was born. Those 15 days were the worst of my life, and all kinds of things went through my mind.)

You can have your life all planned out, a thousand things to do and a thousand more to achieve, until it’s all wiped out in one stroke. Today I see that you shouldn’t have to reach an extreme like ours to discover the power of focus. Focus lets you enjoy more. It fills you with joy and brings much more energy and happiness to the result you’re waiting for. We clearly live unfocused, chasing a thousand things, when most of the time it all comes down to one single thing that, in the end, always gets done well. What’s yours right now? Mine these past eight months was Gabriel. Now I can finally ask: what’s next?

How often, as the saying goes, do we bite off more than we can chew? How often, trying to achieve so much, do we achieve little or less than nothing? This principle of focus has become one of the pillars of my life, which is why I wanted to write a little about it. Maybe in a later post I’ll describe in more detail how I applied it and how I’ll keep applying it for the rest of my life. For example, I’ll probably write my annual plan this week (I didn’t write it in December as usual, precisely because I was focused on Gabriel). So what will it focus on? Which goal will I put above all else? It’s a big responsibility, and what I’m sure of is that it raises the odds of success.

I’ll share more later. For now I have to stop writing, because Gabriel is waiting for me, and so are my son Rodrigo and my beloved wife, Adriana, to whom I dedicate this post on International Women’s Day. I dedicate it to her for the life lesson I know we learned together without ever discussing or planning it. Learning to focus came naturally, and the fruit of that focus is Gabriel. Thank you, my beautiful princess. Without your effort, dedication and care, nothing we’re living today would be possible. I dedicate it to you for the love I have for you, and because in our home every day is Women’s Day.

To you, the reader, thank you for reading. Thank you to everyone who in any way shared the post I wrote about my son Juan Diego, was inspired by it, or inspired someone else with it. Thank you to everyone who stood by us all this time and to those who shared their pain and their joys with us. You’re all part of my family, and I hope that over the years I’ll keep contributing to your minds and hearts with who I am, who I want to be, and the legacy I’m still building and want to leave.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: Ernesto Sabato: his conception of art (1990). The Tunnel was a great work. I don’t remember when I read it, maybe around 15, and like any good book it left an indelible mark. This interview has made me want to read Sabato again, especially since his biography is another one on my list. His conception of art interests me because Sabato started out as a scholar of pure mathematics. His radical shift from mathematics to literature completely reawakened my interest in him, and this video shows you why.
• What I’ve been Listening to: N/A. With Gabriel’s arrival, not this week.
• What I’ve been Reading: La Resistencia. A short essay by Sabato that I reread after watching the interview above. I don’t think I’ll set a goal of 54 books this year, so I’ll jump from one book to another as I’ve done all my life (breaking this post’s principle of focus, though with books it’s a habit I keep in check, and what I start, I finish). Several things stood out, including "…the more abstractly we relate to one another, the further we drift from the heart of things, and a metaphysical indifference takes hold of us while bloodless, nameless entities take power". For me, that line has a first and last name.
• What I’ve been Learning: N/A. With Gabriel’s arrival, this week was about relearning how to hold and care for a baby 🙂

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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