Many of you will agree with me that los­ing your wal­let is like los­ing half of your life. Well, it was like that was sev­eral years ago. After that, it was the filo­fax that made you feel you lost half of your life if you lost it. I remem­ber that story in the Ate­neo of Kris Aquino los­ing her filo­fax and (almost) every­one know­ing her show­biz secrets. Today, you feel like you lost half of your life when you lose your cell phone. Or your laptop.

Last week, I talked about the 20 Things I Learned in Life. I for­got to put in that list one really impor­tant les­son I have also learned. It’s good though because then it gives me a chance to talk about that topic today.

This les­son is some­thing I learned in the Novi­tiate of the Soci­ety of Jesus, and it was taught to me/us by the great Fr. Benny Calpo­tura. He calls it “liv­ing in the ten­sions”. The con­cept is sim­i­lar to Par­menides’ Golden Mean (check that out your­self in wikipedia! hehe).

I first heard this story from a Jesuit priest when I was in High School. I remem­ber he asked the choir to play Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star before he said the homily. I also remem­ber Fr. Bill Abbott, SJ send­ing me an email and end­ing with this story when I was teach­ing in Cebu. I got this a third time in the email the other day. Third time’s the charm, and so I’m post­ing it:

Wish­ing to encour­age her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took her boy to a Paderewski con­cert. After they were seated, the mother spot­ted an old friend in the audi­ence and walked down the aisle to greet her.

I am repost­ing this arti­cle by Rick Broida of Life​hacker​.Com. I have done the sug­ges­tions here myself and have found these to be very help­ful in my con­tin­u­ing quest to unclut­ter my life. As in all things, use the prin­ci­ple of TANTUM QUANTUM (or what­ever is help­ful) to decide which ones you will use in the list below.

Four­teen months in the mak­ing, 42 coun­tries, and a cast of thou­sands. Where the Hell is Matt this time?