“I can separate my personal and professional life very well,” he tells me.

Ok. So you mean you have two lives?

What do you do in your personal life?

I love the weekends and the 22 working days of vacation I get every year. In my personal life I am myself. The laid-back Tom that my family knows so well. A friend to his friend. And always ready to help. I say what I think without masks. I’m always joking and cracking jokes. I like to walk around relaxed in shorts and sleeveless t-shirt.

I’m usually in this state from 6 in the afternoon to 9 in the morning, plus weekends.

What do you do in your professional life?

I celebrate Fridays. I hate Mondays. I have adopted a more yang posture so that I can defend myself and not be judged so easily. This mask protects me from problems and complications that may arise (like being fired, for example). I respect them, but I also like them to respect me. From the moment they don’t respect me, then I give them hell. They are screwed with me. I wear a suit because they force me to. I even have a clause in my contract for this to happen.

I’m usually in this state from nine in the morning until six in the evening, excluding weekends.

Much of the world’s population lives these two lives. To live like this is to live in suffering. To live trapped and without light. Without freedom. To live like this is to live in extremes.

By observation, it is impossible to live in extremes. How long can a pendulum be at one extreme? Only a moment. How long can a pendulum live centered and at rest, without effort? Indefinitely.

Within the scientific field of physics, theoretically speaking, how much energy does a pendulum expend to get from one extreme to the other? Immense. How much energy does a centered, resting pendulum expend? Zero. Basically, we expend immense energy on a daily basis to get from one extreme to the other. Why? To what end?

You already know the answer. We all know the answer. To what? You only have one life. You don’t have a professional life or a personal life. And if you have two lives you are in pain and expending tremendous energy. Unnecessarily. You have one and only one life.

Life is not something you have. Let alone two. Life is something you live. All we have to note is that life is a gift, and that gift is the flow of events that you notice between your first breath in and your last breath out.