The Cerberus is the guardian of the gates of hell from Greek mythology. He is a three headed watchdog on steroids. The fiercest guardian one can adopt to patrol the boundaries of all your protected spaces. And this is what we all need sometimes, a terrifying brutish force to ruthlessly guard the spaces in our lives, in our minds, and in our spirits. Not merely to be stubborn about our time and privacy. Afterall, we should be generous about our care and duties for others. But the Cerberus reminds us that we have providence over our boundaries. We choose what to let in, how much, and when.
This is what I found in Bordeaux, my new happy place, in a week-long trip to a paradise city that I will not soon forget. Creating space in your life is a layered concept I’ve been contemplating often in these emerging spring days of 2024. On career break, after writing and publishing my book, regrouping from a joyous and dizzyingly potent Christmas break with my Tampa and Boston family, my thoughts shift often back to those itchy niggling self-doubts, throughout the days of Dublin’s winter solitude. “Am I in trouble for anything today? Am I doing everything I should be?”
These are the invasive bugs in these limbo days of waiting for my next stage of career and life in general. These are the barbarians at the gate, spears and torches shaking at my fortressed walls, threatening to knock down my royal palace lifestyle, and everything that I’ve manicured and designed to be as it should be. These doubts are the soldiers of misfortune, screaming for my attention. Ghosts of past naysayers in my life, looming shadows of old authority figures from father to boss to companies at large.
And not to forget, all those demons and false gods we often conjure into breathing figures. Those of body image, mortality obsession, wealth protection, glamor, and public perception -the list is endless. All so needy, all so wanting of undivided attention, your whole day, your whole heart. Demanding day and night thoughts, replaying the past, frenziedly preparing for the future, never satisfied, always with a scolding wagging finger, ‘what have you done for me lately?’ All so willing to cast a cold eye without warning, leaving you wondering what should you have done. What should you be doing? What haven’t you done?
These are doubts too often charging my fortress walls. I have had a series of revelations since my first career break in 2020, how many voices come crashing into my moments of desired peace. Have I called my mother? Should I make a stock trade? Should I be more aggressive in a job search? Pester that girl who won’t return my call? And it goes back so much further. Sales jobs pestering me to never settle, to chase the bigger commission. Career promotions, self-improvements. Social norms that would have you believe there’s only one picketed-fence ideal to settle into. Christ on a mountain, no wonder I have so much trouble relaxing. Even when all is according to plan. No wonder standing still sometimes feels like hell.
Speaking of hell, returning to my guarded gates under attack, during the winter months of this year, I’ve found myself planning and waiting around a lot. A limbo of my own design. I am at the strange age where I still want so much and yet, I feel I have so much to lose. I don’t want to squander my savings, my lifestyle, my curated lifestyle and creative mission. I don’t want to rush into the next dumpster fire of a job. But the waiting and planning was its own special blend of torment.
So I did what every social media driven 21st century world wanderer would do, I took a holiday. A nice week-long holiday to a part of France where I’ve never been. And against all odds, in a time when I found a whisper in the winds of an open air cathedral square cafe that said, ‘Create more space in your life. Use that space to nourish your spirit. And be ruthless about it.”
This notion of creating space is a layered one indeed, one that begs some unpacking. It is not simply putting on headphones, or ignoring texts, or shutting the world out. It’s carving out the world as you need to see it, chiseled from a lumpy messy slab of clay. I have read often that some of the greatest minds, philosophers and industry titans alike, share this key ability to create space in their days. Drawing boundaries with aggressive coworkers, putting blinders on against the reckless takers, veering instead towards those who nourish you. Saying no to what takes from you too much. Paying back your deposits ingeniously to the people, activities, habits, and dreams that will pay dividends later.
In other words, when you’ve spent too much time in your own head, living the independent lifestyle like me, you can catch yourself pouring over all the unknown perceptions from others. It can drive you to paranoia. And it only begins with thinking about people, who you’ve crossed and who you’ve pandered to. Left unchecked, the shrinking walls of your own protected spaces begin to extend to every should’ve and should do, until it spirals into something I call existential dread. Am I a good person? Is the world against me? What’s the point of anything? Each nihilistic intruder, another catapult volley sieging your fortress.
Bordeaux has turned out extremely fortifying against this type of thinking. This charming French port-city has offered something I never knew I needed from a holiday. Not exhilaration. I’ve avoided the temptations to tick off the ‘must-dos’ and bucket list compulsions. Not relaxation, or at least not staged relaxation, selfies on a beach, sleeping in, over indulging. God knows this offers nothing but delayed misery on your return trip. No, what I discovered here, around every corner, every stressful push out the door in foreign territory, was a whisper of safety. Something from the cobbled streets that told me to slow down. That I belonged, that I didn’t need to pretend to be something I wasn’t. It was the gift of self-respect, a renewal of comfort in my own skin.
You could call it self-improvement, but without pretense or pretension. I resolved to speak terrible French for the sake of learning and acclamation. Not for a desperate want of acceptance. And I stood my ground on this. When people scoffed, I looked everyone squarely in the eye, because I commanded my own respect and expected it in return. I marched confidently to places I wanted to go, and created space for myself when I felt uncertain, slowing down and avoiding false bravado. I was no longer chasing this artifice of an experience, I was living my life. And despite foreign languages and customs, I believe this was a lesson I needed to take home with me for all my relationships, new and old.
So this new city whispered for me to slow down, and it helped me understand people and my place among them. But I was still left with the more elusive demons and false gods, in the shadows of my mind. I needed to know if I could summon this same principle of commanding my own space with those other vampire whispers of doubt and despair. And before long, they came back to lay siege.
Day three of feeling a new wash of peace, in the perfect city of Bordeaux, on a perfectly sunny day, I had manicured a perfect day, reading my favorite perfect book, drinking ‘un parfait café allongé. Tout a parfait!’ Everything was perfect. And then the attack, uneasy voices screaming at me for sitting still. What was I not doing? Calling home, checking in? Planning my run? Planning dinner? Planning my return?
How did they so quickly intrude on my day, forcing me to start counting my faults, my woes, my panicked deeds, my countless thankless to-do’s? How from nowhere did these marauders so deftly hijack and plunder my walls with these melees of guilt. Why can’t I relax? It’s little wonder, with so many voices unsettled, having been pandered to my whole life. But why should I not decide here and now to reclaim my boundaries from these wreckless whispers, these screaming flaring mobs?
And this is when Bordeaux gave me more than a whisper. An imagined gift, a manifestation of a protecting figure. An image far more vicious than the mob, one that would serve me. From those cathedral halls, or perhaps, from the fires of the sun overhead, suddenly I was greeted by a new stray thought, my new pet. The mighty beast that strolled up to my abstract little world, named the Cerberus. A mangy snarling son of a bitch. Monstrously terrifying in all the ways a guard dog should be. Bowing in servitude, now mine, with undying, unbridled loyalty for my protection and the fortress walls of my serenity.
My Cerebus snarled at those barbarians at the gates for me, howling songs of defiance to false truths. Songs like, “you are perfect and deeply loved, just as you are.” And, “you are not the world’s victim, you are the protagonist.” And, “you will do what you choose and what time will allow.” And, “you can trust yourself to make the right decision, just as you always have.” And, “everything will work out, just as it always has.”
It’s more clear to me than ever, my erected fortress walls were never my true protection. Each closed gate, my folded arms to the untrustworthy. Each watchtower perched scan, another needless worry. Drawing boundaries can sometimes be necessary among the reckless and the selfish. But creating larger spaces in your domain, this is true peace. And with my true protector now standing post, I may keep this drawbridge open, busy strengthening my palace from within.
The howls of the Cerberus’ protection, that is my trust in the world that is as it should be. Those invaders of doubt and demand, can do no harm. These songs help create the spaces to choose nourishing thoughts. Wide open squares and spanning esplanades in my palace. Spaces free from doubt and harm. A palace garden that I was now free to walk with purpose. The preoccupations of my mind are the hidden enchantments, discovered each stroll. Free from the bindings of a vigilant watchtower.
All under the warm, fierce protection of a loyal beast, summoned by a whisper over one blazingly emergent spring in Bordeaux. Vive le printemps à Bordeaux.
Paul Carreo 