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LIFE IS A CASHEW NUT

By: Gil delos Santos

Decades back — the time when my profession demanded how to make my bosses and clients happy, I made a promise to myself that once I reach 50, I should be on that same position. Not necessarily to employ people to work for me, but just a simple personal time I must reward myself for my own sanity: slow travels, immersive experiences, being anonymous. 

That time is now. It's a golden era for all the hardwork I have contributed to the world I care about. 

40s is just a prelude to a more serious life beginnings in the 50s. 

I've noticed that protein alone just don't grow muscles in your 50s without lifting weights unlike in the younger years where daily activities are quite enough to make you look fit to feel great.

In a significant side, what we gain in the 50s are not just 6-packs muscles if we work for it, but brain muscles and wisdom accordingly.

That's sexier than the 6-packs in the view of people on a higher frequency. 

I am in the move in the past 2 weeks to fulfill the life I envisioned decades back. 

This time, my curiousity took me to the cashew industry in Palawan where I meet the metaphor of life found in the world's most loved nut. 

The convenience and the pleasure we get today with various flavors of cashew nuts, each individual grain we enjoy come from a dedicated manual hand labor of at least five individual processors: the collector and dryer, the slicer, the extractor, the peeler, and the roaster. 

I remember how my professional experiences honed my skills in many areas of life: how to be critical, how to troubleshoot, how to workaround, how to delegate, how to appreciate. 

The process how individual cashew nuts become edible is the same process I went through to be able to share the wisdom and the perspective I effort to communicate. 

Every individual grain of cashew nut is a product of careful manual process — the metaphor where every perspective I share is coming from. It's a product of multiple life stages experiences.

At this juncture, the arguments I present is not intended to prove a point nor to establish credibility — but rather to educate and open certain consciousness. 

If I engage on a lower level, the intent is to present a decent perspective, not to level down.

When you have professionally traveled the world; interacted and handled a former US president, industrialist billionaires of the world, the royals of the Middle East, business tycoons & CEOs, Hollywood celebrities, would empty provocations still bother you? 

No. 

I have been enjoying to munch refined cashew nuts. I have no time to process raw cashew nuts. 

That is exactly how I envisioned my 50s.

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