Where To Find Your Purpose

hint: it's at the beginning

I am the son of a Puerto Rican father.

Every December, nineteen family members and I would gather in Puerto Rico for weeks of celebration.

Salsa music was always playing in the background. That rhythm, that electric joy of the trumpet, that sight of countless loved ones dancing freely. That was Christmas for me.

Found this photo of a couple dancing in the streets of PR…look at that passion!

But I never spoke Spanish and I never knew how to dance salsa.

Thankfully, that’s changing.

My Spanish is improving by the day and I’m taking regular salsa lessons.

And this past weekend, I went to a salsa night here in Barcelona. For three hours, I was in a state of pure ecstasy. Even though I kept repeating the same three moves, I couldn’t stop smiling.

As I get older, I find myself circling back to the same places, the same interests, the same kind of love that raised me.

I love tennis because my French grandma was an amateur tennis champion and taught me at a young age.

I love writing because I grew up in a home surrounded by books and parents who read themselves to sleep every night.

I love Latin women because my aunts—my dad’s three sisters—are Puerto Rican queens who nurtured me with so much touch and cariño, that it’s hard to imagine love without that kind of affection.

There’s a great Chef’s Table episode about the Argentinian Chef, Frances Mallmann. As a young man, he went to work in Paris to learn French cuisine. One day, while cooking for wealthy French businessmen, one of them pulled him aside and told him that the food was average and that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to cook like the French.

Side note: that is the most French thing to say ever.

But in the episode, Mallmann reflects that that moment was the catalyst he needed. It pushed him to go back to his roots, to cook what he knew best: cuisine from Argentina. Potatoes. Asado. Milanesa. This switch is what propelled him to worldwide fame.

We are all, in our own way, on a hero’s journey.

And the journey always leads back to the beginning.

The seeds are always planted early on but we often don’t sow them till later. We run as far as we can from ourselves and our nature, only to realize that the answers are at the start.

We search the ends of the Earth for our purpose, yet purpose isn’t something to be found but something to be remembered. It’s a reconnection to be made with self.

It’s looking back to where there were pockets of love, where there was joy, and tapping back into those places.

It’s finally listening to the rhythm that’s been there all along.

It’s dancing salsa because that beat is in your blood and has been since the day you were born.

Love,

Matt

PS - Below are two clips of me dancing with a lovely British lady…I’m leaving it for the paid subscribers because I’m not ready to show the world these moves yet ;)