Hello and welcome to the first podcast
episode of Quintessence. My name is
Beatrice and today's talk will be
all about the actual meaning of
quintessence. So lean back, relax
and enjoy.
I am so super excited that you
are here and that you're part of
our exciting project Quintessence
from the start, and before I dive right
into our quintessence topic today,
I would like to tell you a
short story, a story of
Secundo Timoteo
Arboleda Hurtado. I love
the spanish language.
Alright, Timoteo was born on
11 December 1914 in Vilcabamba, Ecuador,
and he was really looking after his health,
which is why he stopped smoking
– yes, it's worth it!
Because 100 is not really old, at least
where he lives. Vilcabamba is known as
the Shangri-La of Latin America
and recently the US magazine
"international living" nominated this place
as the healthiest in the world. Probably
because the older generation follows
Timoteo' suggestions for a long life.
He only eats what he grows himself,
and harvests all of his meals directly
from his garden, with his own hands.
Avocados, papayas, oranges, lemons... no pesticides,
no preservatives, chemicals are bad for
your health he says, which is why he
also brews his own schnapps – brilliant!
Besides, hard work doesn't kill
anyone. Timoteo has three sons,
two daughters, 18 grandchildren and
10 great-grandchildren.
The man with the cowboy hat is waiting
relaxed for the first great-great-grandchildren,
as it is not unusual at all in
Vilcabamba to get much, much
older. I hope you enjoyed
this little story,
it's straight out of life,
nothing fictional. I found this wonderful
short insight into the life of Timoteo
in the book "Happy at Hundred"
by Karsten Thormaehlen.
Let's take a little detour into
my own life now.
I'm an office manager and have
worked at a business consultancy
several years ago.
Among other things, I was responsible for
organising and arranging seminars and
workshops, all the company events.
Therefore I met lots of people,
I've seen a lot, heard a lot,
I attended seminars as a guest
and also organised them
myself. Thus I was
fortunate enough to have a huge
amount of information, pictures, data and
facts running through my hands, from
my keyboard right into powerpoint presentations.
Recommendations and
strategies about success, health, happiness
and so on and they were seriously
competing with each other,
at least that was my personal
impression.
I'm not sure if this was a trend
back then, but at least for me it
felt like a boom,
they were springing up like mushrooms,
and through all these impressions,
all these opinions, this flood of
positive energy and all these
people's different perceptions,
how they represent something – during
this time I was somehow able to discover
a certain sensitivity inside of me,
to detect anything
in relation to authenticity, or rather
that my antennas responded
instantly, as soon as someone on stage
was trying to present only himself,
if someone wasn't really living what he's
preaching to others, what he stands for.
Actually, well, actually is not a real word...
Anyways, during this time I very
consciously noticed if it wasn't
authentic what these people up on
stage were doing, or the ones sitting
in seminars, or anywhere else.
When you go out for dinner
after an event, you never quite know
if this is real or fake.
I'm not sure if you also feel this
sometimes and how sensitive your antennas are,
but it's not always a pleasant
feeling.
With this you can also very easily,
how to say this...
well, step on people's toes.
Anyways, oftentimes this made me
quite sad, it really touched me to see
that some people simply are like that.
I mean, we can't change people,
we can only change ourselves
and just keep moving on in such cases.
And the second aspect that was
bugging me a bit, is that studies and
statistics in my opinion
always have at least something
subjective about them, by that I
mean that they have a restricted
frame, and they are dependent on various
facts. Just imagine,
science interviews 100 people
in Germany about their weather
perception, 100 people in Thailand
and 100 people in Argentina.
Not only do all of these 3 countries
have different cultures
and habits,
even within the region itself there
are local differences
in temperature,
humidity, rainfall, wind,
and lastly even the own
personal preferences. Does this kind
of result feel authentic to you?
So here I was, trying to give my baby
a name. After all, the quintessence
project is more about life
than studies. Plain statistics
receive faces,
it's lively, and one day when I
least expected it, you might be
able to relate – boom! The
quintessence hit me like
a thunderbolt.
Somehow, this gave me a very fuzzy
feeling in my stomach. But what does
quintessence even mean? I've done
a bit of research, of course, and
the dictionary makes it relatively easy.
It says in short: The essential,
the most important, the keynote, the
gist. But of course, that's not everything.
In latin, the "Quinta Essentia",
the "fifth essence"
was part of Pythagoras and later
on, Aristotle's teachings – the
fifth element. It was also described as
airwaves.
The four ancient elements
fire, water, earth and air
seemingly originated from it.
Aristotle derived the existence of
these four elements from four
basic properties. Dry, damp, warm
and cold, and with their
transformation, the elements also
transform into one another. The airwaves,
as a fifth essence, permeate the four
elements as a transformable and eternal
being. Paracelsus says, the quinta essentia
is the nature of the "arcanum", meaning
it's the actual active principle in our
remedies. For me this is super fascinating,
I think it's really interesting and I
hope that you can also take home some things
for yourself here, you don't need to
memorise it all, but for the next
episodes, if a specific topic interests
you, make sure to have a pen and
piece of paper ready
so you can take some notes
in between.
We're not quite done yet.
There's still the hinduism and the
ayurveda, where the quintessence
correlates to the airwaves, the "Akasha",
which is also described as space.
A similar meaning can be found in
buddhism, and in physics
the
"scalar field hypothetical postulated
quintessence", is assumed as a possible
form of so called dark energy,
through which the observed accelerated
expansion of the universe shall
be described.
Okay! What I like most, is
the fundamental core of
a matter. And this brings us back to
our old, happy and wise fellow
humans, who are presenting us with
their very own personal gift for the
world during the interviews.
And we really ensure the presence of
only one single quintessence, as
per the definition. Ahhh, my soul
is flourishing right now, it's so beautiful.
In the past few weeks I could have
worked through the entire night.
The other day I went to bed at 12:30am
and at 4am I was wide awake
again and simply continued
working.
Perfect timing, I just remembered a
very very nice quote by
Confucius, maybe you will even
know it already.
"Choose a job you love,
and you will never have to work a day in
your life".
Period.
There's so much truth in that. The
people that are being interviewed here,
are people with a healthy outlook on
life, they are happy, fit and
over 77 years of age!
Attention: open end – which means that we
will also speak with people who have
celebrated their hundredth birthday.
So if you know such people,
maybe even in your own family,
relatives or friends, or maybe yourself,
which is obviously also a possibility,
then let us be a part of your quintessence!
Leave a footprint.
Give us your personal gift, inspire us,
and this might sound a bit egoistic,
but this is what my
inner voice is telling me, I
want to learn. I want to learn from your
quintessence, from what's most
important in your life, what makes you
YOU, your gift to the world,
what enriches us.
That's what I want to know. I want to
learn from it and I am extremely
thirsty for knowledge, I've already been like
that as a child. What have YOU got, what
others don't have, what's your secret,
what makes you smile from the inside,
regardless of what possibly happened in your
life – if you are from an older generation,
what made you stand up
again and again.
This knowledge is a treasure. And my
inner voice motivates me
personally, to make this available
to the public.
Everyone, who's potentially stuck in a
dead end with no idea how to get out,
who's longing for a change in life,
who desires support. That's
who I want to inspire.
Recharge your batteries, breathe,
find your dreams again. Love, laugh, all
these things that might have been forgotten.
It's my wish for these people, who have
forgotten about it or who've lost it,
to simply find it again.
I hope that you enjoyed this first
quintessence episode with myself and
that you can take home a pleasant feeling
from our short journey.
I'd love for you to share
this podcast or leave me a
comment, follow me on facebook, and
just be excited for the next
episode. Until then, I'm wishing
you all the very best, keep well,
Beatrice
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