I’ve been thinking about my grandfather, Gordon.
When I was seventeen, my sister and I travelled with him to Brazil, the country where he truly lived from the age of twenty until he died. He had been a gaucho, working with land and cattle, deeply attuned to timing, instinct and flow. He wasn’t someone who overcomplicated things. He met life as it came.
One afternoon, we were sitting on the porch of his fazenda. The air was warm, slow, and everything felt a world away from London. His housekeeper brought us tea and cake.
The cake was covered in ants.
My sister and I froze. Proper London girls. To us, ants meant something had gone very wrong. You don’t eat that cake. You get rid of it. You panic a little.
My grandfather didn’t react.
He simply picked up my slice, gave it a gentle shake, and said, “Just shake the cake.”
That was it.
No drama. No fuss. No unnecessary problem.
He ate it as if nothing had happened.
And something about that moment stayed with me.
He didn’t sit us down and explain a life philosophy. He didn’t need to. In that small, ordinary moment, he showed me something I’ve come back to again and again.
Fear creates complexity.
Trust creates movement.
So often in life, we meet situations and immediately go into reaction. We make things bigger than they need to be. We layer meaning, worry, and imagined outcomes onto something that might actually be simple.
But what if it isn’t?
What if sometimes, you can just shake the cake?
What if not everything needs a full emotional response, a deep analysis, or a problem-solving strategy?
My grandfather trusted life. He trusted himself within it. He knew that not everything required resistance.
And I think that’s what I learned that day.
Life responds to how you meet it.
When I meet things with fear, they expand. When I meet them with steadiness, curiosity, or even a bit of lightness, something shifts. There’s space. There’s movement.
Now, when things feel overwhelming, when my mind starts to spiral or complicate something, I still hear his voice.
Just shake the cake.
It doesn’t mean ignore reality. It doesn’t mean dismiss what matters.
It means notice when something is being made bigger than it needs to be.
It means trust that not every situation requires panic.
It means choosing a different way of meeting what’s in front of you.
And sometimes, it’s as simple as that
