Today I fell in love

Today I fell in love.

As I woke up at a friend’s house and I stared into the world, I saw how beautiful life is. Every little aspect of life is perfect. Even the imperfect is perfect. 

Even though while in Brazil I’ve felt that humanity isn’t what I expected it to be, I have also felt how good people are (even if savage at times). When I started planning to move to Brazil a year ago, I never thought I would encounter such beautiful souls in my journey. I never thought that people would hold their arms so widely open and welcome me so lovingly into their lives.

Every person I come across here has no obligation to me. They aren’t family or family friends. By societal terms, they don’t have a duty to make me part of their family and lives; yet, they do. They greet me with warming smiles and gentle looks. They are interested in who I am, where I come from and how I got here. Most of all, they want to share their happiness with me and make Brazil my home by opening their doors widely and saying ‘Take a look at my life. Come with me and explore this magical country’.

And with people like this, I fell in love with life. I feel how good people are.

As I lay by the pool, staring into the dreamy blue sky and listening to the birds sing, I think back on the hard-times of my life where everything was bleak and grey, and I look at where I am now in the world. I see that now I am living everything I ever dreamt of and I fall in love with the most beautiful thing of all: life. I fall in love with the thing that gives each and everyone of us an opportunity to grow and evolve, an opportunity to discover who we are and, most of all, an opportunity to be happy and to love.

Change

Back at University, on my journey to work I used to walk 20 minutes down dual carriage way with the view of green fields and a cathedral. Today, I walk down a dual carriage way with the view of sky high buildings standing powerfully next to favelas. It’s amazing how much can change in your life, how much you can take for granted and how quickly time passes.

In my two months in Brazil, I have changed and grown more than I ever anticipated. Most things in my life have changed, but that’s because I have changed. In my last post, I said that I came to Brazil to test my capabilities and that’s exactly what has happened and continues to happen. But something greater and more beautiful has happened in this journey; in Brazil I have had an introduction to reality.

I never wanted to believe that people are mean. Call me naïve, and perhaps for my own sanity, I wanted to believe that everyone wanted what’s best for everyone. Now, I see the world differently.

It isn’t that people are evil and are out there to hurt you, but the world is savage. People are savage. As I commute to and back from work, I see how desperate people are to get on a train. How everyone becomes an animal, jumping over each other to get on that train – as if it’s the last one in the world. We quickly forget to stop and look around, to see what those around us need. We forget to look at the child in front of us, the vulnerable adult or the aged person and to see what they need. We are too focused on what we need. We are ignorant.

As I walk down the dual-carriage to work, and I see the $1,000,000,000 flat on sale standing next to the house that doesn’t even have basic facilities. I stop. I ask myself: “If I had all that money, what would I do? Am I all that different?”

It’s easy to forget about the world we live in and to become caught up in our own lives. It’s too easy to focus on what we don’t have rather than focus on what we have. It’s much easier to complain than to be grateful.

So, how have I changed?

I’ve realized that everything in life is a blessing. That life in itself is a blessing, and that the very fact that I can breathe and live already makes me a blessed being.I've changed not by becoming selfless and giving up my own dreams and desires, but by acknolweding the person next to me.

Why Brazil

People often ask me 'why Brazil?' And I am never really able to tell them. Sure, I had my philosophical school and I speak Portuguese but there was something more. Yesterday, when talking to a friend, they pinned it for me. I came here to test my capabilities; to see what I am capable of and what I´m not. It made so much sense.

In the UK, I led a super comfortable life alongside my caring friends and loving family. I had stability and security, but I still wanted more. Here, in Brazil, I have everything to be happy and although grateful, I still search for more. That's the thing with us humans - we are always searching for something more; from a new job to a new house, to a new phone or new car. We hope that through changing things and acquiring material goods that we can achieve that ultimate aim of everyone: to be happy.

Being here in Brazil, so far away from what I consider home, is giving me the opportunity to realise that happiness never comes from the outside and that I can really only count on myself. This is a lesson that I have always avoided to deal with and now I am learning the hard way. Not because people here are unreliable – they are quite the opposite – but because I find myself in an environment which screams at me ´Be yourself, be happy´.

And so maybe I came to Brazil searching for happiness, hoping that here everything would be magical and wonderful. And although Brazil is magical and wonderful, I am the same person I was the U.K., with the same problems and same qualities. Deep down, I always knew I came here to test my capabilities and to grow. Leaving all my comforts and safety was the necessary action for me to be left with myself and to stop searching for happiness through exterior things.

'Why Brazil?' Because it's the place, alongside my professional development, that I know will give me the opportunity to grow and evolve and to stop searching happiness and instead just be happy.