“L’altrove è uno specchio in negativo. Il viaggiatore riconosce il poco che è suo, scoprendo il molto che non ha avuto e non avrà.”
(I. Calvino – Le città invisibili)
“The elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognise the few he has, discovering the much he never had and will never have.”
(I. Calvino – Invisible Cities)
No, I didn’t had any revelation during my trip to South America. I didn’t got up one day with all the answers. It didn’t changed my life, at least not in a different way in which a life can be changed by a two months long holiday.
So what do I take away with me from this trip? To answer this question I had to come back to my first post in this blog, and read again what I wrote before all of this started.
I was scared of travelling so far away. Alone, in a new continent, where are spoken languages that I don’t master.
Now I know, there wasn’t any reason to be scared. Keeping a standard level of precaution, the one that you need when you come to a place you don’t know, is more than enough.
I talked about comfort zones, and I can confirm: life starts exactly there, at the end of your comfort zone. When you get out from your patterns, you are forced to experience something new. But also to review what you did until now under a different light. And well, it doesn’t mean that what you did until now is bad, or as bad as you thought.
I said that motivations are way more important than expectations. And my motivation to get to South America, next to the fact that I have never been there, was the pursuit of emotions.
I think I nailed it. In those two months, I experienced the whole spectrum of emotions. Anxiety, of course. But also interest and boredom. Serenity and sadness. Joy and melancholy. There have been space for any emotion even if, and that’s the good news, I felt good most of the time. And sometime I felt not only good, but alive again.
By the way, I am not saying it was easy. Not being overwhelmed by the emotions is something that I still need to learn. Even if, honestly, I am not sure this is something that I actually need – or want – to fix.
Reading that old post, what at one point caught my eye is the premise “if soon you are going to turn on the wrong side of 35“. Seen today it sounds like a ridicolous whimpering. Maybe what I actually understood is that often we are the only ones precluding ourselves to do what we actually want to do. The age, the work, the money, even the fears are just excuses that we love to tell us.
Yes, I know, it is easy to write this while you are a single, healthy, working professional writing from his comfortable desk in a warm flat of an European capital.
But then, let me ask you just this last question:
“what would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
si chiede: “cosa faresti, se non avessi paura?”
Posted by Dan Magnani on Thursday, 12 November 2009
Song of the post: Brunori SAS – Canzone contro la paura (Song against the fear)
Canzoni che ti salvano la vita,
che ti fanno dire «no cazzo, non è ancora finita»,
che ti danno la forza di ricominciare,
che ti tengono in piedi quanto senti di crollare.
Ma non ti sembra un miracolo
che in mezzo a questo dolore, in tutto questo rumore,
a volte basta un cazone, anche una stupida canzone,
solo una stupida canzone, a ricordarti chi sei?
Songs that saves your life,
that make you say «no fuck, it is not yet the end»,
that give you the strenght to start over,
that keep you up when you are caving in.
But doesn’t it seem a miracle
that in the middle of this pain, in the middle of this noise,
sometimes a song, even a stupid song,
just a stupid song is enough, to remember you who you are?
