What's your purpose?

I think a lot, way more than I'd like and consider healthy, actually. It makes me uneasy. I see people committing to all sorts of lifestyles, and none of them is it for me. Mine isn't either. And I think about it. I haven't found a purpose for any of this, and I'm always wondering what is next; although, I have a feeling that there doesn't always have to be a next, at least not for a great while. It'd be great to think nothing sometimes, to feel nothing, at least nothing but contentment.

I wish I could be satisfied with what I have, especially with the choices I make, and go about
my days without giving everything a second thought, but more often than not that is not the case. I'm always questioning every single thing I do and even more so the things I don't do. I so desperately need to know the why of what's happening to me and around me. It's ridiculous. When I finally achieve a goal I so eagerly wanted to, I catch myself thinking "what now?" It's like nothing will ever be sufficient and I'll never be at peace with the place where I am at. It's not a feeling that's new to me. It has always been here. Always. For as long as I can remember. It's the same feeling that made me fill endless journals throughout my adolescence. It's frustrating to me that some of the questions and doubts, and the uncertainty about life, that I had at 14-years-old still bother me in so many ways. 

I know I'm not alone in this and a lot of people out there are just as frustrated as I am, if not more. I'm not giving myself a pat on back for my metaphysical thinking. 

I look for answers in books, song lyrics, daily news, traditional religions, philosophy, and google, anything that will offer some clarity. I still got nothing. So, having this inner debate the other night, I googled "What's your purpose?" This article came up: How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes. 

I'm completely against any of the self-help crap, but I gave it a try anyway because a) I didn't have anything better to do, b) I was in distress, and c) even though it might work for some people, it's always good to prove this stuff wrong. So I sat down and started working on my list of purposes. Here's what I came up with:

What’s your purpose?

None. Graduate from college. Get a job. Get married. Have two and a half kids. Travel the world. Read all the classics. Read every book ever written (the good ones). Be really smart. Find the love of your life. Live in a little English cottage. Listen to songs that make you happy and sad at the same time. Write more. Be an actor. Join the circus. Join a church. Become a nun. Found a church. Move to Cuba. Buy a house. Join the Doctors without borders. Go work with kids .  Adopt a baby. Become a witch. Be a teacher. Join a political party. Change the world. Be a hippie. Go live in San Francisco. Move back to Brasil. Live in Gramado. Be a good cook. Open a bakery. Open a Starbucks franchise. Open a café. Open a little new age shop on some neat tropical island. Learn languages. Make friends. Fall for a charming person and run off to fight injustice with them. Write stories. Tell stories. Live alone in a little cottage in the woods. Move back to my hometown. Work with my mom. Live in Paris. Travel through South America. Live in Buenos Aires. Become a truck driver. Say I love you when I mean it. Become completely fluent in French. Move to British Columbia. Declutter. Make enough money to live comfortably. Live without internet. Be rich. Handwrite. Write poetry. Tour Europe. Go to NYC. Live healthily. Eat well. Bike. Find your dream job. Work in a daycare. Teach kids. Work in a hospital. Go live in the Congo. Help people. Become a Buddhist. Become a Buddhist monk. Learn how to meditate. Move to the East Timor. Let go of material goods. Travel. Live in a different place every year. Live in Canada. Get a dog. Have 5 kids. Have no kids. Allow myself to be happy. Worry less. Find a good therapist and start therapy sessions. Buy a horse. Let feelings out. Speak the truth. Buy a car. Buy a trailer. Make the trailer your home. Join the gypsies. Go to China. Believe. Live in a small studio in a big city. Be alone. Empty my mind. Be content with the life I have. Live with the minimum necessary. Give stuff away. Not look back. Accept that other people will fail and disappoint you. Accept that I'll disappoint other people. Love people regardless. Be open. Be a hippie in Arembepe. Shut up more often. Join the guerrilla. Be gentle. Have faith. Listen. Spend some time in India. Trust people. Be Amish for a month. Act. Dance. Sleep less. Be more active. Have fun. Be a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Drink beers. Enjoy the game. Enjoy what I have now. Don’t think about the future. Join the army. Live in a fishing village. Watch less TV. Accept that I prob won't be able to watch people's reactions when I die. Care less about fictional characters. Have discussions and still be friends afterwards. Talk nicely. Learn how to drive a truck. Respect people. Be kind. Pay my bills. Care less. It’s ok to feel deeply. Believe that people care and not everybody leaves. Believe in love. Settle down. Accept that there doesn’t need to be a purpose. Buy a motorcycle. Write a book. Feel saudade. Be silly. Be the clown. Host parties. Live in Rio. Make grandma proud.

It took me some 20 minutes to compile this little list and the whole thing turned out to be a list of my short-lived life goals, if you can call them that. The very first part of the list, from graduating from college to having kids, is what my family always told me I should do (I was following the article's steps to the best I could). Most of the rest is me being delusional. It even got deeper and sentimental as I went on, but there were no tears, none whatsoever. Thus, I proved this thing wrong. 

I still got nothing in terms of my purpose in life. Mostly, I think all of my "purposes" were incredibly selfish and one-sided. I focused mostly on my own self and what could make me happy and that's not what I want my purpose in my life to be. There were also a lot of buys and moves in it, which maybe means my purpose in life is to be a shopaholic with a travel addiction? I want there to be more to it than just me. I also want to stop asking myself "then what?" because even as I wrote all of that, at the end of the day I could have achieved every single one of these things (ok, maybe not every single one, but some), and I know I'd still be wondering "then what?" It's daunting indeed.

What about you? Have you found your purpose yet? 

Que a força do medo que tenho
Não me impeça de ver o que anseio.

Que a morte de tudo em que acredito
Não me tape os ouvidos e a boca.

Que a música que eu ouço ao longe
Seja linda ainda que tristeza.

Que essa minha vontade de ir embora
Se transforme na calma e na paz que eu mereço.

Que essa tensão que me corrói por dentro
Seja um dia recompensada.

Que não seja preciso mais que uma simples alegria
Pra me fazer aquietar o espírito.

[Metade - Oswaldo Montenegro]

A prayer for the wild at heart that are kept in cages.

[Tennessee Williams]

Oh, the places you'll go...

"Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.

'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat.

'I don't know,' Alice answered.

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.'"

[Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland]

People often ask me: "Why are you going back?" I always answer that I'm not going back anywhere, I'm going somewhere different. They don't understand. What I hear in response is "you're going back to a foreign land." Like that's possible. 

For the uninformed, I'm not leaving because I hate Brazil, because I think somewhere else will be better (ok, maybe I do). It has nothing to do with my country, its culture, and the shit that happens here. News fresh: shit happens EVERYWHERE. I'm not going for the place as much as I'm going for my own sake, my own sanity. I need change. I crave it, love it. No, I'm not talking about scary, life-threatening change. I've experienced that, and it's the very opposite of the change I seek.  

I know we need to reinvent ourselves. I've read what Gandhi said about us being the change we want to see, over and over and over again. I just cannot do it. Not yet anyways. Maybe someday I'll learn to make little changes in my life and live happily with those. Just not now, not yet.

I haven't figured out what exactly I want out of life (man, I'm behind in this game), but what I want isn't here. Sometimes I wish somebody would point the way, the easy way, but most of the time I just want to figure things out on my own, make my own mistakes, those amazing fixable mistakes we so often make in life. 

"You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go."

[Dr Seuss - Oh, the places you'll go]

I can't find peace in the quiet simplicity of the known, the predictable. How many times have I heard people say they wish they were as brave and adventurous as I am, and inside I'm always thinking it takes a lot more courage to stay, to settle down, to dare and be happy within the borders of your homeland. I'm beyond borders (movie title cliche, sorry). I get bored way too easily.

Honestly? It's not always fun! After all, as Maya Angelou's written "the ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." I've chosen the exact opposite, at least for the time being. I'm going places where I'll always be questioned. I've chosen to always feel saudade. So much for the challenge. 

Well, I leave for Canada in 2 days with no idea of what it will be like, and, against all odds, I'm feeling calm. The calm before the storm, maybe. I've done all the freaking out I possibly could already. It's come the time to focus on what the near future will bring, and be practical.

2012 has been one heck of a year. So much has changed. Remember they said the world would end this year? Maybe it will indeed. Individually. Everyone gets an end... and a new beginning. I'm sure I've gotten both. It's been a wonderful ride, with quite a few bumps. I've learned so much. I've learned lessons that, hopefully, I will remember in the years to come.

In all seriousness, if Canada sucks, it might, you never know, I'll just pack my bags and come back to the comfort of a place I've known and loved my whole life, or I'll steer in a completely different direction and move into the weirdness of new place, one that doesn't, in any way, resemble the ones I know. I'll report it all.

"Coisa que gosto é poder partir sem ter planos, melhor ainda é poder voltar quando quero"

[Milton Nascimento e Fernando Brant - Encontros e Despedidas]

On a happier note...

"Começar de novo e contar comigo
Vai valer a pena ter amanhecido
Ter me rebelado, ter me consumido
Ter me machucado, ter sobrevivido..."

[Começar de Novo - Ivan Lins]

Kids playing in Thailand two years after the tsunami.
Source BBC News. Image from UNICEF @2006 

I don't really have any particularly happy news to share except that I'm getting better and better each day and will, hopefully, continue to progress towards a full recovery. That makes for happy enough, and more than enough. My brain is still playing psycho crazy and not at all fun tricks on me, but I'm alive, well, and kicking as far as I can tell. I just want to send happy thoughts everybody's way, and nothing spells happy like a bunch of happy kids, especially kids who have every reason under the sun to be gloomy and miserable, but manage to smile and be grateful in spite of everything. 

Two-year-old Achta recovering from severe meningitis, in Chad.
Source UK Aid. Image from Unicef @2012

Não tenho nada de novo e particularmente feliz pra dizer além de que eu estou me recuperando e me sentindo cada dia melhor e, se Deus quiser, progredindo para uma recuperação total. Isso em si já é razão suficiente, e mais que suficiente, pra ficar feliz. Minha cabeça ainda está uma bagunça e meu cérebro adora pregar peças nada agradáveis em mim, mas eu estou viva, bem, e dando meus pulos, até onde sei. Só queria mesmo deixar alguma coisa feliz aqui, espantar a urucubaca, e nada diz feliz como crianças que tem todas as razões do mundo pra chorar e ainda assim conseguem ser felizes, sorrir, e agradecer, apesar de tudo.

Why English?

I don't like it much that people complain when I update my Facebook status or write something in English, even less so when I'm writing to the "public." I write in English because it's easier for me. I'm not saying that I know/speak/write English better than I do Portuguese because I don't. It's because when I say something in English it doesn't have the same weight as it does in Portuguese. It's almost like the second language doesn't sound as real and heartfelt as the mother tongue, and, let's face it, Portuguese is the drama queen of languages.

The feelings are there, don't get me wrong, but the words, the words add a foreignness to them that make them more bearable. When you grow up with a language you know the exact power of each word and how excruciating some of them can be, especially in context; however, when you learn a language as an adult, as I did, the words don't hold the same power and are often, when spoken, more just means of communication. They don't poke your heart and, frankly, don't sound so dramatic. 

The saying "the pen is mightier than the sword" will always prove to be truer in your mother tongue than it'll in any other language you learn later in life, no matter how good you're at your second, third, fourth language... 

For those who complain, either you learn it too (it'll do you some good, trust me) or there are always good-ish online translators if you're really curious. Google ring a bell?

And this is a completely unnecessary rant, but I need to take my mind off other stuff, and hopefully someone out there will understand me. Oh, I need a little understanding so badly right now. If nothing else let me get it through language ramblings.

Uma casinha lá onde mora o sol poente...

Pra finalmente a gente simplesmente ser feliz.

[Ao que vai chegar - Toquinho]

I should be sleeping, instead I've been thinking...

Por que nascemos para amar, se vamos morrer?
Por que morrer, se amamos?
Por que falta sentido
ao sentido de viver, amar, morrer?

Why are we born to love if we're going to die?

Why die when we love?

Why do living, loving and dying 

make no sense? 

[Carlos Drummond de Andrade - Por quê?]

Thinking too much, as usual. 

When in Brazil...

Bolo de fubá. ;)

One...

Two...

Lovely, ain't it? Scrumptious too, but that you know. And it tastes even better (like it's possible) when accompanied by a little soundtrack.

Amora - Renato Teixeira

Recipe here and all over the web.

Das coisas que me fazem filha de mãe

Eu já te falei de tudo, mas tudo isso é pouco,
diante do que sinto.

[Fanatismo - Florbela Espanca e Raimundo Fagner]

Além da cara que não há quem negue é a mesma, herdei dela o choro quieto e silencioso e as  cartas de amor and otherwise escritas, extensas e nunca enviadas. Herdei essa vontade de ser sabe Deus o quê e o falar muito o desnecessário e pouco, quase nada, o necessário. Herdei, e renego enquanto tento remendar o já feito, a mão pra fazer coisa errada. Herdei um sofrimento constante do qual ela não fala e eu não falo, mas que está aqui dentro e perturba. Herdei esse sentimentalismo exagerado que um dia encheu de poesia folhas e mais folhas de papel. Herdei um coração pra sempre partido e a sina de amar o perdido. Herdei "ilusões perdidas e sonhos inúteis..."* Ah, e o gosto por Fagner, pelas músicas que de tanto ouvir me trazem lembranças de coisas que não sei o que são. Tenho nem pra onde fugir. É aquela história: se correr o bicho pega, se ficar o bicho come. :-)

*Quando o amor vacila - Maria Bethânia