Category Archives: Nonfiction

#34 Protecting ourselves while opening up

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Imagine you’re having a conversation with someone. You’ve been exchanging intimate details about your lives, and you feel safe enough to share something deeply vulnerable, like:

“My mother died of cancer when I was ten. I still feel an emptiness when thinking about it.”

But to your astonishment, the other person replies:

“Still? After all these years? Come on, you gotta move on!”

I bet you’d feel hurt, confused, and would react with the typical fight, flight, or freeze response. You might take it personally and decide never to share anything with that person again. Correct?

When we open up to others, we must accept that vulnerability comes with risk—of criticism, misinterpretation, unsolicited advice, or outright dismissal. A conscious approach, though, isn’t always possible; sometimes we’re just flowing through a conversation. But ideally, we should learn to protect ourselves in any circumstance.

In a perfect world, this vulnerability would be met with empathy, compassion, maturity, and intuition—elements that create a safe space for intimate connection. But as we know, the world is far from ideal.

That said, no meaningful relationship—of any kind—exists without occasional disappointment. We tend to expect more from those we allow close to us, but expectations often undermine relationships, just like comparison robs us of happiness. We must remain rooted in ourselves, closer to our inner compass than to the urge to close gaps with the people around us. And it’s our responsibility to shape communication in ways that feel safe and respectful for all parties—through honest expression, clear boundaries, and mutual understanding.

The ability to shape a relationship should go hand-in-hand with choosing them wisely: developing the sensitivity to recognize early on which people will require the least emotional effort to maintain healthy communication.

Still, we may go through periods where solitude feels like the better choice. Not because we reject connection, but because we’re exhausted—tired of investing in yet another relationship or friendship that drains us. Even then, we must sit with our inner demons—grappling with thoughts of the past, present, and future, and confronting the psychological obstacles our mind constantly elaborates.

There are also those moments when life seems to place only annoying or immature people in our path. And let me be clear: I’m not here to criticize such people. I’ve been that person. You’ve probably been that person. Humility and the awareness that we’re all works in progress can help not just us, but others too.

One small, recurring thing I try to do when I feel hurt, misunderstood, dismissed, or belittled in a conversation is to take responsibility for my feelings. First, I examine where they come from. Then I try to empathize with the other person—to understand what might have triggered their reaction. Sometimes, for example, people simply feel like shit and alone, and they want to drag others into their misery. It may be unconscious, but it’s still a mechanism—a pattern they’ve been repeating for a long time.

So the next time we find ourselves opening up, revealing intimate details, and receiving an offhand comment or a dismissive silence in return, we can try a simple practice: pause and identify the feeling the other person’s behavior triggered in us, then express it. A sentence like:

“When you dismissed what I said about how my mother’s death still makes me feel, I felt sad.”

is already a meaningful first step. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to do in relationships—because most of us react to feelings instead of sitting with them, and finding the courage to acknowledge them to ourselves and share them with others.

If this sparked your curiosity, I encourage you to read Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. These were two fundamental books for my development and growth over the last years.

#33 Do we remember with honesty?

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The shape of memory

As we advance through life and its various phases, we evolve into something entirely different from what we initially were. Without acknowledging that change, we often forget what we used to be like as children. It’s difficult, though, to look back at our past objectively—we tend to use those memories to justify who we are today, rather than seeing them simply as integral parts of our journey.

Personally, I fluctuate between different emotional states when thinking about my past. Some memories I enjoy indulging in; others, I’d rather forget. However, when I think about the child I used to be—rather than specific events—everything becomes softer, more comfortable. I don’t mind stepping into that skin again. I still find myself in that child’s essence—not in their behaviors, but in their core, which remains a familiar and safe place.

Chaos, imagination, belonging

Until I was about seven, growing up in the high-crime Salvador of the 90s with a single mom, I spent most of my time confined within our residential building.

Aside from sporadic visits to my cousins or my mom’s friends’ kids, my daily social life revolved around that building. With only three children, including me, it was hardly a playground. The other two were brothers, so I wasn’t really part of their dynamic. In other words, I didn’t have much of a social life outside of school, weekends, and holidays.

After doing my homework, I would go kick a ball against the wall in the building’s garage—an underground block of cement with no trees and only a sliver of sunlight for a few hours a day. I had no dreams of becoming a Bebeto or Romário like the other kids. Hitting the ball against the wall just helped me release some stress, I suppose. On the few occasions I left the building for groceries, I got robbed. Once, I was even assaulted at knifepoint and returned home shirtless, stripped of a brand-new baseball cap I had received for Christmas. It may sound traumatic, but back then, everyone I knew had a similar story—whether kids or adults. Robbery was a disturbingly normalized part of our society.

Despite the repetitive, limited, and at times dangerous routine, I remember being a happy kid. I was alone most of the time, but I didn’t mind. I don’t recall ever begging my mom to take me to see people—maybe I did, I’m not sure. What I do remember is asking to go see a movie, buy a comic book, a toy, or a new set of colored pencils. I was really good at entertaining myself with drawing and reading. I also had strange little habits that excited me beyond reason—like memorizing the names of the cars parked outside our gate, which I would stare at for hours from our window while waiting for my mom to return from work. I guess boredom forced me to invent ways to stay entertained.

Whenever I did meet my cousins, I tried to make the most of it—even if that meant doing unusual or dangerous things. I had a constant urge to compensate for the apathy of my day-to-day life. I frequently joined street fights, often ending up beaten, as I tended to challenge older, bigger kids to heighten the adrenaline rush I craved. I would jump off cliffs, swim in stormy oceans, explore abandoned caves and cemeteries, break into buildings or stores just to steal something random. When caught, I’d deny everything with the most bizarre, creative lies imaginable.

Daring and breaking the rules meant being alive. It was my way of affirming that I existed. That need was likely unconscious at the time, but I can’t justify it any other way now.

I have to admit—I loved inventing stories, even if it drove my mom mad. I was always around when crazy things happened, partly because I had a knack for being in the wrong place at the right time, and partly because I was always nosing into other people’s business to compensate for the dullness of my life. I collected wild anecdotes and shared them with others, but I couldn’t help spicing them up. I’d exaggerate just enough to make the stories unbelievable—but I’d tell them with such enthusiasm that people began to believe them.

Once, while playing my car-memorization game, I saw a car crash right in front of our building. It was bad. The woman in the back seat of one of the cars lost consciousness and never woke up. The driver stumbled out, blood covering his face, shouting random nonsense. When my mom got home, I told her a kid had been catapulted from the car (there were no children involved), and that the driver had lost an arm and was screaming in a foreign language.

It’s hard to explain how often bizarre things happened around me. My cousin once threw a rock at a beehive and nearly died from the stings. I saw a girl drown in a stormy ocean. A friend broke his jaw and lost most of his teeth in a skating accident. I saw a gang fight. A gang member once let us hold his gun. And so on. Eventually, I began normalizing—and even seeking out—chaotic experiences. It’s no surprise my favorite movie genre was horror, which, I’m sure, made my mom question my mental health from time to time, though she often found it funny.

A different reality

What I sometimes observe is that my childhood gave me a constant state of alertness that still follows me, even after being “Europeanised”—used to a much less abnormal routine. I still double-check dark corners before walking through them, take wide turns, and instinctively keep my distance when a stranger approaches out of nowhere. The sound of fireworks? My first thought is gunfire.

By the time we moved to Italy, my childhood had already taken some wild twists. I had spent a year and a half living with my aunt and uncle, and their building was a treasure trove of experiences—a wonderland of children hungry for adventure. I bonded with them and collected a new set of PG-13, not-so-recommendable experiences. When I arrived in Italy, I was reactive, restless, troublemaking, and unreliable. My background didn’t match European standards—especially not those of the small town I ended up in. The integration process, both inside and outside my family, was difficult. I’ve talked about this in previous posts, and the re-education process was anything but easy. But that’s a story to dive in again another time.

There are parts of ourselves we hide to fit into the world. That’s a pity. When we’re in touch with who we really are, we know what we want and how to live in alignment with our core. Otherwise, we end up living someone else’s life. And that makes a huge difference. We are all a mixture of light and darkness, good and evil, boredom and excitement—whatever those words evoke in us. We do need to coexist with others, but before that, we need to exist in peace with ourselves and accept who we truly are.

An image from the movie Braveheart (1995)

#32 Is freedom in crisis?

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Freedom: the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc. whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited.

Freedom for basic rights

“Freeedoooom,” screams William Wallace at the end of the movie Braveheart, while English executioners tear his body apart during a prolonged torture before finally chopping off his head.
In the movie, based on a real story, Wallace fought to avenge the murder of his bride and for the freedom of Scotland.

In other parts of the world, right now, people are also fighting for freedom. Afghan women—who, up until the late 70s, had experienced steady progress in their rights, just like in many other parts of the world—saw decades of progress undone: first with the Soviet withdrawal, then with the international troop withdrawal led by the US. In both cases, a vacuum was left behind, filled by Taliban extremism, leading to violent repression of women’s rights.

The LGBTQ+ community is seeing their basic rights being repressed in Hungary (most recently a ban on the Pride parade under the guise of child protection—while neo-Nazi demonstrations are permitted—doesn’t bode well for this year’s Pride in June. Expect headlines about a harsh crackdown by the Hungarian government). This follows the Russian-style “putinization” supposedly aiming to restore or protect what some define as “conservative values.”

Ukrainians first fought to defend themselves from an invader, then were deluded by Western puppet masters into pursuing a war to defeat Russia. Now, they are being manipulated again—this time by what appears to be a Trump-Putin quasi-alliance, excluding Ukrainians from any real negotiations. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of men and women have lost—and continue to lose—their lives on the battlefields.

Investigations by international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have concluded that Israel is committing acts that amount to genocide against Palestinians. The word genocide is one that makes one flinch—especially when viewed through the painful paradox of Jewish history just 80 years ago. Meanwhile, Palestinians have been systematically denied a voice in much of the Western media, where coverage often remains apathetic, reduced to daily death tolls that now consist almost entirely of civilians.

But what we’re really witnessing is a clash of ideologies and propaganda that we’re all severely subjected to, often forced to take a side in every situation, whether we want to or not. We are like cows, completely submitted to the will of governments, corporations, organizations—masters who have full control over our lives as a collective. In fact, I would go as far as to say that we do not exist collectively outside the context of these institutions. Is it bad? Is it good? No idea. Maybe it’s brought more good than harm—after all, organizing eight billion humans any other way might be impossible.

An age of confusion

From one perspective, the restriction of freedom arises from fear. Fear leads to a utopian attempt at control. And control eventually backfires, giving rise to reactionary forces and movements that can themselves become radicalized. The clearest historical example: fascism and Nazism rising in the 1920s in reaction to communism and the form it had taken at the time.

When ideology proliferates and takes over rationality and critical thinking, the soil becomes fertile for dictatorial practices. Take Western moral hypocrisy—we’ve been brainwashed for years into believing that Western governments are ethically driven, morally superior, and paradoxically “blessed” with the lessons learned from past horrors: colonialism, the Inquisition, concentration camps, gulags, and more. We’ve been convinced of this narrative so thoroughly that we can no longer distinguish good from evil in a world where everyone believes they are on the “right” side.

Need for freedom

So, if collective freedom depends so much on rules, ideologies, and cultural practices—are we at least freer on an individual level?

I would argue we are not. The main reason: our actions have consequences. No matter the society, the community, the family, or the relationship—we live by a set of rules that limit our individual actions. To be truly free, one must be willing to accept the consequences of their actions. That’s where ethics, values, and education come into play. To what extent we’ve been taught to respect (or disregard) rules and others makes a huge difference in our lives.

Expectations through changes

And that’s where expectations come in—when we enter a relationship, start a new job, or move to a new city or country—and reality smacks us in the face. A process begins: we polish our behavior and adapt our values to fit the new environment. In doing so, we also discover which values we’re unwilling to compromise.

We swing like a pendulum between extremes: sometimes excited by change, sometimes completely frustrated or suffocated by it. That’s when tolerance, experience, and empathy become essential. The ability to accommodate each other’s differences while preserving respect for our own backgrounds and values is a difficult job—but not impossible.

Everything changes in this process, leading us down new and unknown paths, which naturally freaks us out. Then we swing back to the other extreme, trying to control things to reestablish balance, calm, and order—before opening ourselves to the next wave of novelty.

If we pay attention, we’ll see this pattern not only at the individual level but also collectively. The real danger is when we freak out too much—and lose our minds.

#31 What I don’t want to write about

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This week, I tried to write a post several times, failing miserably at each attempt.

Initially, I wanted to write about my holiday in Portugal. I managed a few paragraphs and even came up with a title I really liked. It felt simple, catchy, and fitting for the overall topic I had in mind: “The importance of taking a break.” But by the time I reached paragraph five, I had already lost the plot. I was writing about anything but the importance of taking a break.

Instead, I found myself rambling about the thoughts that had accompanied me during my vacation in Portugal—things like “I’m grateful for this…”, “I found that so annoying…”, “That person was a creep”, “That other person was so nice”, and so on.

I read the whole thing out loud again, and it irritated me. I didn’t want to put anybody else through that unexciting, boring collection of random thoughts. So, I deleted it and started all over again.

My next idea was to talk about a project that I’ve had in mind for a while now: reading extracts from books that taught me valuable lessons. This time, however, the title I came up with was disastrous: “A reading project.” Just for the record, I think it’s important to come up with the title at some point during the writing process. It gives me clear direction—an answer to the quintessential writer’s question: “What do I want to write about?” But no, “A reading project” didn’t strike a chord. It was too broad, and somehow I ended up talking about childhood dreams I had long forgotten.

Today, three hours of my precious time went by between unexciting meal prepping, interrupted second-season episodes of Fleabag, chips, large cups of coffee, and random words written on WordPress. All this while the sun was shining brightly outside. And there I was, thinking, Well then, when it’s raining you can’t really complain about it.

At that point, I was ready to give up. I was starting to feel like a fraud, questioning my skills, creativity, attention span, life—while also feeling deep guilt for wasting a sunny day. WTF?!

Then I realized something—or better, I found something to blame for my lack of ideas: society, once again. Of course! In these times of uncertainty (I think this is one of my most used words lately), insecurity (this is my second), and lack of collective purpose—other than worrying about war, having a stable job, and how crazy we’re all becoming, ignorant, and trapped in a vicious cycle of extreme events (which, in my case, feels like the beginning of a new Middle Age).

But again, no. That has nothing to do with my writing skills, creative process, and so on. I’m just in my own process. I’m realizing, once again, that I don’t have to figure out what I want to write about. Instead, I just need to go with what’s true to me in a specific moment—which, in itself, is a challenging endeavor.

So, in the end, I would conclude by saying that there is no magic formula. For me, every post is a new, very different experience. The only thing I can do is try to look into myself honestly and figure out what’s true to me in the moment.

What we want to write about sometimes comes by excluding what we don’t want to write about. Hence, letting go of what doesn’t resonate with us in a given moment and leaving space for what does.

#29 Uma breve distinção: ambição construtiva e ambição destrutiva

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Eu tento sempre pensar em qual será o próximo passo importante que darei na minha vida. E com “passo importante”, quero dizer algo que me fará avançar como indivíduo. No entanto, às vezes me questiono se essa mentalidade não pode acabar complicando nossa vida, em vez de melhorá-la.

Ouso fazer uma distinção entre ambição construtiva e ambição destrutiva. E, ao usar “destrutiva”, não o faço de maneira leviana. Pelo contrário, acredito que uma ambição mal direcionada pode nos levar à perda da saúde, tanto física quanto mental. E não apenas a nossa própria saúde, mas também a das pessoas ao nosso redor. Um exemplo claro disso é a figura de Gordon Gekko, do filme Wall Street dos anos 80, cuja filosofia “ganância é boa” (“greed is good”) reflete perfeitamente os perigos da ambição destrutiva.

O drama dessa questão é que quem é um vetor da ambição destrutiva, na maioria das vezes (e digo isso com base apenas na minha observação pessoal, sem qualquer fundamento em pesquisa científica), não tem consciência disso. Ou, então, foi tão corrompido por essa ambição que já não há mais volta.

Por outro lado, quem manifesta ambição construtiva tem um poder incrível: sua energia parece fluir sem esforço e iluminar muito além de si mesmo. Acredito que essa ambição surja da aceitação de que a vida é feita de ciclos, mais ou menos semelhantes, mas sempre desconhecidos. Podemos imaginar o amanhã, mas nunca saberemos exatamente como ele se desenvolverá. E não saber o que nos espera, não ter controle absoluto, não é algo ruim. Pelo contrário, aprender a se entregar ao desconhecido nos ensina a aceitar o fluxo natural da vida.

Já a ambição destrutiva parece estar enraizada no desejo de controle. E esse desejo, por sua vez, nasce do medo de perdê-lo. Por isso, essa forma de ambição tem um poder corrompedor: tudo aquilo que não sabemos deixar ir tem o poder de corromper nossa alma.

#28 Le sfide del processo d’integrazione tra ammirazione e invidia

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Una premessa un po’ personale

Fino a qualche anno fa, il modo in cui venivo percepito dagli altri aveva un grande impatto su di me. Mi piaceva soprattutto ispirare ammirazione piuttosto che invidia. Questa aspirazione mi induceva inconsciamente a voler compiacere o impressionare le persone intorno a me, facendo molta attenzione a non risultare arrogante o inautentico. Poi ho iniziato a comprendere le radici del mio bisogno di apprezzamento e, più ne investigavo le origini, meno potente esso diventava.
Quando, all’età di nove anni, mi trasferii in Italia con mia madre, dovetti ricominciare la mia vita da capo. Non solo dal punto di vista educativo e culturale, ma anche nell’inserirmi in una nuova famiglia e farmi nuovi amici. Non si trattava solo di abituarsi a una nuova realtà, ma di accettarla incondizionatamente, poiché, ovviamente, all’età di nove anni, non avevo ancora il potere di decidere se restare o andarmene. L’accettazione, però, non è automatica; anzi, ci sono vari livelli da attraversare per diventare prima consapevoli e poi capire cosa si vuole davvero. Abituarmi, invece, quello dovevo farlo in fretta, ma il mio processo d’integrazione non fu affatto semplice (quando mai lo è?, verrebbe da chiedersi), e gli adulti che avrebbero dovuto guidarmi non furono pazienti.
Trent’anni fa non c’era la consapevolezza, la ricerca e i dibattiti su questo tema come oggi.
A scuola mi misero in una classe indietro senza un programma specifico per il mio caso. Procedemmo tutti un po’ alla cieca: io cercavo di assorbire il più velocemente possibile, ma il processo mi sfiniva periodicamente.
In seguito, dovetti ripetere il primo anno di scuole superiori, perché i miei genitori avevano deciso per me che dovevo frequentare il liceo scientifico. Io, invece, ero ben consapevole delle mie capacità e dei miei limiti e sapevo, già da anni, che il percorso linguistico era quello giusto per me in quella fase della mia vita. Alla fine, al linguistico ci andai, e le cose migliorarono.
Dovetti investire anni per colmare il divario con i miei coetanei, ma non smisi mai di credere in me stesso, anche quando nessuno lo faceva; persino quando i miei stessi genitori sembravano aver perso le speranze e non facevano altro che punirmi in tutti i modi possibili, senza nascondere la delusione che provavano. Devo riconoscere, però, che anche loro si trovavano di fronte a una situazione difficile, senza l’aiuto di psicologi, podcast su temi di crescita personale, libri di self-help e tutte quelle risorse che oggi ci permettono di capire meglio noi stessi e il mondo in cui viviamo.

Superare insicurezze: il valore dei piccoli successi

Faccio un salto in avanti, lasciandomi alle spalle questa premessa forse troppo personale e disorganizzata.
Alla fine, sono riuscito a camminare con le mie gambe, in un paese e un continente diversi, nonostante tutte le difficoltà, il mio passato abbandonato, la famiglia lasciata alle spalle e i sogni mai realizzati in quella vita che avrebbe potuto essere, per vivere in quella che è diventata.
Per me fu uno sforzo mastodontico, di cui non prendo coscienza abbastanza spesso. D’altronde, se non siamo noi stessi a riconoscere i nostri sforzi, difficilmente lo faranno gli altri: o lo danno per scontato, o fanno finta di niente.
A un certo punto, le difficoltà sembrarono diminuire e iniziai ad avere successo nelle imprese che intraprendevo, prima in modo modesto, poi un po’ meno.
Apro una parentesi: è davvero strano scrivere di me stesso su questi temi, sapendo che altri potranno leggere. Non sono nemmeno sicuro di star dicendo tutta la verità. Finora, mi sembra di essermi solo vittimizzato.
Comunque, fu in questo momento, dopo aver superato gli ostacoli più grandi del mio processo di integrazione e aver ottenuto piccoli successi personali, che iniziai a suscitare negli altri ammirazione o invidia, o entrambe.
Capivo benissimo entrambe le emozioni. Da bambino, al mio arrivo in Italia, ero consumato da una silenziosa ma profonda invidia per i miei compagni di classe che si esprimevano in modo fluente, leggevano senza difficoltà e capivano al volo concetti complessi. Al contrario, provavo ammirazione per chi dimostrava onestà, affetto e pazienza nei miei confronti: per me, era una dimostrazione di grandezza smisurata. E furono in pochissimi a dimostrarmelo: penso a Walter, il mio allenatore di canottaggio a Monterosso; Manuel, il mio amico pittore che amavo osservare dipingere; Adriano e Corrado, compagni di barca e amici; Andrea, un genio del liceo, che non ha mai usato la sua intelligenza per sminuirmi, al contrario di molti altri; Mike, un mio amico imprenditore, che si ritagliava un po’ di tempo la mattina prestissimo per insegnarmi a surfare.
Nonostante l’empatia che provavo per coloro che vivevano queste emozioni, inizialmente mi trovavo a mio agio solo nell’essere ammirato; l’invidia degli altri mi disturbava profondamente, la trovavo addirittura pericolosa, come un male che si insidiava nella mia vita e che volevo assolutamente tenere lontano. Col tempo, però, ho imparato ad accettarla, anche quando proveniva da persone a me vicine. Anzi, spesso sono proprio queste ultime a provarla: vorremmo che le persone che amiamo gioissero dei nostri successi, invece alcune tendono a sminuirci, cercando di demotivarci o addirittura sabotarci. Ma credo che aspettarsi ammirazione sincera da tutti sia ingenuo: sia l’adorazione smisurata sia l’invidia distruttiva hanno la stessa origine, l’insicurezza di chi le prova. E il miglior modo di reagire all’insicurezza che si prova, a mio avviso, è:
1. Capire il prima possibile come migliorarsi – A piccoli passi, giorno dopo giorno, senza lasciarsi sopraffare da sfide titaniche che potrebbero riportarci nell’insicurezza.
2. Smettere subito di paragonarsi agli altri – Il motivo, spero, sia ovvio.

Cosa fare quando riceviamo invidia o ammirazione?

Generalizzando, in modo non del tutto corretto ai fini di concludere questo post, gli invidiosi esprimono la loro ammirazione dicendo il contrario di ciò che pensano. Spesso cercano di screditare i successi altrui, ridimensionandoli a semplici casualità. Gli ammiratori, invece, ci stanno accanto finché non hanno assorbito tutto ciò che abbiamo da offrire.
Imparare a riconoscere questi atteggiamenti e a non lasciarsi condizionare è estremamente importante. Evitare gli invidiosi e gli ammiratori è impossibile, perché tutti, in misura diversa, proviamo invidia o ammirazione. Ciò che conta è sviluppare empatia, riconoscere questi sentimenti in noi e negli altri e, se possibile, trasformarli in qualcosa di costruttivo.