Diary Entry - At End of October

Under the Bodhi Tree - The Place Where Sidhartha Reached Enlightment - Bodhgaya, India, 2005

It is my 28th day in India. The 28th day of my round the global south trip. The 28th day of what feels like a new phase of my life, a life which is total has already been a powerful journey with much sadness and thankfully much more happiness.

Being here, in the world, differently (open to learning), has already started to remind me of the self that I am, of the person I love and respect, and of the person I know I must be more patient with, more kind to, more loving towards.

Witnessing myself in India has helped me remember so much. My ability to go with life, to be taken by new experiences, fearlessly. It has reminded me that I am a careful person, that I am a intuitively loving at first, but that in many ways as each day passes I try to be aware, albeit not too intensily, about what moves me and what I need to be more attentive to. This has allowed me to see that I try to make up for my shortcomings and that at the same time I am intensily candid with who I am, who I was, and who I want to be. Life for everyone, it is a complex balance, which I wish to negotiate differently the more I live.

As I meet people who are culturally different than my Brazilian Americanized self, people from Poland, the UK, Japan, Tibet and of course Indians, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that I am not them, and my uniqueness becomes more evident. Simple, yes. Yet, this simplicity is confusing after living for in a culture that struggles to be so totally the same, and yet unique at the same time. SImultaneously, I realize that I am exactly as everyone I meet. I feel hungry, cold, sad, glad, and I need shelter and friends and family. I need to laugh like them, and cry when I cry.

"Into the Woods to Find the Giant..."
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