YA LEUM.6 — The fear, the Epiphany
Sitting on the bus, Madalena and I smiled at each other and giggled in gladness.
We had a vibrant talk full of laughs and already memories. We had a long night bus waiting for us but the fatigue and excitement were hoping to finally have time to rest.
Some sat silently, others leaned against the window and the rest softly closed their eyes. Madalena also tried to sleep.
We were sitting in the front seat, facing the big window, and witnessing first row the road in front of us.
The dark route was illuminated by laughs, hopefulness and scattered pieces of time already left behind us.
I contemplated the road and my life before that.
On February 2016, my father paid me a visit in The Netherlands for two weeks.
At this point I had not foreseen to travel. The beyond borders have always been a part of me: my father’s family is Chinese and he grew up in Timor (island close to Indonesia); my mother at the age of 12 moved on her own from a small village in North of Portugal to Lisbon, years later she moved to Finland for a while. Also, I have always been attracted to new stories, exotic faces and cultures.
When I was 15 years old, I just wanted to be abroad, so I looked all the options possible. I visited some places, but nothing remarkable. Also, because I hold a strong belief “I will not travel to stay a short period in a place. If I go, I want to stay”. That stopped me and I just started traveling more as of 20 years old.
In my last semester of university, I was attending the Erasmus session preparation because I had applied to go to Belgium. There, they announced a new agreement with Beijing University, had been recently signed. I felt so agitated in that moment, I left the room immediately to call my parents asking for permission to go. They are not the type to say no, so I changed my location in 2 minutes! I wanted to go to the furthest and weirdest place I could go. You bet it was the weirdest place I have been so far!
After the semester ending in Beijing, I did not want to come back, so I applied for jobs in Hong Kong. It did not work out as I was not so prepared. So, I returned to Portugal and started the working life. Fresh from university, fresh from China, time to start!
20’s great years: loaded with fun, love, work, new experiences, new people! However, at the back of my mind, and not too far back, I had a constant desire to travel around, but what I really wanted was to stay in a place long time, I recently learnt people call it slow travel.
As I was approaching 30 years old in a couple of years, I was feeling even more urgency to finally follow this dream.
Yet, I was being stopped by the big monster — Let me introduce you my not-so good friend Fear.
Fear has been part of my life since ever, always saying and preaching more than it should.
Finally, in 2016, 27 years old, I decided to confront Fear and compete with it.
In one of ours Plato’s dialogues, my father called me a wanderer “I see, you too are in search of answers that humanity is also trying to answer. I am glad to see you in this path, just keep asking the right questions”.
It was one of the few times my father did not point me out as logic, rational, structured, or assertive person. Always our lively discussions would end and still do with open questions, but still my father was used to look at me as a rational person rather than the opposite.
I felt that comment was the space to introduce him my not-so good friend Fear.
“Dad, I have always been wishing to travel but I am afraid of the financial consequences. I have a plan, but I am postponing it because of my fear regarding money”.
He challenged me big time that day. We spoke for hours on end and he kept saying “I do not exactly comprehend what you are afraid of. Keep talking until I understand”.
I explained so many times the fear of losing stability, not being able to find a job, to spend all my savings, to not be hired again… I created analogies, found examples, stories, reframed it from all different angles to explain my point; still he was not fully understanding the big fear.
Neither was I, as I had a sudden epiphany.
In fact, I comprehended I was not afraid of anything in particular, but I learnt to be always afraid of something.
When I realized that, the fear was gone.
In that moment, I decided to quit my job and travel without a returning ticket.
The day after, as a way to support my decision, he offered me a book named “ The Old Days — A Journey on Foot” — about a man that walks the ancient roads of Britain and discovers “that paths offer a means not just of traversing space but also of feeling”.
As of that moment, I changed paths without being seen. I changed, and my life followed. A new world unfolded in front of my eyes, as it has been waiting to be released for years. New human connections, projects and feelings took place in my current life.
The new path felt so natural, it seemed I have been there before.
Shortly, I learnt the big decision was not to quit my job or to travel, but to give myself the space to express a side of me that has been under covered:
A side that wants to express;
softness over pragmatism;
a creative mind;
a desire to write;
a curiosity to understand consciousness;
an internal mission to work with people in vulnerable contexts;
and an eternal craving for new countries and cultures.
That was the decision I made.
Before I left, I was already living who I wanted to become.
Still taking the train everyday to Hilversum in those rainy days but smiling discreetly to my new life. Even nothing has been yet changed. Just me could know what was already happening inside.
For years, I thought I could not be soft like breeze and logic like math.
I looked at myself as an equation and being too much of one would cancel the value of other. I also wanted to understand the connection of being soft and logic at the same time…
You tell me it does not work like that, now I know. I realized I could be both and still be me.
Learning I could be both without jeopardizing any of the sides, new things followed to learn:
The place of emotions and logic inside me;
The meaning of vulnerability;
The pleasure of being who I am in all my known forms;
And embrace it even when I do not understand.
That night in the bus I understood exactly the path I was about to walk and what life, so kindly, prepared for me to learn such lessons. What does life know about me that I cannot know myself?
During life, we have some glimpses of who we really are.
What is already inside and yet we cannot see clearly?
In these almost epiphanies, we see pieces of the path to take, but then a mesmerizing flock of birds or the winter mist arrives, and we lose sight. Life is full of such glimpses…
…Until the light emerges in a lasting flawless spring teasing us to try a new way to go…
Mathieu was the new way to go. He appeared in the flawless spring to challenge my truths…did I jump to the new path or kept walking in the old ways?
Unaware, he became the book I needed to read, the teacher I needed to listen and the path I needed to walk to set myself free from the binds of reason and logic and to become who I always longed to be — love in my all forms.
After 10 hours in the night bus, we arrived at Chiang Mai airport. We still had a few hours to go until the flight, so we looked for a bench to sleep. As I accommodated myself in the bench to nap, a bird whispered me the road will be soft and with little uncertainties…
“I want our story to continue. You are the one I need. Je ne veux pas te perdre “
I shut my eyes, leaned on the bench and felt safe to start the road.
May 2017,
Patricia Assis
