What would we do without strangers

What would I do without strangers? What would I do without all the people who look after my bags when I’m alone? Whenever I am on my own in a café and I’m carrying a lot of baggage, sometimes I go to the bathroom and I ask someone else to watch my belongings. I did that some days ago in a café in Madrid. I remember doing that in a café in Athens, after a long night with little sleep because of a flight taking off at two in the morning. In airports, so that I could go to the bathroom without needing to carry a heavy backpack.

What would I do without the people who looked after me in the hospital without no one asking them to? All the people who offered me a seat. All the persons who touched gently my arm while I had my face covered with my hands while making myself small from all the pain I was feeling in the hospital corridors.

What would I do without the mothers who saw in me a potential daughter and took care of me? For everyone that watched out for my safety without knowing me?

We are all part of one big thing called humanity. In reality we are less strangers than one could think of. We are glue.

I used to go to therapy. In the last session, after telling my therapist I wanted to keep walking my way without feeling that she was holding my hand, she told me about the universe and its parts.

The universe is a whole in itself. At the same time, it is composed of many pieces that when combining them together, they are one.

That’s a bit how I see humanity. We are all complete in our individuality and at the same time we are part of something bigger. Humankind is one and it is formed by all the people in the world. When watching the official video of the song Taro from Alt-J, I feel this (even though the song is about something else).

A couple of people have told me lately that humans are energy encapsulated in a body but that at the end of the day we all are energy.

There is a word which is interesting, neuroplasticity. Neurons refer to the nerve cells in the brain. They communicate primarily through electrical and chemical signals. In some way, one can say that they communicate through energy. The second part of the word, plastic, refers to the ability to sculpt, mold, or modify. Basically, neuroplasticity describes the capacity of the brain to modify or change itself.

I like to see it as the mental gym. Whenever you go to the gym, lift weights, stay active and eat a balanced diet you modify your body. You can do the same with the brain. It can be harder to visualize the change compared to seeing a before and after picture of a body transformation but it can be even more powerful because it shapes how you live with yourself on a daily basis.

We are energy. We belong together. And we choose the speech we tell ourselves. Life is a story. Which one do you want to tell to yourself?

Life update

I’m no longer in Medellín. And it makes me feel sad to think about it. The good news is that I got a new good client. It is to develop in the programming language that I like, Go (aka Golang), which makes me feel happy and proud. The job is remote but since there is a big time difference, many meetings would be during the night at Colombian time. On top of that, I need to use a company laptop and we decided it was best to pick it up in person, so I came back to Europe.

The quest of building a home is still going on and I decided to do that in Spain. It has been ten years since I left my country. It feels weird to decide to stay because I’m from here but I often feel foreign. In a few days I will go to my new apartment in Madrid. It feels terrifying. I’m not used to stay anymore. To not care about visas. To have my own room longer term.

It’s somewhat funny because for most of the people, the wild thing is to leave. And I have done that so much, that for me, it became the opposite.

After having visited my family for some days in Pamplona, I’m spending some days with my brother in Zaragoza where he is working. On Sunday I went with my bike around the countryside in my hometown. It was during the golden hour, the green of the fields was bright because of the sunshine light. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. I felt happy after I got to know that they accepted me in an apartment in Madrid. I have applied to an accelerator program as well and they selected Sunbathe, I am preparing a presentation I need to do for an interview with the judges. Then they will share the final verdict on whether I got selected for the program which is in person and that makes me happy.

Fields from the bike ride on Sunday

Have a good week.

I love you very much world,

Julia