WANT TO SEE THE WORLD?

A visual journal of a semester in Portugal. This week in happiness

I take my keys in hand for the last time. I take the bottle opener, which was once red but is now silver in spots from wear, and slide it around the keychain to remove it. I do the same with the stone of protection that my stepsister gave me, with a now-rusted chain. Standing on the balcony, I look out over the city for the last time. I turn and close the door, leaving the keys for my landlord to find. My room is now as flavorless as I found it. The only memory of the magazine cutouts and Portuguese tile that hung on the walls are a few poorly patched holes. I’m moving out again, for the 7th time roughly. You'd think I'd be better at it by now, but I'm not. I stayed up all night, cleaning and packing my things back into the two overstuffed suitcases I came with. In them are both memories and unrealized dreams. Once again, I am in between: in between homes, in between countries, and in between friends. I stand in the doorway, looking back with melancholy. In this case, to be melancholic is to mourn, and to mourn means there must have been a something good, and there was.

It started out shakily. Looking back, I can often measure how I am doing in life by how much I was writing. Writing has always been my way of coping: with uncertainty, with suffering, and with the constant struggle to use my days well. When things were rough, my notebook filled up with the same words over and over: how unsatisfied I was, how I’d wasted another day. And then the cycle would repeat.

When I first arrived, it took me a while to settle in and find friends. I clung to the idea of a perfect routine, but routine was impossible and only later did I realize that was okay. My suffering started to ease when I let go of my attachment to routine and embraced the outside world instead.

It wasn’t my most productive semester, but that didn’t matter. I got the essentials done, and more importantly, I had a good time. That shift happened slowly, and it happened because of people. I made friends by throwing myself into social situations, even when I felt awkward or alone. And in doing so, things began to change.

It started when I went surfing with a group of people I barely knew. My friend had bailed, but I decided to go anyway. Taking that leap laid the groundwork for everything that followed.

The future took shape with a pilgrimage I walked alone. It was odd, perhaps, but it gave me the space I needed to break free from the illusions that had prevented me from enjoying the path right in front of me.

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Your Mother is the earth

Your Father is infinite light

And your friend will be the sea

The lady said to me

Then there was a moment of pure beauty that was sometimes interrupted, fleeting, and fragile. I’m not sure how long it lasted or if it was ever fully real. But it was there: love, friendship, and a sense of thriving.

I’d wake up not knowing what the day would bring and that was enough. Mornings surfing melted into Afternoons playing spikeball on the beach. Evenings stretched with conversations that felt like forever in a good way. One moment flowed into the next with a kind of effortless joy, the kind you don’t notice until you look back and realize you were truly living.

This was living at its best. This hasn't happened often in my life, but it did here.

I stopped looking at the mountain ahead and fell into a rhythm with the world around me. There are two things to let go of: the summit and the ego. While the summit defines the mountain, 99% of your time will be spent on the sides. So, all that matters is how you feel; who cares where you end up? The second thing to let go of is the ego, the idea that you must summit or else you are weak and a bad person. This mental weight will drag you down, preventing you from accomplishing what you can and will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The summit is your goal; the ego is how you perceive yourself based on that goal. But all of this is an illusion. All that is real is the step ahead, the breath you take, and the company you keep while doing so. When you release your ego, you realize that your value is internal and is externalized by climbing the right mountain for you and helping others while doing so. What else is there to think about?

A Summer Day

Heaven on Earth

enough for me

Things started to slow down, people started to leave, and things got complicated. Those days were over. If you love something, you have to let it go. Clinging to those memories will only make me miserable and leave me with nothing but blood under my nails.

The rose-tinted glasses have come off, and the people who made this house a home are gone. I have seen a lot in Portugal, and I want to see more. However, it has lost some of its luster, which is normal after you have lived in a place for a while. The glimmer of the new dulls until you move on, at which point it is replaced by nostalgia for the old.

I stopped writing for a time

You were enough for me

And now you’re gone

And I write poems in the blank space you left

As with all places, the memories of what happened here will start to blend. Its already starting to feel like a dream of paradise. With constant movement, you lose the priming ability of the world around you. All you can do is bring back small reminders of where you've been. But a souvenir hardly lets you bring back a city, let alone the people there.

Change is inevitable; everything comes to an end. There will come a time to settle down. But until then, constant movement and fleeting connection is the price we pay to see many places and make many friends.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "saudade" is a Portuguese word meaning a deep, melancholic feeling of longing for a home that doesn't exist (maybe it never did?). Fitting in this case.

Although this hurts now, it's only because it was such a great time. It has awakened my desire to see more of the world and incorporate it into my daily life.

I learn the same lessons over and over again, and I believe that humanity as a whole does as well. Modern psychology has come to recognize the benefits of Eastern traditions. One of these lessons is learning to let go of regret. I just know that next time, I will do things differently.

Many paths lie ahead of me and ahead of all of us, some cloudy and some leading off a cliff. What will the future bring? Is there a future for me with AI? I’m unsure of what lies ahead, and I stand in the doorway with apprehension.

I’m in the in-between now, the space where there’s nothing I have to do immediately.

This can be just as corrosive as having too much to do. I often reject these transition periods, these stretches of travel and waiting. But in doing so, we reject the chance to simply live as we are. I’m actually doing exactly what I want to be, Im traveling I’m moving around, it can be exhausting, but it is more exhausting when you dread it.

I am standing in the doorway, looking back with melancholy and forward with apprehension. Melancholy means I have lived; apprehension means there are opportunities yet to come. There is only one thing to do: look at the ground and trudge up the mountain. Hopefully, it is the right one, and hopefully, I will enjoy it.

I know it will take me a month to readjust to my old life. Of course, though, it isn’t the same life anymore. It has changed in my absence and will continue to change long after I return. Nothing is permanent, but at least the different periods of my life are honest about that.

I don’t know what’s coming. I only know that things will change. For now, I don't have any keys. But my stone and my bottle opener belong somewhere, as do I. I just need to try some doors until I find the right one. I have keys to nowhere right now, but nothing is holding me down. I have access to everywhere.

This is the companion piece to the following: