Earlier today, a co-worker looked reckless. A young man under 40 years old, divorced, with a jovial appearance, whom I will call Mario only fictitiously, when asked by the older cleaning lady, hesitated to answer how he felt with the new challenge that life proposed to him . A move from town to a location close to the beach.
I can't say if this was his dream, or a goal he thought about building so soon, but once chosen he couldn't go back. I had already made the choice. So, fear and nervousness had accompanied his days since the announcement: it was official. In fifteen days, he would be leaving for the coast, where he would take up residence. Alone.
The city that is a few kilometers away would take him away from his father, away from his friends, away from the people he lives with. Mário was afraid, he said that putting it on the tip of the pencil would not be worth it, and he already presented a fearful speech, different from when he excitedly told a few days ago that he was selected for transfer.
When he half-heartedly answered the question, he startled me. Once he chose the new location, he no longer felt sure if he wanted to live away from his father, away from the city he lived in for a few years, away from his comfort zone. The lady's advice wasn't the kind you write in a short story, just full of talk about change, but it was good advice.
Before I could understand, another coworker arrived. This one, a girl married for some time, I'll call her Marcela, also in a fictitious way, addressed her colleague saying that she now also had a challenge. Her husband had just become unemployed. She needed to adjust her life to this problem. She herself had become bewildered, walked from the house to work, ignoring the driving, as if she were walking to burn calories and forget the feeling of anguish that consumed her. I also understand this feeling well.
She said that a friend from another office had already gone through the same situation, but that she considered leaving her husband, living alone. She was reprimanded, under the following statement "if you leave him, your prince charming will not be waiting for you on the corner". It would be ingratitude if she, who was always backed by him, left him now that he needed her.
Upon hearing those two statements, the cleaning lady was no longer able to save the chronicle with words of wisdom. Any change brings with it fear, nervousness, doubt, the desire to give up. It takes work to get out of the comfort zone, it takes work to discover the new. It takes work to deconstruct to build something new.
Ironically, they weren't the only ones going through the same situation. Just being in the same room as the two of them is evidence of a change happening inside me. A few months ago, I was simply focused on a hobby that I loved dearly, and still do, which unfortunately brought me more pain than happiness. I learned that people are ungrateful by their very nature, and that when Peter talks about Paul, I learn more about Peter's character than I do about Paul's character. That the ingratitude described in the change exists. That we shouldn't let people treat us badly just because we love them, but that's for another text.
I have pictures that portray each of the moments I lived with my old hobby, which by the way, I evolved a lot. Every event flyer I attended turned into a small board I kept on my dresser until disappointment came, which led me to stash them in the bottom drawer on the left side of the wardrobe.
By common agreement, in that conversation, we agreed that living is a challenge, it is being willing to face the new, because every day, something changes around us. Every minute, cells die and are born inside us. Every day we exchange inexperience for experience, and in payment for the exchange, we approach the end of life.
Change takes us out of our comfort zone. One of the books that most marked my life was "Who Moved My Cheese", which told the story of two mice and two little men who lived in a labyrinth and fed on cheese, in a giant stock that they believed to be infinite, until a one day the stock runs out, challenging them to find a "new cheese". As a spoiler I can say that the mice, irrational beings, were the first to move towards what was new, after all, they did not cling to what cheese meant, they only lived what cheese could provide them, and risked themselves. say that they already predicted the end of the stock. The rest of the story showed that men resisted change, blamed each other, in their theory-filled minds...
It's interesting how we have the ability to adapt to any situation, and even more interesting is how we have the ability to cling to fleeting things, create our comfort zone and forget about the world. Mário is still under 40. Marcela has never had the opportunity to decide the house rules. I still don't know my purpose in life. Why aren't we open to new things?
With or without your consent, change will happen. Whether for me, who is now focused on a new professional area, for my colleague who is now preparing to take over the reins of the house, or for my colleague, who will have his new destiny set.
Before going home, I stopped by a store and bought a painting... The last event I attended, right after the disappointment. I placed the pamphlet. I framed the memory. That it will be just that, a beautiful memory of what will not come back. Now I need to chart new directions, navigate new currents. If I didn't leave this as a memory, I wouldn't be in that room having that difficult conversation about change. I still haven't decided if the paintings will go back to the drawer, or if after a few years I'll bring them back to the wall.
I don't want to say that my morning had a happy ending, either for me or for both of us. But our conversation extended and yielded good thoughts, and even this text. One of the fruits of this short dialogue came today, when, before I left, Mario hummed smiling towards the kitchen a song that we knew in Brazil, that Charlie Brown wrote “"my office is on the beach, I'm always in the area"...
Source: Pixabay
