A hug, comforts and comforts everything.

     For a long time in my life, I looked for hugs.

     Hugs from family members, hugs from friends, hugs from love, and it was in a divine hug that I found comfort.

     After I arrived in my homeland, I was longing for a hug, but there was no one there to offer their arm for this hug, but suddenly it comes to my mind, Iguaçu Falls, and I go back to that moment and feel hugged by God, and comfort comes to me.

     Upon discovering the internet I looked for people that I admired, that I loved, that I still believed, that were part of the past, and they all showed me their true faces very different from the one I believed existed in them.

     I wasn't too surprised, you know, in fact I was expecting it, but it still hurt to see that they were so different, and wore masks so lackluster, that in seconds they fell off their faces.

     The people I've had around me for thirty years were as unqualified as the fake crying of a cranky child.

     What we say, your choro is without quality, improve your performance, that, from this model, it's hard for you to get what you want.

     Life doesn't have time to rehearse, everything we do has only one chance to get it right, taking the risk of getting it right is the happiest way to go ahead and fulfill ourselves.

     Those who live looking to get it right, but plan, plan, and then take action.

     When you go to do what had to be done, your time is gone, the right moment is gone, and the expected end will never be there again.

     So why did I wait thirty years, to take a step further, let others walk over me first, destroy my life and my dreams, could this reader ask me, I would tell you, because if I had taken the step, sooner would have torn me apart.

     You know, while I was there, where I didn't want to, who I didn't want to, I was feeling like I was doing my part, with those, because from the moment I started walking I wanted to have a sense of accomplishment.

     And the moment that feeling hit, I told myself, enough is enough.

     People go back when they get the feeling that they should have tried something, that they could have done it differently, that it could be different, but when we are ready for something, nothing stops us from moving forward. 

     And being ready does not mean that everything will be easy and we will receive everything ready, it means that we are able to overcome all kinds of obstacles without looking back.

     Overcoming pain, suffering, hunger, fear, loneliness, without fear and walking forward, without crying, without looking back without regretting what you do, is the guarantee of arriving happy at the finish line.

     Sleeping peacefully with the idea that I was a glass dome, that protected those who loved until their last moment, despite everything.

     I want to be at peace with myself that I was the air that cools and dissipates the rain, in the eyes of others.

     For that, I just need the certainty that I did everything I could and should at the exact moment that things happened and that on my part there was no lack of attitude, that my words were not empty.

     One day, when I was driving along a path along a beach in São Paulo, a car suddenly hit a cyclist, right there in front of me, I ran to the public telephone, called the fire department, and went to see the injured girl, then the fire department when they arrived, she had been rescued and left, I was the homeless person, unknown and seen as a pejorative being, on a beach of wealthy people. 

     A few days later, I was invited to go to a beach, which only the cream of society could enter, it was young people who came to pick me up on the streets to accompany them. 

     Coincidence? 

     One of them was the girl? 

     Or simply compassion for rich young people? 

     I think that both in one situation and in another I was where I should have been at that moment.

     And that God, above any other being, looked at my attitudes, if they were such as my faith. 

     It's no good faith without works, it's no good works without faith. 

     Preaching a religion is not going around shouting moral values, dogmas and social conventions, and acting the way you believe you should act, within what is preached in your belief. 

     And don't hide what you believe, where you come from and why you believe, if someone else asks you.

     Don't hide your real self, don't hide your values, don't hide your love for your neighbor when he needs you.

     One Easter I was all broken up because I had been beaten for refusing prostitution.

     I had casts on both legs and both arms.

     And a street child started looking at the eggs coming out of a big store we were in front of, I was standing right there, because it was no use leaving there, I couldn't move my hands. 

     And then the child told the mother, I wanted an egg, the woman looked at me and the child and said, who wouldn't?

     A few days earlier I had heard a conversation that locals were terrified that broken people would break into their stores or homes, that it would lead to financial bankruptcy.

     I asked someone to help me up from there, and I left, walking around and threatening to enter businesses and houses and people would ask what you want, I would answer an Easter egg, the merchant would give it to me and I would leave, so I collected several eggs for the children there, when I came back with arms outstretched and full of Easter eggs, I asked them to get the eggs on them and they ran and got them and ate, it was so nice to see that scene.

     Sometimes we can use another's mistaken credulity to do good, it was worth it. 

     People around me started to have empathy for me and helped me to get up, sit down, took me to the bathroom, there were even people who would ask for food and they gave me food in my mouth again, because I couldn't move. 

     When I left that place in northeastern Brazil, I was once again with the feeling of accomplishment.

     Sounds weird right? 

     But it's real.

     In the street there is no feeling of solitude as a couple, as a three, but the real amplitude of what you live. 

     There are poignant, frightening, and real south situations, where the homeless person next door says lying on the floor looking up, this hotel, millions of stars is beautiful.  

     And you find yourself looking up, and looking at the stars that are in the sky, and you fall asleep laughing, as if you were in a soft, well-fed bed (even though you haven't eaten for days).

     How is so much solution possible in a space of so much pain and destruction?

     Simple, when we have nowhere else to go, we go where life takes us.