Brazil: The World’s Heart and Mine
My friends in Brazil like to say:
“America is the world’s brain, and Brazil is its heart.”
I’ve appreciated that analogy ever since my first trip to Brazil in 2019. As somebody who is slow to open up socially and even slower to really trust people, I was caught off guard when I arrived here.
The 2nd night that I ever I spent in Brazil, my friend Leo took me to a churrasco (barbacue) with many of his closest childhood friends.
Besides slice after slice of meat that melted in my mouth, the thing I remember the most about that night is being so surprised at how cool everybody was to hang out with.
I thought it would be awkward for me. A nerdy gringo who doesn’t speak Portuguese in a group of a dozen Brazilian guys who have been close friends for more than a decade? I expected to either feel left out or, worse, to be the center of attention for being a foreigner. But it wasn’t like that at all.
That night, I just felt like one of the guys. The only time I was treated differently for being a gringo and newcomer to the group was that I always got offered the first slice of steak right after a fresh piece had been pulled off the grill. I didn’t mind that attention at all.
By the end of the night, I knew I was going to have a lot of fun in Brazil. But I still had no clue just how much this place would soon mean to me.
Opening Up
Since those first couple of days in Brazil, my experiences only got deeper and more interesting.
Like his friends, Leo’s family welcomed me more warmly than I could have ever hoped for. In just 6 weeks, I went from being and feeling like a stranger to knowing that I had a 2nd family here who were going to be a big part of my life.
I gradually became “Uncle Dan” to Leo’s then-3-now-5-year-old son Massimo, the first young kid I’ve spent considerable time with since I was that age.
I may have made him cry 1 or 10 or 50 times, but damn… the feeling of walking through the door to hear an excited “Uncle!” followed by running footsteps and hug around my waist has changed me in ways that I never anticipated.
As I write this, it’s been a month since I last saw Massimo and I’m missing him all the time.
Then there’s Leo’s wife, Andressa. When I first met Andressa, we clashed a bit (or maybe a lot). She understandably didn’t trust the strange foreign guy sleeping in the room right beside her son’s room, and I knew it would take some time to get comfortable. But as both of our guards came down and we got to know each other, our clashes were replaced by interesting and mind-opening conversations about spirituality, culture, personal growth, and some fun conspiracy theories for good measure. In fact, it’s largely thanks to my talks with Andressa the past 3 years that I no longer call myself nor feel like an atheist, and I’ll be forever grateful to her. (But that’s a story best left for another time.)
Andressa’s mom, dad, sister, and grandma have all treated me like family, too. We’ve spent the past 3 Christmases together, and they’ve been the most enjoyable holidays I’ve had since my Nonna passed away when I was 17.
And finally there’s Aline, a friend who Andressa convinced me to meet so that I could try reiki because “it would be really good for you”. I procrastinated going to see Aline for a while, but my curiosity eventually got the best of me and I made an appointment my last week in Curitiba before I was set to return to Prague, where I was living at the time.
I was a tiny bit nervous and a large bit skeptical as I walked through the door into Aline’s office. I don’t know what I was expecting, but one thing I wasn’t mentally prepared for was that Aline was young and hot. My surprise made it difficult to maintain such strong skepticism, and as me and Aline began talking I felt myself opening up much faster than I had ever anticipated.
She helped me understand my experiences and my own personality more deeply, and to this day she’s giving me mind-blowing insights on life and how to make the most of it.
But when it comes to having my mind blown here In Brazil, it’s still my first ever close Brazilian friend who takes the cake.
Brother from Another Mother
I first met Leo in 2017 when we began working together on a cryptocurrency project. He was the marketing manager and I was hired as a copywriter, so we were always collaborating on various tasks.
As time went on, we began chatting more and more often, and the talks became focused on work less and less. I told him all about my experiences in America, especially in my favorite state of Colorado. He told me about his family and showed me some of the beauty of Brazil.
In 2019, when I had the opportunity to travel to Uruguay for work, I sent Leo a message to see if I could go visit him in Brazil on the same trip. I didn’t know what to expect really, but an invitation to come stay with him and his family for 6 weeks definitely wasn’t it.
One thing I learned early on when I began traveling is “just say yes” and let the details work themselves out along the way. So I took Leo up on his crazy invitation, and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in my whole life.
From the moment I walked out of the Curitiba airport to find Leo waiting for me, he has made me feel welcome in Brazil. We staid up late talking to each other almost every night of those 6 weeks I was there. Some nights we talked about business and money and responsibilities. Others we compared Leo’s family life with my single, nomadic life. But my favorite were the nights we spent watching NBA, listening to Russ, and just dreaming about what the future had in store.
It’s pretty common when traveling for people to ask something along the lines of “where is your home?” As a nomad for much of the past 5 years, I’ve grown accustomed to answering that question with “I don’t have one.” But the super cliche-sounding truth that I’ve come to understand through my globetrotting journey is that home is not a place. Home is wherever you are with the people you love. Leo is my brother, and his family is my second family. Whenever we are together, I am home.
The Pursuit of Meaning
It’s crazy to think that all of this started with me taking an offer to work on a cryptocurrency project for like 5–10 hours per week 5 years ago.
But actually, I realize it started way earlier than that. I never would have gotten that offer without creating an Upwork freelancing profile about 2 weeks prior. And that only happened because I decided to quit engineering right after graduating so that I could move to China (Wuhan of all places). Which I only did because I had been to China once before in 2014 and became fascinated by it, and that 2014 trip only happened because… well, you get the picture.
The amount of things that had to happen just so in order for me to get here is incomprehensible. And I didn’t have a clue what I was doing at the time. My 22nd year was one of crisis and feeling utterly lost. But one thing that I knew without any doubts was that I had learned more from my handful of trips around the world than in all the thousands of hours spent in school combined. I knew that I had to keep traveling.
The late, great Anthony Bourdain once said:
“If you’re 22, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel — as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them — wherever you go.”
I know I’m not on this earth just to make money, nor am I here in the pursuit of happiness, whatever that would be. Ultimately, I am here to learn and grow, and to be courageous in the big decisions I make. That is how I’ll leave this earth better than I found it.
Brazil has taught me more about why I’m here than any other place I’ve ever been in my life. It has taught me gratitude through the beautiful people and places I’ve gotten to know here. It’s taught me about family and kids and the childlike curiosity that we all tend to lose over the years as we are taught not to question things or think critically.
But most of all, it’s taught me to live more with my heart, because sometimes it knows better than my brain.
