How I realized life is not about what I do.

That’s right, this beautiful shadow of a person in the picture above is me.

This marvelous piece of photography captured by my good friend Rodrigo turned out to be my favorite picture from my whole trip, maybe from my whole life.

Why, do you say?

Well, as if an alpha-male standing on top of a rock featuring a beautiful sunset behind Manhattan Bridge wasn’t enough for you professional photographer people, the story of this picture is quite awesome.

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it.

Three days ago my friend Rodrigo, the author of this masterpiece, invited me to go to this event at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn where one of our favorite authors would be having a Conference, so we went on the web searching for tickets one day before this big event — obviously could not find any.

Ok, no problem.

We had already seen the guy in another night when we got miraculous first row seats to a National TV show where he was interviewed (remind me of telling you that story at another time).

So it was all good, I mean, we had seen him already, it wouldn’t kill us not to be there for this major event.

Ok, but that’s not what happened.

Someway, somehow, tickets suddenly became available in that website, ok good, let’s go.

I had around the exact amount of money needed to by those tickets for both of us.

Did it, let’s go.

So next day, saturday, here we are in Brooklyn after a bus ride that cost us an extra 20 bucks (ouch) with 4 hours to do nothing but explore.

But let me tell you a very important detail, that morning before we left I prayed (Yes I pray) in the shower these exact words — “Father, I receive your love and favor in my life, surprise me today.”

I love praying in the shower btw.

Okay, back to Brooklyn, we went off exploring with no direction whatsoever. When we “finally” found a subway station (around 30 seconds later) I figured I wantes to go to DUMBO, which is a neighbourhood under the Brooklyn Bridge, so we walked there.

Okay, now we are here at DUMBO, the sun is about to set, it’s getting cold, we’re eating at this very well located Shake Shack.

It’s a perfect day, a lot of hipsters going around, DYI bikes all over the place, I’m freakin’ lovin’ it!

But then there’s this thing: a thought comes to me.

By this point I feel like I should warn you about something: my melancholy-phlegmatic temperament is prone to go thinking and thinking and ugh, you would not hear me say a word but this mind is running like it’s the Olympic Games.

Ok, back to the thought, what came to me was this:

What exactly did I do to be here?

So here I am, at the place I dreamed of as a kid watching Spiderman movies, the place I dreamed of while an adult watching the New Spiderman movies (which kind of suck) — NEW YORK FREAKIN’ CITY!

What exacty did I do to be here? I was born in a rather small town in Brazil where 15K people reside today.

How come I made it here?

From this point on the ego tries to kick in.

Am I the best at what I do?

Obviously not, I don’t even “do something” at all.

Here come the “destiny thoughts”

Maybe I was always supposed to come here!

Well maybe yes, but why?

Now is the part I stop talking and start hearing.

There is absolutely nothing I did to deserve being here, to deserve all the amazing things happening in my life.

My ego might kick in again and say:

“Come on, you’re a good guy, you totally deserve this”

I can even thank you for these kind words my dear Ego but how have I come to be a nice guy?

I did nothing to be “a good guy”.

“Uhmmm, but… yeah maybe you’re right”

Thank you Ego!

Moving on now to my point, as I did nothing to deserve this tsunami of great life events that are coming my way, that means life is not about doing.

Yup, you heard that right.

But hey, don’t get me wrong here, I consider myself both a dreamer and a doer so I’m not saying you should stop doing stuff.

What I am saying is this:

If your life is defined by what you do then you are your own god.

All this stuff is coming my way because of God’s desire to show me who He is — and God is Love!

Even my desire in that morning to pray asking for His favor actually came from Him!

Yup, that crazy long awesome book called The Bible tells us this mindblowing fact:

“God works in us both to will and to do”

It was never about what you can do, it will never be about that.

You can make the best of it though, you can definetely hustle and get to where you always dreamed of getting, many have made it! I can tell you this : it will never be enough.

You see, we were not designed to be our own gods, we were made to experience God’s love.

Ugh, here comes this guy with his religious stuff.

Dudes, believe me when I say this — RELIGION SUCKS! It’s been the worst thing on the planet for quite a while now.

The religious folk will tell you that our goal in life is to praise God and get to heaven but that is very far off, it doesn’t even make sense!

If our main goal in life was to praise God we’d be angels and if it was to get to heaven we would all die at the very moment we would accept this God into our hearts.

Religion has it all backwards.

Religion tells us what to do our best to try and get to God while God gave His best to get to us.

So hey, I’m not telling you to stop doing your stuff, become a monk and try to get a connection with this Creator dude.

All I’m saying is:

There’s this super cool dude who is so in love with you, he is just waiting for you to stop texting and instagraming and being busy all day so you can stop for a minute and see his loving hands stretched out to you.

Oh look, he brought flowers!