My strongest weakness

Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who thinks about it. Other times, I am sure I am not alone. Thinking about what I want to do professionally is my cigarette, it kills me slowly.

This is an old matter for me. It takes all the empty and filled spaces in my mind. It is recurrent, insistent, my strongest weakness. For a very long part of my life I thought things were just the way they were. As soon as I graduated at age 21, I still lived in that excitement and naiveté, thinking I would have a lot of money in my late twenties and I would celebrate my 30’s in the house that I would have worked hard to buy — a house that would have a massive pool full of silver and golden balloons (I do not even like the color gold!) and many perfectly dressed guests laughing unnaturally with real crystal glasses. I was never ambitious and never had these goals, but every once in a while this scene would come to my mind in the pink phase called college.

Then, I got an internship, and if I close my eyes now I can still remember how incredible it felt to be there for the first year. I was learning something new, I was making friends, finally becoming an adult, making and saving money and having fun. All the fun of the lilac phase called internship, when you do not have the obligation to be certain. For a period of time everything was perfectly aligned, but if I could go back in time I would say to that young Fernanda: Hey, at some point they are going to take away all the fun, and they will explain that with corporate names: opportunity, “natural” career path, more responsibility and commitment, challenge, growth… do not fall for that, dear. You can continue to be a specialist, and if you do not want to, you do not need to ever become a manager, a supervisor, have people to coordinate and worry whether or not your team or that guy in your team is feeling motivated enough. That first job left me broken. It broke my spirit. It gave me experience and took away the act of experience in a single stroke.

Then, came one job after another and this phase I call “the gray phase — discovering that the hole is further down and that you actually were at the very bottom”. I found heartless jobs, made money, cried countless times and felt very lonely in almost every moment of my 9–5 jobs. After all, everyone shares the same pain, but each one of us in our personal stall. Alone. Not seeing yourself in a role, it is a lonely experience even if everyone thinks they are lost, too. At the end, it is you and your absent heart. I could not take it because nature has taught me something. Nature is clever, vibrant, creative, bursting in life every single day, resilient, colorful and strong. It is alive. Now, look at a traditional corporate job that makes you unhappy. See? I did not understand before and I do not understand now how I will support my heart just by working to support myself. Make a living is imperative, I know, but I also know that the world needs our most precious talent, the one that only we have, and although it is worth gold, cannot always be put in a résumé: “Possesses practical knowledge in cheering up the whole company, dancing, singing and mimicking personalities or strangers when a project goes down the drain.” This is my knowhow and as Aristotle once said: “Where the needs of the world and your talent meet, there lies your vocation.” And the world needs authenticity.

Years later I find myself working with coffee abroad. At age 36. After a lifetime in the corporate world. Myself and I, creating drinks, serving people. I found it simplistic at first. An exaggerated simplicity. And I was right. Outside the cocoon, I did not know the language, but it was where I could use my restless, colorful and powerful heart to touch people’s feelings as an embroiderer would do with bright yarn. That was the rainbow phase where I created incredible connections with people I could never imagine meeting if I was in the corporate horror land. I met so many available, open, vulnerable people, all different from me… people with an intense load of life, with precious, delicate and exciting stories that made me realize something very unique:

Do you know the thing that you were hired to do (in my case, to be a barista)? Yeah, it is not always what matters the most in a job. Some things are not in the scope of your work, maybe they will never be, and yet they are the core of any human connection and what makes a business something brilliant: kindness, joy, curiosity, enthusiasm, energy, LOVE. That job was never about coffee and at the same time could be about anything: shoes, candles, books, plants, boats.

When I realized this, I realized that my old dream of “making the world a better place” was not just about daring projects and fanciful, astronomical creations. In the act of serving coffee, I was serving a purpose. A very peculiar one: my own purpose here on earth. Improving the world, I realized, had to do with perceiving the other person, serving a coffee and talking, listening, connecting my stories with other people’s stories, looking in the eyes, rescuing the lost empathy, remembering the details of a story, smiling, hugging and sometimes even dancing to the sound of some background music.

I remember one day working at the cafe, when I went to meet a lady at the cashier. She had already asked something to the manager. Until then, I did not know what the question was, but I know he did not pay much attention and left. She came up to me at the counter and said she did not want a coffee, she wanted to know how much the parking meter was and how long she was allowed to park her car in the front. She was worried because she said she had an appointment at the hospital down the street and did not know how long it would take — she did not want to come back and find a ticket or her car towed away. What came next was enough for me to do something out of my way. She said: “You know, I have an appointment now. The doctor found a tumor few days ago. I had an exam and today I’m going to see the result. It could be something.”

My heart fell to the ground. Walking up the stairs of the cafe that led to the street, I said: “I do not know how much the parking meter is, but we can check together. We can put some coins, and I’ll put an alarm on my cell phone; if you have not returned, I will put my money for a few more minutes; if you come back earlier, we’ll have a coffee together.” She thanked me, went to the hospital and I returned to the cafe counter.

She came back before my alarm rang, told me soon that the doctor did not find anything serious and we briefly celebrated. I made her a cappuccino, I did not let her pay, and we sat together for a few minutes. It was winter. It was fear hugging her tight earlier. I cannot even imagine her anxiety. No barista is hired for that. We would never be. And the thing I was not hired for changed that lady’s world that afternoon, and mine too! How do I know? Well, few days later she went back to the cafe, smiled as she came down stairs, said my name in a cute American accent, and came towards me. She gave me a hug and handed me a scarf wrapped in glossy paper with a handwritten card saying that her country needed people like me. That I should stay there forever. I made all the coffees during that shift crying, thrilled and red-faced. Kindness is everything to me.

I am 38 now and at least since I was 27 or so I think a job should create or return something positive to the Universe. A job should show the best of me and help to potentiate the best in others. It should have a straight and tight connection with my favorite words and verbs: curiosity, spontaneity, connection, sharing, authenticity, experiencing, interacting, imagination, intention, care, joy, collective, creativity, fun, exploration, catalyze, memories, stories, ethics and generosity. I want to laugh and thrill myself many times a day, even if I cry on the desk in the same proportion. I want my head exploding with curiosity and creativity. I want sharing, genuine eyes, real connections with the human being besides me. These things that you feel in those who feel the same as you, after all, similar souls recognize each other. I want to be able to leave cute little notes, recognizing how important it is to have the people I have with me on a daily basis, and feel safe for being exactly who I am… laughing hard, speaking out my truth, crying, most of time all together. I want to belong, to come alive. I want my work to regenerate the disconnected cells of love and to come from the heart — out of my spirit into the world. Intentionally and unapologetically.

These days, thinking of everything I have lived professionally, especially in my coffee experience, I have been thinking about how the world needs the power of each one of us. That saving grace we all show when we are free and safe… We need that to get out of our sleepwalking mode and wake up to each other, to be funnier and generous. We need the power of each one of us to create individual worlds full of purpose, to then create a stunning collective world. And because of these ideas, which float daily in my head like little sparkling insects at night, sometimes I think I’m the only one who thinks about it. Other times, I am sure I am not alone.