I've mentioned before how people I met during my travels keep coming back to me, interested to know about my travels, my experiences, stories and learnings, and to express how they feel inspired by all that. It feels wonderful to be a positive reference and to inspire people.
Today I got a surprising message of this two Canadian ladies that I met in Kenya a few months ago. In this message they referred to me as an "inspirational nomad", a description that made me really think about the impact one can have in someone else's life.
By the time we met, I was living in this Maasai camp and assisting the community leader on a health related project when these ladies came to stay in the camp for a few days. There were always some tourists coming and staying in the camp for the experience of being with the Maasai and catching a glimpse in their life style. I remember this evening during their visit, we were still sitting at the table after supper and talking, as the visitors usually do. The two Canadian ladies, another lady from New Zealand and I. I was telling them about what I was doing there, how I decided to move to Kenya and do voluntary work in the countryside. At a certain point the older Canadian lady, which happened to be a experienced nurse, asked me a question. She said: "Considering all your what you've done so far, what would you say it was you biggest teacher?" That caught me by surprise!
I stopped for a second and repeated the question to myself and immediately the answer was there, just like hit by a lightening. For a fraction of a second I still pondered if I would give her the proper answer since it was somehow very personal and sometimes people are not prepared for such discussion. Anyway, the way I am, I just let it out. I replied: "My depression!" And the funny thing was I put this possessive pronoun "My" in front of it. Well, it was my learning process, it redefined "Me" and changed "My" life. So, it was "My depression."
I told her and the others at the table about the difficult time a had before deciding to change my life and the lessons I've learned from that painful period and to justify why "My depression" has been my greatest teacher I went through some points I've been concentrating on since then. It first, I told them about the one lesson I refused to learned, which was "being selfish is alright!" I've never been selfish, I didn't like selfish people and refused at any cost to become one. It that moment I mentioned what my therapist told me once. She said: "Mr. Cavalcante, you're the kind of person that will never eat the last piece of the cake." She was totally right with that metaphor. She meant actually that I had to think more of myself and put me as priority before think of others. I've been putting myself aside to prioritize other people for so long and that led me to invest a lot of energy in events and people which would culminate in deepest disappointment. So, I was meant to come first and had to change that in me. It took time, it's not easy for someone to reset this kind of thing but I had to do it, and at a certain point, I started making the first moves to change it.
Another important lesson I gotta learn was "what to do to be happy." Most of us wrongly expect to find our happiness in someone else, "the love of our lives", or in something material, or professional. We all project our idea of happiness in something that should be acquired, achieved, made or bought. When it comes to the core of the question, happiness actually becomes a decision and not an empty blank that hast to be filled. One has to decide to be happy, that was the lesson. To get myself out of the said place I was in, I had to decide to be happy. I had a place to live, friends, a good job, I was healthy. So, why the heck I was so sad? Yeah! I stopped letting external variables dictate how I was supposed to feel and took the decision to be happy. On hard times one has to stop, go through the sad feelings, process them and grow out of them, not forgetting that they are not those who determine about you being happy or not. You do it!
After I finished with the defense of my thesis on "how my depression became my biggest teacher" I realized that the Canadian lady was crying. I even apologized for, eventually, shocking her with my sudden talk about depression but she was really fine. She was just a kind of sensitive person, as she told herself and wasn't expecting such an "intense" reply to her inquire.
Next day, I was approached by the second Canadian lady during a walk in the camp. She came to express her gratitude for me being so open about myself and helping her in dealing with her own issues. She opened herself briefly and explained she had been facing similar emotional problems and, with my talk the previous day, I made she feel better and encouraged her. I told her again that, as difficult as it seems, we first have to take a decision. A decision to feel good.
Life is really a roller coaster. In one moment you find yourself in the darkest place you've ever been, dying on self pity and afraid of facing the day, in the next moment, you are living from one moment of awe to the other and inspiring people to change their lives. I feel blessed for being able to find a way to deal with all my emotional difficulties and, above all, I'm glad that now I can help other people on easing their pain and finding their own. It's everything about finding it. The way.
The inspirational nomad.
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