Let me share a personal experience with all of you.

About three years ago (I was 20 years old at the time) I saw myself tired of the city so I went to the fields with my backpack (almost 25kg on my back) with a purpose: walk for 50km from one town to the other through the vast plains of Alentejo (a region in Portugal which I recommend to every fellow travelers). It was summertime and the temperature was around 35/40ºc. So these are the terms, 50km, 25kg, 35ºc…
(now this is where it turns to be almost ridiculous)
After 15km I wanted to sit down and rest under one of the few trees. While I was ‘trying’ to rest a horde of tiny and annoying flies were all over my face and I just couldn’t stand still.
I fought the flies and flies won. You know that feeling… I wanted to find myself, I wanted to feel at home and the natives (flies) were not welcoming me (I take those flies as my inner fears if you will) … I failed to see that at the time but my home is not ‘the field’ if it’s not inside myself.
While I was fighting the flies I started to cry like a little baby, I yelled like I was in pain (don’t forget, “pain is weakness leaving the body”) and I called my mother. She told me: “Don’t worry son, get back to the village because you’re not ready for that travel and you know it. Don’t worry son, stepping backwards it’s not necessarily bad”. So I grabbed my backpack again and made the 15km back.
It was an amazing victory because my plan was to walk 15km in one day and I walked 30km… I’ve learned a lot about the plains and my particular way to see it and I’ve learned my physical limits at the time. Somehow a part of me was left behind, a weaker part, I suppose.

That was how I learned that a Failure is not just a Failure… One can learn great lessons from mistakes.

Keep that in mind and keep walking the path.

‘There’s a definitive change in all actions, an eternal life
that waits to be buried along with us’

Be well!

Pedro Mota’s last blog post..: a new dawn