A personal note

18th of August, 05:22 am and here we are waiting the long, long queue at the border between Slovakia and Ukraine, respecting the old tradition of crossing any border at the sound of some top Portuguese “Pimba” music hits (Tony Carreira is “making the honours today). Perfect timing to take a first look back on our first week on the road!

And it’s not hard for me and my Deuch to reach a consensus on the outcome so far: AMAZING!!! Rimini was awesome, Balatonfoldvar sweet and Slovakia as crazy and funny as expected! Besides, the Deuch is simply being the Lord of any road throughout Europe, spreading its charm wherever we go. But, on top of that, a feeling of true happiness I didn’t remember experiencing for quite sometime now. A feeling which grew much bigger then the simple sum up of the events we went through over the past 7 days.

A quiet happiness, built over pure excitement! An intense and apparently contradictory feeling very easy to explain: right now, right at this moment, I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do. This alone is a massive privilege: how often can one say this? For the large majority of our days, we limit ourselves to keep on going, surviving through the day, adding or experiencing little or nothing truly new to our daily routine. Having the life life itself planned for us, but hardly ever the one we planed for ourselves. Well, unlike on the last 365 days (to say the least), if little young Tiago, from 10 or 15 years ago, would be given the chance to, at this moment, take a glance on what I’m doing, on who I am being, I’m sure he would be damm proud! Here I am being as Tiago as I can, in the end, just playing the role I was born to, even though I often forget it. Travelling the world, following my way, enjoying every single time (and they are a lot) people tell me how crazy I am. Open to a complete new world I am given the unique chance of experiencing “on the 1st person”, meeting some amazing people along the way, “walking my talking”, proving every single day one of the main vectors of my life’s Philosophy: “what comes around, goes around”.

But the privilege gets bigger: I’m doing all this, still staying is close touch with all those who are so dear to me, mostly through this meeting point. Speaking of dear ones, I’ll take the chance to say out loud something that, out of my character, I hardly do, even though it should be said at every opportunity: to my parents, a THANK YOU as big as the experience I am going through. Not only for always giving me everything I need and more, not only for having raised me the way they did, but mostly for allowing me to grow up as faithful as possible to myself, something I know is not always easy. Again, THANK YOU!

Battery is running our, unfortunately, the queue is not…Just one last note: life indeed can be easy, simple and beautiful. When we break away from our context, we realise that few real things holds us to what we often see as our inevitable life. To be truly happy, we always have to leave our “comfortable places”, these places being physical, psychological or emotional, even if only to challenge them and realise they are the places where we want to be. But in those “comfortable places”, even though far from true happiness, we are indeed even further from sadness. The choice is therefore very plain: do we want to fight for our happiness or are we ready to settle for avoiding sadness? At this moment, my choice is self-evident. But till when? If, as I wish, for long, will I then know when to stop? Will stay in touch to figure it out together!

Love, an happy one
TMA and Le Deuch