Precisely two years ago I was landing in Taipei, about to start a new chapter of my life.
Professional circumstances brought me to Formosa Island, the same island that as a child, I would freeze amazed listening to my grandfather’s stories about the great Portuguese navigators. Maybe it was the way he describe it, maybe it was the name itself, Formosa remained in my mind as a fantastic island from a wonder world.
Back to 18 November 2002, although I always feel excited when visiting a country for the first time, I was feeling unhappy because I was leaving back the place that I considered home for the past eight years.
Leaving a place and moving to a new one is always very emotionally demanding, no matter how many times we repeat it in our life.
Since I was a child, I’ve been exposed to this:
First you have a regular life in a place, you discover your own comfortable zones and you enjoy it. One day, for some reason you have to leave and then you realize how much that place and people meant to you. You leave and when you arrive to the new place you hate it because you cannot find what and whom you just left behind. Then with time you start getting into your new routine, you start discovering your new comfortable zone and you enjoy it until one day, for some reason you have to leave and the process will restart all over again.
The more you do it the less traumatizing it is, and eventually, Planet Earth will be what you consider “home sweet home”.
People often ask me, with all this moving around, what do I consider myself to be?
If we were machines and if we could quantify the percentage of us in terms of influences of the places where we lived and allowed ourselves to be acultured by, then I would answer roughly that I was something like this:
But because, its not only the country where you live that makes you what you are, it is also who do you meet and deal with, the countries that you visit and all the other billions of factors that make you what you are: a unique human being.
So if I had to represent what I am, I could not think of a unique nationality that could represent me, perhaps this will be more representative: a blend of those billion factors that some how made me what I am:
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