This is my first time in this city so my personal experience might not be significant enough, but it seems to me people here are extremely hospitable.
Maybe it has to do with the amount of business tourism São Paulo has or maybe it’s a generalized cultural norm, but everyone is more than willing to engage in conversations with me.
The chef of the hotel asked me last night what part of brazil was I from, I’m sure my accent was throwing him off, so I told him I’m a foreigner. He was pretty entertained with the idea of flying that far.
“10 hours on a plane... I could not do this... ever”
I had to ask him what was the longest flight he had ever been in. His response was pretty interesting “I’ve never left this city”.
I guess there is nothing inherently wrong with one completing a life cycle in a small mile radius, but it does give me some insights into what I can only identify as invisible cages.
Of course we are all different and the thought of traveling might have different emotional responses in each of one of us, but I had never considered the possibility of never traveling. There are economical challenges no doubt, but I’m inclined to believe the main ingredient more often than not must be the lack of want.
Why would we sapiens need to travel, to explore? Long before we spoke any familiar language this was necessary for our very survival, but today there are still existential benefits. Perspective, that is the gaining of it is probably the most valuable to our understand of the world and it’s complicated existence.
What would be the reason to draw lines, to effectively live inside the cages. Here is where I can only speculate, because this idea up until now had never been considered by a single neuron belonging to me. Maybe it’s a plain misguided survival behavior keeping anything unknown as far as possible. That does make sense, we know the unknown unknowns can be quite scary, but I’m also not willing to say they have thought it through that far.
Maybe it’s even simpler, like if the wind never blew then the leaf never moved. Would I be ok with being a leaf? I don’t think I would and I’m sure now, knowing how much I still don’t know it would feel like torture.
But if we knew no better... Then that’s a whole different thing.
I don’t like the saying, it seems insulting but it’s seems to be quite accurate.
“To the heart and mind ignorance is very kind”