Excursiones al Corazon

While I started this blog mainly to share the experiences and impressions of all the places I visit and the things I do, there is a slightly different topic I want to write about today… and that would be the kind of experience and impression that affects not only your memories but rather your attitude, your view of the world and eventually your heart.
As you sure can imagine, such a trip away from home, loved ones and friends is not only fun, it is also quite a serious expedition to get to know yourself in different kinds of ways, and that is not always only cushy. Don’t get me wrong, this Colombia-experience is generally a lot of delight and definitely enriching: I’m getting to know new places, am close to my relatives, am finding new friends, etc… but it is also a trip into another culture, another mindset, another standard of living, another type of challenges than the ones we face back home and it is a visit to my own heart, where I get to know a lot of “new” and unfamiliar things as well. And this second set of experiences is the mind-blowing one.
It’s not that you can’t experience such intense and emotional times at home, but since I am here in Colombia it seems to me that my established attitude and common feelings are shaken anew almost on a daily basis. It’s kind of difficult to explain, but the cause might be the many impressions from the Colombian people, from the trips, from work, from the way of living as a very privileged subject in the middle of an emerging country that, although actually doing well at the moment, still has immeasurable social inequity, faces corruption and civil war, just to name the most obvious problems… I don’t know exactly but I’ve been thinking more about life in general here and went through more emotions (and emotional turbulences) than at home. The result this “process” will have, I don’t know yet… but the ride is pretty interesting, mostly rough and sometimes costly (on a non-monetary level). Maybe the whole thing is an illusion I’m making up, maybe it’s real, difficult to say, but I’m quite sure when I’m back I will have changed at least a bit and for sure my environment will have changed… and I wouldn’t want to miss that, because though change is uncomfortable at times it makes you feel alive and that is good! And in the end that’s what life is all about: being and feeling alive, isn’t it? They have a nice saying here (actually it is from Argentina) that fits perfectly to this post: “La vida es un tango y hay que saberlo bailar!” … Life is a Tango and you have to know how to dance it… well sounds rather true to me and I reckon, I’m still learning… but aren’t we all? Keep it up and take care: