dear son taue...
I liked your letter very much...
this issue of my shyness…
relative to vitorino’s group of friends…
on those days when I was 12 years old…
was something very intense…
even today… I can’t explain very well…
the reasons that caused me to be so shy…
I think that… in my case… on those days… in teresopolis…
many factors contributed to it…
I’m going to try to describe at least… one of them…
that group of vitorino’s friends…
consisted of a kind of people… with whom…
I wasn’t very used to interact…
they were people with a certain level of sophistication…
which… for me… represented something very new…
it was like… as if… suddenly… I had found myself…
facing an entirely new world…
and… this feeling of being in a world different from the one…
we are used to… somehow… represents a threat to us…
often… we feel threatened…
because we are afraid that the group finds us ridiculous…
we fear that the group may judge us…
we fear that the group makes fun of us…
the group threatens us…
and… this threat… in a certain way… terrifies us…
instinctively… we shy away…
we avoid exposing ourselves…
we choose not to talk too much…
which is a way to reduce the chances of… accidentally…
committing a social blunder… an “indiscretion”… a “slip-up”… a “gaffe”…
and then… find everybody laughing at us…
a “laughter” which can be explicit… or not…
it can be an invisible “laughter”…
and… this invisible “laughter” is what frightens us the most…
because… precisely because it is invisible…
we have no control over it…
we don’t know if it is… really there… or not…
we become submitted to things our imagination is creating…
( which some people call… “paranoia” )…
--- --- ---
but… my dear son taue…
as time goes by…
as we are growing up…
becoming older…
more mature…
we realize that all this scare…
all this fear…
is unnecessary…
we realize that such group-of-people...
we thought was formed by people very refined…
very cultured… very sophisticated…
they are nothing but normal people…
like us…
with our qualities and defects…
human beings… like everybody else…
who take-a-shit… sleep…
get sick…
happy…
sad…
etc… etc…
then… we realize… that all the affliction…
we used to have towards that group-of-people…
was just something our imagination had created…
we thought we were “inferior-beings”…
but… if we think a little-bit… we can see that…
nobody is neither better nor worst than the other…
we’re just different…
--- --- ---
and as we become aware
that we are not worst than anybody else..
this awareness helps us to improve our self-esteem…
historically… in my life… I had passed by several moments…
where my self-esteem was a kind of low…
in other moments… my self-esteem was pretty high…
fortunately… nowadays… it is doing fine…
I’ve never thought about what I’m going to write at this exact moment…
but… talking with you… right now… through this email…
there’s an idea that just came up to my mind…
the idea that… maybe… the self-esteem of people… in general…
could be a consequence of several factors…
for instance… if the person is well… materially…
if this person is passing through a moment in life…
where everything is fine health-wise…
if this person has an interior-peace…
if the body is clean…
a body which hasn’t received not a single drop of alcohol…
a lung which hasn’t received not even a little-bit of smoke…
( since two-and-a-half years ago…)
then… all this care that I’m taking with myself…
helps my self-esteem to become even more stable…
even more tranquil…
I could find some more examples from the history of my life…
for instance… when I was 20-years-old…
I interrupted college…
but still kept my job as a teacher at colegio-anglo-americano…
on mondays… tuesdays… and wednesdays…
every wednesday-afternoon… I used to go to saquarema…
and stayed there surfing until sunday…
it was a pretty-healthy life-style…
and… on those days… I believe my self-esteem was also pretty-well…
--- --- ---
but… all these examples are just physical examples…
material examples… related to health…
and… how about… when we are in the difficult times…?
well… in the difficult times… what can we do…?
dear son…
in those moments… that’s when I think…
all the attention must be doubled…
it’s exactly on those moments… that…
if we want to be able to win the battle…
we should try to take all the care needed…
to avoid to become even weaker…
it is on those hard-times that we must try to do everything…
to keep our body as much healthy as possible…
each millimeter of inattention could be fateful…
--- --- ---
I’m going to give an example of what happened today…
one friend of us came over to visit us… this morning…
she brought a “joint”… so we could smoke…
at that moment… I felt a little desire to smoke a little-bit…
but then I thought to myself…
“ I’m feeling so well without smoking anything since two-and-a-half years ago…
that I feel like keeping my body… clean… and healthy…
therefore… I’m not going to smoke “…
ok…
if I had smoked…
I wouldn’t be now… writing this letter to you…
I would be tired…
I would probably be sleeping…
but this letter is very important…
I want to be by your side… through this email…
I know that you and peter are the persons who I care the most… in this world…
so… I’m glad I didn’t smoke…
otherwise… I would probably be with no physical-energy…
to be writing right now…
--- --- ---
I’m becoming more and more convinced…
that the alcoholic-drink is one of the most foolish things in this life…
at that moment we enjoy that sensation of a “mental-pleasure”…
but afterwards… we are a trash… with no energy…
it’s not worth it…
here in recife… people have the habit of drinking a lot…
as soon as I arrived from hawaii…
I already arrived here pretty educated in relation to this issue…
I had alreeady learned in hawaii… that alcohol and smoke deplete the kidneys…
and… according to chinese medicine…
the kidneys are one of the most responsible organs…
for the well-functioning of the organism…
if the kidneys get depleted…
bye… bye…
the whole organism gets depleted…
but… returning to our earlier talk about how people here in recife… drink a lot…
as soon as I arrived here… ( from hawaii )…
I realized that the people here has the habit of drinking a lot…
they think that… if they drink… they would become more sensible…
the chatting would flow better… etc…
I soon realized that this kind of thought is like a fallacy…
a delusion…
people think that they are “ripping”…
but they are digging their own grave…
I soon realized that… this was not the way to go…
I thought to myself:
“ if they want to drink… then… let them drink…
I’m not going to get into that…
because I know… it would lead me to an abyss…
it would be a temporary delusion…
which would ruin people’s health really fast…”…
now… let’s see what the result was :
two-and-a-half-years had just passed…
the fellows who were “fans” of the drinks…
are realizing little-by-little… that I was the one who was right…
for instance… whenever I go to these little-kids-birthday-parties…
I feel that they are beginning to realize that I am pretty right…
… ( in relation to this matter…)…
if I am in those little-kids-birthdays-parties…
and… while everybody is drinking too much…
I’m just drinking my glass-of-water… (with no ice)…
(since they already know that I don’t like soft-drinks)…
I talk with everybody sharing good-vibrations with all of them…
I am super-caring and friendly towards everyone… in a wonderful mood…
when I leave the party… I am tranquil…
happy with myself… full of health… tranquil…
with the certainty that I am going to have a good-night’s sleep…
with no headaches…
and… on next day… with no headaches either…
in the meantime… there they are… completely stoned… all fucked up…
regretting to have drunk…
the thing is… I can feel… that many of them… are already realizing…
through my example… that I am right in my viewpoint…
since some of them are beginning to follow me…
there are some occasions that they decide not to drink… etc…
--- --- ---
so… my son…
all these cases that I’ve just talked about…
are related to the main theme of this letter…
that is :.. the self-esteem…
through this story...
(of me insisting on my philosophy…
of drinking my glass-of-water through these little-kids-parties…
here in recife…)
I would never had the “courage” of following my own conscience…
if I wouldn’t know from start…
that drinking is foolish…
it’s an unwise thing…
this conscience… I acquired… in hawaii…
thanks to that serious health-problem that I had…
in my sciatic-nerve…
thanks to the good-influences of an acupuncturist-girl who healed me…
I was introduced to the basic-knowledge of chinese medicine…
this knowledge educated me to such an extend… that…
… when I was arriving here in recife…
I was fully aware that the habits here…
“ to drink… to drink… and to drink”…
were simply… of an ignorance… very extreme…
but… I only could have this assurance…
this self-determination… this self-confidence…
because… in hawaii… I was lucky enough to meet…
this girl that introduced me to the wisdoms of chinese medicine…
wisdoms that proved themselves to be good… in the practical sense…
as I was gradually becoming healed…
--- --- ---
so… in the case that I was finding myself I kind of lost…
in the group of vitorino’s friends…
that was because I hadn’t had any experience of life… yet…
I was within a social-group…
where everything… for me… was an unknown…
I was feeling insecure…
afraid…
exactly because I wasn’t knowing…
… how to master the language…
… how to master the specific language of that social group…
but… as we grow up…
new experiences come to us…
and… so… we are more prepared to communicate ourselves…
with the several social-groups that are always showing up…
in our lives…
maybe that could be one of the explanations…
for what you observed in your letter…
when you said that this shyness was a characteristic of the past…
but… nowadays… you feel much more secure…
regarding evy… I think… she too… like all of us… sometimes…
passes through moments of insecurity towards certain environments…
where she might feel… probably insecure…
due to the fact that she feels that…
within that social-group (of her little-friends)…
there could be some kids who… maybe… could represent for her…
a certain kind of “danger”…
(either in the physical sense… (punch her… etc)…
or in the moral sense… (make fun of her… laugh at her…
regard her as someone who “doesn’t fit there”…
these kinds of things…))…
we should never forget that… unfortunately… we human beings…
like all the other animals…
we find ourselves… sometimes… in situations…
where there is the “law-of-the-jungle”…
that is: sometimes there are situations…
where a human-being wants to “eat” the other…
and this destruction has many faces…
sometimes… the attempt to destroy is physical…
( to punch the other-one… etc…)
sometimes… the attempt is in the moral-dimension…
( to make intrigues… gossips… to talk bad things about the person…
… to ridicule… to mock… etc…)…
and… so… since all of us had already received… at least once in our lives…
this kind of “punch”… ( either a physical one… or a moral one…)…
so… whenever we are in a social-group…
whose habits and languages are new for us…
it is understandable that we might feel insecure…
since our main tool for interacting… are the words…
but if we don’t master very well the language of such social-group…
how can we be self-assured…
in the sense of being able to communicate ourselves…
in a way that everybody can respect us…?
in order to accomplish that… we need to know:
1… which group is that… (which we are interacting to…)…
2… how to communicate ourselves… (with them…)…
3… how to listen…
4… how to behave ourselves in a gentle way… etc… etc…
all this practical knowledge… we usually learn it… as time goes on…
in our experiences through the real world…
and… if… by the way… we find ourselves in a group…
where we feel completely awkward…
that’s all right…
if we are aware that all of us… human-beings…
are limited and imperfect…
then… in this case… who cares…?
there’s no reason for us… to feel awkward… at all…
at these moments… the best we can do… is to assume who we are…
to chat naturally…
and… since the very start… level with them…
showing them our true face…
respecting them…
but… also knowing that the group is going to respect us…
otherwise… if the group thinks that it is so much better than us…
in this case…
bye… bye…
life keeps on moving…
I wish you (from the group)… the best…
be happy…
and I’m going to look for my place in this world…
see you later… bye… bye…
because life is short… I’m not going to spend my whole life…
begging crumbs from your table…
if you want to relate with me in a respectful way… that would be great…
otherwise… bye… bye…
--- --- ---
that’s the story…
my dear son taue…
this theme is very interesting…
it deals with a lot of psychology…
I’m glad you mentioned this subject… in your letter…
because it’s a theme that it’s worthwhile to take a careful look at…
this theme of the shyness is so important…
that it is worthwhile to take a little-look at the following question…
whose answer is obviously related to the concept of shyness :
“ what is the reason why people… usually… drink at the parties…?...”
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
a big big hug…?
a big big hug…
I just loved your letter… my son…
keep being always like that…
see you soon…
a hug…
with tenderness…
your father…
…luis antonio…