This is the third time I tried to start this article because I want to explain my thoughts about important topics. About changing, about evolving, about moving towards a different direction while you find who you are. It is also about the people that are with you on this ride. Friends, families, your landlord and the barista that makes the coffee you like.
Lately, my team has expanded from just me, to then Tiffany and me, and now another fifteen people and me. This latter has consistently made it more difficult to be aware of everything that is happening around me. I know I care about everyone, I know I have good intentions and I am trying my best to move forward towards creating a platform to share culture and knowledge, not only because it is a good thing to do but as a business. I found that whether I like it or not, I keep offending people or someone gets offended by my actions, people I love and care about. Honestly, I am learning that a lot of the time it is not my responsibility, but in reality, I still struggle with this.
Yesterday, while I was teaching, I said to Peter, one of my students at Cortés Dance who tried to jump in very late to the class, that please stay out. I thought I said it very nicely because I was in the middle of the class. I spent the rest of the class thinking about how I mistreated Peter and I was looking forward to talking to him after about my reasons and how we decided that we wouldn’t allow that anymore.
So the class finished and I looked for him and just before I could say anything he came to me and said, “I am sorry Pedro for jumping into the class,” and he said all this with a kind and embarrassed face that only he can pull off. I had the space to explain my reasons and nothing happened. The catastrophe that I was living for a few minutes in my mind was probably on his mind too and it came to harmony after 30 seconds of conversation. But sometimes the resolution to misunderstandings or to emotional bursts is out of my control.
Should I torture myself about what Peter or others thought about me? Should Peter? Can we just trust in the harmony of the environment and keep going with life?
I believe yes. I believe that in recent years, I am improving the way I connect with people and getting better at choosing the people in my life.
Transaction. In Australia, I feel that love is often transactional. If I kiss you, you kiss me. I want you to do this for me because I did this for you. Of course, I am not saying that everyone is like that. I am just expressing how I sometimes feel. I feel like we are experts at assuming that others build their worlds in the way we think they do. Silly of us, yet too quick for us to realise, because our emotions already overpowered any kind of objectivity we could have. When in reality, I think we need to be a bit more responsible for our own emotions, ideas, expectations and assumptions. and when necessary please let’s have a conversation about what you just went through.
To be honest, I am struggling right now because it sounds like some people in my life got another Pedro and this one today does not appreciate having them in his life. But it is not true, I am just working on myself to focus on building the world that I always believed I was capable of building. I am not talking about hustle, maybe in the future. I thought a few lines ago that this blog was really hard to write because once again I had to be careful with how I said what I wanted to say. But this blog is actually a love letter to my friends who are still beside me after all these years.
I am sorry that I can’t spend much time with you or that I forgot to include you in something that I probably thought was not for you.
This is me that is here today and I love you and I won’t promise that I will have much time for you tomorrow but when possible, I will and I am very grateful that you can also spend some time with me. I will try my best to be better, to be the best version of that Pedro you believe I can be and for that, I say thank you. Thank you for your encouragement and your love. Even though I miss you and I am sorry for hurting your feelings, please understand that is not my intention and I am just moving towards me like I always thought I could, but I struggled to.
Some days I forget that when I came to Australia, I left my hometown, my family, and a lot of what I was back in Venezuela and paradoxically I brought a lot of that with me. We move, create and evolve towards what we want, while apparently leaving a lot behind, when in reality they have become a part of your life, like when you lose someone and you know that you are a different version of yourself. Thanks to them so then we have the opportunity to love them within.