Dom Tsui

Living and Leaving

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

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In less than 22 hours, I will be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Given that I’m currently sitting at home in London, England, the thought is making my head spin.

I’m about to spend the next 6 months living in Brazil. This can all be traced back to a conversation I had less than 3 months ago on March 21st. I was working on a particularly long and arduous shoot when I struck up a conversation with a guy who was diligently working away on a screenplay.

It turned out that he’d worked as a film producer for a number of years but was now focusing on writing. He mentioned that he’d recently spent 6 months in Brazil, teaching English and working on his script. He said it was one of the best things he’d ever done, in terms of writing as well as just being an amazing experience.

Can you guess where going with this yet?

I’ve wanted to take a trip like this for a long time, but for various reasons it didn’t happen last year as I’d originally planned. The moment seemed to have passed. Hearing about someone else’s adventure brought the dream back to life: I mentioned to my script-writing friend that I’d always wanted to go to Brazil, to train and to live. His answer? “So do it.”

I started to make excuses: too many things in the way, too much to sort out. Too much keeping me here. “Like what?” I couldn’t come up with a proper answer. “You should do it”, he said. That night I spent hours researching it: within a week my mind was made up. I had an opportunity: who knows how long I’d have the freedom to take advantage of it?

I made a point of telling people right away: as soon as I’d told enough people, it took on a life of its own. I couldn’t back out of it without looking stupid. I talked to so many people who volunteered contacts and their own personal experience: they inspired me to make this fantasy into a reality.

And really, that’s what this post is all about.

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“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.”

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I’m nervous. A little scared, even. I’m leaving behind some amazing friends. I’m taking a risk. But to be honest, the rewards far outweigh the risks in my mind. My freelance work has been rather slow and my writing had taken a back seat: I had slipped into a rut. I’m going out of my comfort zone to give myself some perspective, to see things and see myself in a different light.

A change is as good as a rest, they say: there’s no better way to change than to immerse yourself in another culture. Things that were stressing me out no longer seem important, or at least not as important as learning to speak Portuguese and learning to live in a strange country. I literally have no idea what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be in a couple of months: suddenly I feel alive, excited, and most of all, free.

We all have dreams and ambitions: things we want to do, or how we want our life to look. If things aren’t going the way we want them to go; if there’s something missing in our life; if it feels that you aren’t living the life you want to: it is up to you to change things. In the words of Maya Angelou, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

I’m going in search of something that I know is missing from my life. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know that the search itself is what’s important.

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“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller