Memories from July 2018
Left birth city when 3 months old.
Left birth country when 6 years old.
Brazilian born, Bolivian raised, and the face of none of the two. Light eyes, light skin and a high tendency to change words between languages. While talking in Portuguese, a spanish accent, and vice-versa. When speaking English, who knows.
Having this in mind, it’s easy today to comprehend a difficulty in trying to define my personal identity. Working for an American company and absorbing much of its corporate culture just increased such difficulty level.
I used to cry not having been able to create those bonds and roots that I often see elsewhere. Those friends at school, university… those neighborhood friends. Life had other plans for me.
I often saw myself trying to reattach to those past tribes. I had to fail miserably at this in order to understand the real path in front of me.
Today, living in Indaiatuba, I definitely can’t call it home. But what is home anyways? More and more I see home as not something that we are inside of, but something that is inside us.
An engineer, an administrator, a social entrepreneur… a friend, a brother, a husband…
In each of these, a Mario of its own.
In the understanding of my privileges as a white, middle class, heterosexual and healthy man, the importance of understanding the diversity inside me to understand diversity in society.
Today I see this very positively. Inside me, a multiplicity of my own, and a whole lot of possibilities of connecting to the world in so many ways that give me hope and joy.
When I think about this I remember the violin. How it presents itself in classical music… how it adapts to other genres so gracefully at the point of even changing names (fiddle in folk music) without ever changing who it really is.
Today, as I leave Bogotá, and seeing much of my personality expressed here (specially in street art), I feel good about who I’ve become, from here and there, from then and now.
Photograph: Mario Gioto – Bogotá 07/2018
Inspiration for this text came from watching Rebeca Hwang’s talk. Links below:
English: https://goo.gl/zsgEyY
Español: https://goo.gl/4ZEgh8