The farmer's eyes

I was at work. Office. German multinational.

I opened the newspaper and saw the photo of a man. He must have been from Vietnam or Cambodia. A farmer.

And when I saw that person's eyes I said:

I want to be like that when I'm old.

I want to have that tranquility. I want to radiate that energy.

Around me the corporate world ran on a different frequency. Nobody respected the body. Nobody respected feeling well. It was always the vices, the infidelities, the addictions. Always that need where nothing is ever enough.

And the eyes of that farmer had something that nobody in that office had.

Peace.

A poker player once said that the goal in life was to discover your passion. And until you knew what it was, your goal was to discover it.

My mother enrolled me in a massage course. Mondays and Wednesdays, seven thirty to nine thirty in the evening, in Sants. The schedule fit around work.

I started there.

While my classmates did one, two, three practice sessions, I did ninety-seven.

Because for me it was something very serious.

I left a job where I was earning well. My parents thought I had joined a cult. The investment was eighteen thousand euros in training plus fifty thousand in opportunity cost from what I stopped earning.

I didn't know that decision would take me to Germany, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, to twenty years of training, to thousands of bodies, to leaving an entire career behind.

I only knew that the farmer's eyes had something I needed to find.