Twenty years is a lot of time, a pile of years for some and, for others, nothing.
Twenty years
resembling books. There are non-fiction, novels, fantasy, drama, romance,
adventure and travelogues. There are terrible long books, poems, short stories,
books that we will never read and others that we wanted to read and still could
not.
There are books
divided into chapters, with many characters, some entering and leaving the plot
many times; others that leave never to return and a few who continue until the
end of the story.
Many books have open
endings, chapters that leave unresolved issues or mysteries that the writer
will not take up; pages and pages turned around without return, fatal erasures
and indispensable re-readings.
Incredible,
fantastic, indelible books that allow us to choose our own adventure or simply
choose between the blue pill, which allows us to forget what happened and
remain in the virtual reality of the Matrix or the red one, that frees us from
it and leads us to the real world.
I once heard that the
opportunity of lifetime must be taken within the lifetime of said opportunity.
Making the right moves at the right time.
All this is a whim is
to transpolate my twenty years at Orange as a book that represents a great
stretch of my life, my autobiography. Opportunities, learnings, friendships,
trips, working on what one likes or learned to love, giving up so many hours
trying, like the juggler, to keep all the dishes turning on the sticks all the
time, still having plans and tantrums by the thousands.
I do not forget
(could not) those who trusted me, from bosses, colleagues and my parents,
siblings and friends. Everything would have been impossible without that first
leap of faith and support from my old men leaving me to fly into the unknown,
without Pato by my side, my daughters. They broke distances and were always
close.
At times we seemed to
be in the Matrix but there were others when we deliberately decided to return
to reality. The best thing is to have been able to choose when to do it, to
have changed when we felt we touched a roof.
"Look for a new
cheese when the old one starts to smell stale" ... Nico (my brother) gave
me the book "Who moved my cheese" at the airport the day I left home
for the first time; that phrase and others were etched in me. I read the book
through tears in mid-flight. A book within a book, like the movie "Bedtime
stories" ... this is how this road-trip has been so far and I hope it continues to be guided by the
stars that always shine brighter in the dark sky.
