Upon returning to Portugal, even after a short time away, I immediately notice how my view of the place I live in has shifted. The same river, the same streets, the same coffee, the same ocean — yet everything feels different. As if something had shifted within me in those few days. It’s a reminder, every time, that we never see the world as it is — we see it as we are. And the “I” is anything but constant.
As we get older, it’s not that we become wiser; we simply change our lens. At twenty-one, it feels like you finally understand things as they truly are. At twenty-eight, you realize that was only one of many temporary insights. Those fabled seven-year cycles aren’t a straight line of growing up but a spiral: you move forward, yet each turn reveals a new layer of illusion. Someone who thinks at thirty-five, “now I really see it all,” simply hasn’t reached the next bend. And when you finally grasp the depth of your former blindness, that’s the surest sign that you’re still blind — just to other things. You always look from a single vantage point and mistake it for the only truth.
#Porto #Portugal
