Ryan's World

So now I finally get to the post I've been wanting to write for quite some time now...

I have fallen in love, not with a person, but with a country. It is a bit strange to admit, but my day to day life has started to revolve around how life goes on in a country somewhere in the southern hemisphere.

I listen to the music in what is the ultimate language of the world -- Portuguese (Brazilian specifically). I think of what it would be see the streets alive during Carnival when people from all walks of life celebrate happiness. I imagine myself in the rainforest, listening to the calls of birds in the canopy of trees. I paint a picture in my mind of multicultural collision, where the rules of society in the "normal" world get broken everyday; this place seems made for the future, constant change.

My picture looks beautiful, peaceful and full of life at the same time. But I know that there are problems I cannot see from afar; corruption and greed are magnified in daily life. Millions suffer in poverty, and it pains me to realize this as I sit here with all of my trappings of the developed, gluttonous world. I want to throw it all away and begin life again with absolutely nothing to my name.

Yet, I know this will never happen completely. I am too entrenched in my societal upbringing. However, as I have now started to understand as I go through college, I am gaining the tools to help develop society to a better norm--a norm of hope. I am majoring in environmental engineering, where I can not only solve problems of pollution, but problems involving the development of society.

I can offer the world a way to set down its arms and dig deep inside to build an infrastructure built on what connects us all -- the quest for love, personal and worldwide. This blog post is my first step to creating the change I seek. If I have the willpower, which I must find within, I can tread further down the path to a better world.

More immediately, I wish to continue doing well in school. However, I need to focus more on the problems that surround me. I want to volunteer more often at a homeless shelter, or anyplace so I can communicate more with the people who face more hardship than me.

Next, I want to actually get out in the world, outside of the cultural barriers of the US. I am planning to study abroad in Brazil for a semester. If I can go, this opportunity will offer me a glimpse at how people in the rest of the world face problems daily. I will have to learn Portuguese, which will be a difficult task, but I am taking steps to do so today.*** When I am in Brazil, I will try to see the favelas (slums) and keep note of what I saw when I come back to study in the US. If I can effect any change, such as offering clean water, I will try to see if I can find a way to do so.

A lot of what I write here may be just empty promises, but with the help of my friends on the Opera Community pushing me forward, I can get a jump-start. (Read: "I can be lazy sometimes given the chance, and might need somebody to annoy me enough to do something...")

Hopefully, something good will come out of my discovery of Brazil, the country that helped me find myself, and the world.

***Any Portuguese-speaking Opera Community members who want to help me learn the language?

(About the title to this post: it's basically speaking about going to a village with no suffering. Here's a Marisa Monte video that will help you understand. It's in Portuguese, but a set of pictures leads you through what the song is about. I believe we have yet to go to the village she speaks of in the song--we must create it first.)