There Are People Like That.
There are people who carry a kind of madness I envy. Those who live on the edge of things, who seem not to care whether the world is crumbling or blooming around them. They aren’t lazy; quite the opposite, they seem to understand life better than the rest of us, with our detailed plans, schedules, and obsessive need to believe everything has a logical end. Some people just know that even if the world ends tomorrow, it would still be worth laughing today.
I once knew a guy like that. Not someone you’d notice at first glance. In fact, he was the kind of man who goes unnoticed. But he had a soul that didn’t fit inside him. One of those people who do a bit of everything—not to prove anything to anyone, but because they can’t sit still within their own skin. He was always getting into trouble, but I never saw anyone laugh so much at their own bad luck. Once, he lost his job on the same day he crashed his car, and he came home with a bottle of Brazilian rum and a crooked smile, as if to say: “Well, to hell with it.” And you’d end up believing that, yeah, maybe the world could afford to be less serious.
What impressed me most about people like him was their capacity to love. Not that soap opera kind of love, full of declarations and eternal promises, but a love without expectations—the kind you see in small gestures: a thoughtful glance, a spontaneous kindness, a comfortable silence. This guy, for instance, loved as naturally as he breathed. And I’m not talking about women, though he had plenty of stories with them. No. He loved the world in a strange, upside-down way. He loved the dog crossing the street with him, the stranger who smiled for no reason, and the music playing in the bar, even when no one else seemed to hear it.
I never quite understood how someone could carry so much of the world inside them and still be so free. Maybe that’s the secret only a few know: that you don’t have to choose just one path. Living is about being capable of everything, without being tied to anything.
I remember one afternoon when he told me, “Life is just this, my friend. If it’s not now, it won’t ever be.” I kept thinking about whether that was true or just another one of those barroom philosophies. But over time, I started to realize that maybe he was right. What paralyzes us isn’t the lack of time, but the fear of spending it wrong.
There are people like that, who take risks, who leap without a net, who turn each day into an attempt. And the strangest thing is, these people never seem to regret it—not because they always get it right, but because they know that messing up is part of the dance. They know, deep down, that life is just this—and the rest, my friend, is just talk.