Dulcinea Moots
As we traveled on the subway to the B3 bank building, as we sat in a lecture about Brazilian economics, and as we toured a museum in a language that we didn’t speak, one thing was going through my mind – what a human experience we are having!
We went to the B3 building with a group from Belgium that is also working with ESEG right now. As we traveled, I was struck by the way that there seemed to be a swarm of humans wherever we went – different, and yet all on the same adventure. I had the pleasure of getting to know Julie, one of the Belgian students who got separated from the rest of her group. As we talked and shared experiences, I realized that despite our origins, we were both just students on a journey. Our differences – where we came from or why we are in Brazil – did not matter as much as our similarities: we were traveling together in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people all around.
This further struck me as I sat in the economics lecture. There are differences between the Brazilian and American economies, for sure, and yet at the core of everything, there are people just trying to live their lives. One quote that really stood out to me was, “Brazil is a rich country with poor people.” I think that easily, “Brazil” could be replaced by “America,” and this quote would make just as much sense. Once again, at the end of the day, we are all human. We all want to help the poor but feel helpless at times; we all get stressed about finances, and we all wonder what our lives would be like with more or less money. We are all human.
The pictures I’ve included in this blog are of two kinds: one with very few faces, and some with my smiling friend from the day. The one with no faces exemplifies the fact that this could be any group of people in any country. I find this beautiful – we are separated less by the fundamental differences in our humanity and more by the divisions that we have created. The pictures of our smiling faces are a) because I should probably show you that we are actually having fun on this trip and b) because another essentially human trait is joy. Joy, laughter, love – what is a society without these things? What I’ve learned so far is this: humanity is much less different than we think, and learning to find similarities helps us treat the world with more love.
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