The Immigrant
The Immigrant-
How following my dream of becoming a mime, landed me with a higher education in the USA.
I am a performer of stories with over 30 years’ experience in premier venues in the US and around the world. I am also a Latino immigrant with Afro and European descent with an American Citizenship since four days after 9/11. Now, that is a story all in itself.
My performance goes deep on what the pursuit of happiness really means to someone’s life and the kind (double meaning here) world we can create for ourselves. My presentation for Middle and High schools is a well crafted motivational speech using the power of stories, both fiction and non-fiction to inspire kids to live their full potential. The reason why they are here on Earth.
I grasp students’ attention right at the start, as I lure them in with extremely precise mime moves that I have been doing for 35 years. Then I tell them of my childhood dream of becoming a mime back in Brazil in the early 1980s, and my parents’ reaction to it which was: “We don’t care what you become as long as you are happy and kind to others”. The whole show is based on that opening line.
By the time the show is over, the kids walk away with tools on how to better manage their anxiety about life and their pursuit of happiness while carving a kind life for themselves and the ones who surround them.
My immigration story also touches on healthy living through following ones dream while being kind. If you do what you don’t love you become unhappy and unkind, thus creating great amounts of anxiety and depression, and, a life of looking forward to a Friday, complaining of a short weekend, and dreading Monday mornings. What if you could live a life where there was no difference between weekdays and weekends all the while having a fulfilling career. The secret for a successful adult living is not only what you are going to do, but rather on how you will feel while doing it. As Confucius once said: “ Do what you love and you don’t have to work a day in your life”. So, when asking what you want to be when you grow up, the answer should be simply: Happy!
Kids in MS are anxious about how in HS will be. Kids in HS are anxious about what life after HS will be. The fear of the unknown is the source of many mental disorders. No, forget about the unknown and start being happy now. Focus on what brings you join. Yes, we have to do a lot of things that are not joyful: taxes, study for finals, papers, take out the trash….the list is long. But, if you see those tasks as a “ticket” for a good and happy living, they do not become so problematic. If you do what you love, paying taxes is not such a big problem, because you are not so connected to the money, but rather with what you do. Studying for a final, becomes less problematic if you see a connection of the subject to be studied with the simple fact that it is a ticket for your graduation.
The above statements have a lot to do with a Healthy Behavior. How you see life has a direct correlation with how healthy your behavior is. Life can be dreadful if we focus on the unknowns of tomorrow or a tremendous and beautiful adventure if we would focus more on the presents of today. After all, that is why today it is called a “Present”.
