Contents
“The world needs more dreamers and fewer successful people”
Psychology
Pedro Correa, photographer, artist and writer, contributes in his work «Every morning of your life» an inspiring testimony of a man who dived into his inner voice in search of his happiness
When at the end of 2019 Pedro Correa was invited to deliver, as a former student, a speech at the Engineering graduation ceremony at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, he never imagined that in a short time his words about the power of passion would spread ( one of the attendees recorded his speech) until he became a viral phenomenon that went around the world and that already exceeds ten million viewings.
A year or so later and with the pandemic As a background, that virality that, in his opinion, showed that the time had come to break the taboos around an economic system that makes us sick and unhappy, has prompted him to write the book «Every morning of your life »(Letter to all those who want to change their life and the world). In it he vindicates the importance of achieve happiness and at listen to your own inner voice ahead of any external message or social imposition. Pedro Correa reached this conclusion when he was 29 years old and, overnight and completely unexpectedly, his father died in a domestic accident.
In his book he explains his own experience in his search for the life’s sense After that ‘awakening’, he reveals why he realized how uncomfortable he felt in his own skin and how he found the path he had to take to free himself from the tyranny of social dictates.
Today, in the midst of a pandemic, that 2019 speech takes on a new meaning that invites you to discover in your book in the heat of this appeal: «We are the relay: the rebels, the rebels, the subversives, the empaths, the sensitive, the dreamers, the disobedient, the misfits, the sick of this system. The Nobel Prize Saramago exhorted to avoid at all costs the ‘wrath of the meek’ because it is the worst of all. Today we know that we are millions of angry meek.
Do you think the pandemic is helping many people to listen to their inner voice?
It is a complex question. Yes and no. That desire to listen to my inner voice and to see what my real life path was, was awakened by the death of my father, who lived on the front line. All of this was linked to an existential awakening that in turn was linked to the simple fact of realizing that I am mortal. We all know that we are mortal, but on a theoretical level, we don’t really know that we are actually going to die. Seeing that death so real, so close, so sudden and so tragic, overnight, made me go from that theoretical connotation to something more practical that made me wonder: «Would you change something in your life knowing that you can die tomorrow?».
It is true that the pandemic has made something that has always been taboo more visible: being aware at the social level that we are mortal, that we are going to die. But the difference between the two sensations is that the death of my father woke me up with the desire to take advantage of life or that second chance that was offered to me. It was something similar to what happens to those people who feel that they are born again because they have escaped a tragic accident or have been reborn after cancer. The paradox is that those people who have seen death so closely are not afraid of death. What scares them the most is wasting that second chance. What I wanted at that time was to make the most of life.
But what is happening with the pandemic is that we have stayed in that fear of death and we have not advanced to the next step, which is to realize that we must take advantage of life.
In his speech he explained that putting anxious terms such as seriousness, excellence, competitiveness or sacrifice at the center of our lives can only lead to sadness, fatigue and illness. How can we get rid of them?
I think it all comes from something that philosophers have always said and that is ‘Know yourself’. We can part with those anxiogenic terms if we realize that we are neither those anxiogenic terms nor do they create our personality. They have been instilled in our environment and in our family and they are speeches that we have heard since we were little. For example, I did the exercise of finding out what my family had been transmitting to me in order to question it, to stay with what I like and being aware that that was not me.
There are also the external anxiogenic terms, which are strong and which come from the media, from advertising, from the neoliberal system; that tell us that we must be competitive, the best, that we must earn and amass the greatest amount of money and that society is complicated and dangerous. But realizing that these voices do not come from us and that we are not the fearful ones, nor the ones who want to succeed at all costs, nor those who want to be perfect or the best, makes us begin to listen to ourselves and make that introspection or that inner path that help us detach ourselves from those voices. Ultimately, it is about realizing that there are two different things: who we are and who have told us that we are or have to be.
Another interesting concept that he defends is that happiness does not fall from the sky but that it “works and requires” an effort … How do you work?
We return to ‘knowing oneself’ and that, although it may not seem like it, requires work and effort. We are covered in onion skins that must be freed. You have to analyze them. We have to realize where they come from to answer questions such as: «If I want to be the best … why is it? … ?.
Questioning and questioning what we have been told we are and being curious to find out what our true selves is is a long and expensive job. And also it cannot be done alone and you should not hesitate to ask for professional help (psychologists) to do that. introspective look.
We all have within us the voice that knows what is best for us. You just have to work on yourself to hear or recognize it.
He comes from a family in which art and culture were always present, from childhood, that may have endowed him with a special sensitivity … But, what would he say to people who have always lived on automatic pilot, doing what what did they have to do?
Let them begin to give importance to what is invisible. We are in a society so material and so clouded by production and consumption that we have forgotten what is invisible. And we are flesh but also we are a soul that feeds on invisible things which are fundamental although they do not talk about it: love, solidarity, compassion, social ties, hugging, feeling… The neoliberal outside voices have told us that, as they are invisible, they do not exist. But you have to put those invisible terms like love, happiness and well-being because today more than ever we are realizing how sad we are because we have put those words aside for too long.
If you feel sad, give importance to that sadness. If you feel a passion, give importance to that passion … You have to listen to your inner voice. Have you ever asked me what happens if our inner voice tells us to lie on the couch all day. But I am convinced that no inner voice will say that consistently over a long period of time. It will be something punctual. The key is in give importance to the voices that have come to you repeatedly throughout your life. My mother is a painter, my father was a literature teacher and since I was little that inner voice has always come to me from time to time that told me to create, to be an artist. Until one day in my thirties, I took that inner voice seriously and explored how I could unleash that need to create.
And the same happens, on a physical level, with pain, sorrow and sadness. If you are at your job and for many years your inner voice tells you that it is something unbearable or that you cannot continue like this, take that voice seriously because it is trying to talk to you. I know it is difficult to change, but you have to start by listening to yourself and seeing what you can do to make room for that need to change in your life. In my case, I went from working for a multinational to writing and selling my art (photography). It is slow and you have to be patient. But when you are on the way to what makes you happy, slowness does not matter because that flame makes us be patient and moved with what we are living.
It tells us that the world does not need more fighters, but what they have always told us about is that we have to fight, fight, improve, progress, advance …
Yes that’s how it is. But the world needs more dreamers. You don’t need more fighters or successful people but more dreamers. Dreaming is something invisible and the system in which we are submerged like fish in an aquarium tells us that we are enemies of the rest of the fish and that if we let others be happier we will lose something when in reality the invisible, what we feel , confirms that it is when we help others that we are happiest. In fact, scientifically it is proven that one of the things that makes us happier is helping others, that is, experiencing values such as generosity and empathy.
A supposedly successful person who has always forced himself to be strong and win over others is likely to have forgotten his dreams.