A short monologue about my existence on planet Earth.

(The curtains open — He walks to the center of the stage, clears his throat, looks at the audience and begins:)

Self-education as a way of life and self-evolution as a daily goal — My life experience

This year I turn 49.

I have finally embraced the fact that I am a writer.

I started writing when I was around ten years old, encouraged by teachers who said I had talent. I wrote my first attempt at a “book” with genuine enthusiasm. Until I received a shock.

My mother’s brother’s wife, a psychologist, had already applied some tests and said my intellectual capacity was above average. She read my text and returned it with a sentence that stayed with me:

“You write well, but you have no road yet.”

The sentence was true. At ten years old, nobody has road behind them. But the impact was deep. It struck hard. The writer inside me remained silent for 39 years.

During that time, I gained road. A lot of road. More than I would have liked.

I survived five near-death experiences. I faced depression. I once had money and lost everything. I became a widower. My father died in my hands after months of care while he was incapacitated. Today I am in debt and rebuilding my life.

I have lived enough not to romanticize anything.

I have always been an outsider. Why would it be different now?

Observing public debate, especially on social media, I clearly see the country’s structural educational deficiency. There is a lack of foundation. A lack of reading — a lot of reading. A lack of critical formation.

The prevailing mentality is colonial, archaic, slave-minded, individualistic and selfish. There is no debate of arguments, only insults and conflicts.

I recently researched the best-selling books on Amazon Brazil in 2025. And I asked myself: what does it say about us that the top two positions are coloring books?

Am I the problem?

Or are the 40% of illiterate people in our country the problem?

And before someone mentions “functional illiteracy”, let me say this: someone who reads a text but does not understand it, who merely pronounces the words without developing logical reasoning from them, who cannot interpret what is written — to me, that person is illiterate.

We painted a beautiful picture with the word “functional”, a convenient illusion, while leaving an entire population without quality education. This must change as soon as possible.

Speaking for myself, I fell and lost everything because I lacked financial education. I had money at a moment when I did not know what to do with it, because until then my life had only known scarcity.

Today I am rebuilding.

There is no problem without a solution. Everything resolves itself with time.

Debts? They can wait.

At the right moment they will be paid. I have rebuilt myself many times before. What is one more?

I recognize that I had privileges. Actually, I still do. I grew up in a culturally rich environment. My maternal grandmother played a fundamental role in that.

Dona Yvonne tolerated no spelling or grammatical mistakes. To her, being illiterate was shameful. At the very least you should master your native language and then seek other ways to communicate.

I owe her the flame of curiosity that still drives me today.

And I cannot forget Wandinha, an unforgettable Portuguese teacher who taught me everything I still know about language, introduced me to Latin and showed me how language is constructed.

As a small aside, they were extremely demanding European women. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I misspelled the word linguiça. I forgot the umlaut. I believe it no longer exists today in Portuguese, but at the time it did.

The punishment?

Write the word two hundred times. That was the method.

I was encouraged to think for myself. To monitor my own mistakes. I had teachers who taught more than content. They taught humanity, character and conduct in life.

Some of them are still part of my journey.

But what truly feeds my soul is reading.

I remember precisely the day I read my first word.

We were in a Volkswagen Beetle. I was in the back seat. My mother was driving and my grandmother was in the passenger seat. We stopped at a traffic light. I looked at a sign and read out loud:

“IPÊ LANCHONETE.”

There were screams, celebration, almost collective hysteria. I was reading.

Since that day I never stopped. I am hungry for words.

One day while reading I realized — thank you Machado de Assis — that when you read, you enter another person’s mind.

Whether they are alive or dead, you are accessing their thoughts.

Books are that, bound thoughts.

Throughout my life I have been told I have a “gift”. I have always treated that idea with ambivalence. I do not use it to differentiate myself from others.

In truth I consider everyone equal. Everyone capable. Wanting it is another matter.

At one point, during a driving license exam required for professional activity, the examiner called me aside and asked:

“You know you are gifted, right?”

I answered no.

Then I asked her how we could turn that into money. We both laughed. But the question stayed with me.

Years earlier, when I took the university entrance exam at UEL after five years without formal study — simply following the world through reading and information sources — I was admitted to Library Science.

Since I already worked with technology, it felt like a natural choice.

What surprised me was my ranking.

First place overall in the entrance exam.

If I had applied to medicine, I would have been accepted.

That realization gave me vertigo.

I was born in 1977. Analog childhood in the 1980s. Teenage years in the 1990s.

I witnessed the transition from the physical world to the digital one. I saw science fiction become everyday reality.

Robotics, artificial intelligence, automation.

Everything seems to converge toward a technological singularity that once felt distant.

This journey is fascinating — and exhausting.

I have read nearly all the Portuguese and Brazilian classics. I read the English and American ones. I studied religions, philosophy, medicine, anatomy, sports, martial arts, geology, psychology, astronomy and countless other fields of human knowledge.

My brain soaked in information. I continue following my favorite subjects and authors, and now I try to share a bit of what I know.

As I once heard in therapy, at some point I would overflow.

That moment arrived.

To be honest, I lost count of how many books I have read. Today I curate the works that shaped my thinking and carry them with me.

I have always believed in generalism. Extreme specialization frustrated me in academia.

I do not want to know just one thing deeply. I want to understand the whole.

All subjects are connected. One science depends on another.

What the world lacks is multidisciplinary integration.

When a subject interests me, I go deep.

Today I have fourteen books published, three in English. Writing stopped being a fantasy and became a necessity.

I am emptying my mind and heart, organizing decades of curiosity and inquietude that had been stored inside me.

I do not write to produce best-sellers. I write to quiet the noise inside my mind.

I write to spread ideas. If even one person finds value in my words, I am satisfied.

I enjoy honest, intelligent and well-grounded debate. Only through that can we change the reality we live in.

My mind never stops.

It connects data, identifies patterns and notices historical repetitions.

It is both a blessing and a burden.

And if someone thinks I use GPT to write my texts, they are mistaken.

The system itself has frozen, malfunctioned and complained that I think too much. I even made artificial intelligence complain.

What I actually do is simple.

I read a geopolitical news article. I type my reaction on the keyboard, releasing all the frustration I feel about a planet so beautiful being turned into such a mess by the beings who inhabit it.

Then I ask GPT to check spelling, grammar and coherence.

The idea is mine. The machine only helps polish it.

My personality is combative — therapy helped me understand that.

But writing is not one of my weaknesses. The machine assists me. It does not create for me.

In my youth I quickly became disappointed with politics.

I participated in the student union, marched in protests during the impeachment movement against President Collor, and soon realized how dirty institutional politics could be.

Eventually I stepped away. I chose to live independently. Without political patrons. Without institutional alliances.

Just trying to live honestly, pay my bills and avoid unnecessary trouble.

Is that asking too much?

I am just an ordinary citizen with a sharp perception of the reality we inhabit.

At night I like to put my head on the pillow and sleep peacefully knowing I did not deceive, exploit or disrespect anyone.

We are all human beings in the same boat.

Different opinions will always exist, but without mutual respect no society can survive.

My voice was silenced for a long time.

I grew tired of staying quiet. Now I will write.

Those who enjoy reading will find plenty here: books, articles, reflections, stories.

For a long time I simply observed the world. Sometimes I wondered whether the problem was the world itself or my perception of it.

After reading my work I hope readers ask one simple question:

why?

Because real change in the world does not begin with our neighbors. It begins within ourselves.

The individual is the smallest unit of society. And from individual conduct the world is shaped.

The greatest transformation in my life, however, did not come from politics or academia.

It came from caring for another human being.

After my wife passed away following twelve agonizing days in intensive care, life suddenly handed me another responsibility.

Caring for my father after a severe stroke. Five months that changed my inner structure.

Bathing him. Feeding him. Helping him move.

Watching the man who once taught me how to be a man slowly lose his physical and cognitive abilities.

Witnessing a father fade away reorganizes the soul in profound ways.

After that I left São Paulo. The city no longer made sense.

I moved to the countryside of Minas Gerais, worked on an archaeological project and eventually stayed.

Here I found silence. Mental space. Human rhythm.

Now I write.

I sing karaoke once a week to release the pressure inside my mind.

I drive for ride-sharing apps to pay the bills.

My partner works.

We almost live with dignity.

For a long time I walked through life without a clear purpose.

Today I see one emerging.

My purpose is to record my journey and provoke reflection.

To fight for better education.

To demand infrastructure.

To show people that free thought exists beyond ideological chains.

I want to transform people into readers. Not mere word-pronouncers.

I want my words to provoke something inside you.

I want my ideas to invade your mind.

Welcome to the mind of a man who sometimes believes he is crazy but has been assured by therapists that he is not.

A mind that constantly sees patterns, failures and repetitions.

Why do we repeat the same mistakes generation after generation?

Why do we not elevate our collective conduct?

These questions haunt me.

I believe in self-education as a way of life.

In self-evolution as a daily goal.

Reading is a tool of liberation.

Words nourish the mind.

The mind transforms behavior.

Behavior transforms the world.

I do not seek applause.

I seek awareness.

We are all human.

I will keep writing.

Thank you.

(Curtains fall.)

📚 If you enjoy reflection, reading and ideas outside the mainstream, follow the profile.

Here I share texts and reflections about the reality we live in.