Contemporary Love

Why? Why are people in North America always so nice? Why do they all seem to have naughty eyes? And why, on the opposite side, even being very kind - generally speaking - Portuguese people always have that kind of sad look? Is it only our lost empire? Do all of us even know that we lost an empire?

I thought this, a week ago, when I was in San Francisco looking straight into the eyes of an American woman. There she was being nice to me, for free, exactly like all the Americans I had the pleasure to meet. I started to wonder about this natural sympathy. Suddenly, a lot of hypotheses appeared in my head. And more questions. And more possible answers.

But only one answer remained in my mind.

Maybe this has to do with the way people live, how easy or difficult life, in general, is in each country. And one thing I understood, life in America is unbelievably easy. You may not have the best mobile phone, but you have one. You may not have a fancy car, but you have one that is good enough to take your kids to school. You may not have a very good house, but you have one with all fair conditions. Summarizing: you may not have luxury but you have a decent salary that allows you to pay the rent, the bills, the food and the school. And this is poverty. Of course I am speaking about big cities, the big cities I know.

Here in Portugal, in the big cities, poverty is a much darker place. And, generally people have to fight a lot to have something with no guarantees.

And after I thought, maybe these things stay written in our body somewhere, like a genetic code. Maybe we transport these feelings through time - maybe since we lost the empire. For the first time in my life I realized that a country is a single identity and its history makes the history of its citizens, and those hidden centuries are present in our present stories, in our interactions. Funny to realize that even American sad music, the blues, is much happier than our sad music, fado.

And then I wondered, is this why people around here are much more emotional, or, better, willing to easily show their emotions? Is that also why people here kiss or fight more easily, in front of other people, even if always concerned about what others think about them? Is it possible that the kiss I give today has something to do with the foreign lands we found 500 years ago?

And how are our kisses going to be 500 years from now if we all mix together? Are we going to keep seeing on a San Francisco street an American woman next to a Latin one, next to a Muslim one (with a scarf on her head)? Or we are going to be just one big group of women in which the only difference is the color of our hair?

What is more beautiful, after all? A rainbow with its different colors or a big blue sky where we can imagine all the colors in the world? But would we be able to imagine all the colors in the world? How important is it to keep history or identity? Probably it is a good thing that empires get lost so that we can enjoy how things turn out when people can express themselves freely. Probably how things turn out is, in the end, the universal will. Probably one day a Muslim woman will remember the scarf her grandmother used to cover her beauty, probably she will keep one in her closet, but most likely she is now on a different road, riding a Harley-Davidson with her hair blowing in the wind.

And if she is happier, isn't she making a new and happier history?