All Dreams of World

The key of understanding my personality is scouting. I was a Sea Scout for five years (from the age of 12 to 17). I remember countless sailing trips, camping, hiking/ walking and cooking on wood-fires. Golden days! Be prepared, that's what we always did. Good equipment. Train and prepare as good as possible and if necessary improvise.

What I learned above all is that we don't need much - clothes, shoes, backpack, pocketknife, small amounts of food and water, sleeping bag - to stay alive and to move from one place to another. Next to that it gave me self-confidence.

All the tips & tricks I learned back then shaped my personality mentally. I have been using it in the army as a drafted soldier, at the university, in my professional life and in love.

Since then I know that the unknown is "not-known" and that we just have to face that literally and use all the other senses too. (Did you know that the excessive use of and trust in the sense of 'seeing' is a bias of the species 'homo sapiens'?) It will be fun - partly - and there will be constraints - that's for sure - but at the end of the trip we will know more of what we didn't know before. As if we peeled an onion.

To paraphrase and transform Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935): "I am prepared for anything. And if not I'll improvise. Next to that, I have in me all the dreams of the world."

And you ... where did your self-confidence come from? In an image: what is it's 'wellspring'? 

P.S. Original quote reads "Não sou nada. Nunca serei nada. Não posso querer ser nada. À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo." Source: poem 'The Tabacco Shop' (1928).
P.P.S. Trip. What I mean is the physical trip like a 25 km walk and mental trips like writing and reading.