I used this phrase quite frequently and made it a form of appreciation for the generous experiences that have colored my life. They did not come all at once, and I was not always aware of the gifts of my existence on this traveler’s journey through the universe. For a long time, like the universe, I gravitated around my own axis, attempting in my way covers, often left-handed, to bring light and understanding where I thought it was needed.

Somewhere around the age of 13, I had my first great awareness of what life would be like. Without knowing why or how I was convinced that my life path would physically remove me from home and country. But as Communism was flourishing in that time and all doors were closed all the time, we did not talk about it. Later, ’89 caught me up with the feverishness of its events, and ’90 took me to the big road leading to the West.

Years of multitude wanderings passed, charged with multi-lingual experience and charging still with a meaning I would have perceived it much later. I crossed the continents looking for what was always on me, yet at that time, searching only the outside of me, it was difficult for me to perceive my interior. Years have passed and they have left me multiple gifts and themes … but I still had to take some inner steps to bring sense towards the outward me. Time has gone by, and without any planning, I have woken up in a new life, where this time the focus started from within and it was pouring out.

In this new universe and through these new experiences I met my wife and my path became clearer and less impulsive. Later, while I was assisting my wife at Sara’s birth, I would Sara’s first glance at the great universe, and the first person to whom Sara’s eyes were stopped on was me. And slowly yet always secure, my steps led me to be Fatherly, through the experience of Parenthood, and not only. They were leading me towards myself, to open me to those around.

I still do not know what I did well to deserve all this, but now I feel that the question does not even ask for her oblique response. The path of my life is neither unique nor special; we are all defined by beauty and depth, but this is not clear for everyone. And so, one by one and each in his own way, we decide at some point to catch the thread of the moment that defines us as humans … and start by wanting us to be better. That’s why this time is not only a demonstration of the outer universe but rather a contemplative one, with a deep look into the interior of each of us who, without implicitly proposing this, unites us all.

Today I am still on my inner path and I feel how this links me to everything that is. Now I begin to understand how “to change you, changes the world around you”. My steps are neither unique nor caught in the sphere of any “special”, but they are becoming more certain in this great wandering that is for me strolling in Parenthood, and more and more strolling in the Universe.