Sitting on a Corner in Brazil

I haven’t lived in many cities, one in fact.  I’ve spent the better part (some might even say the best part) of the last decade living in downtown Baltimore.  I have visited a number of cities across the United States, both big and small.  One of my favorite things to do in every city I visit is to sit and watch.

On my second day in Sao Paulo, our second day in Brazil, I found myself sitting on the corner of Paulista Avenue as the Sunday foot traffic hustled and bustled around me.  Paulista closes to traffic on Sundays so that the pedestrians can enjoy the unencumbered joy of walking through the middle of the street.  While I sat there, watching the world spin around me, each individual, each couple, each family, ebbing and flowing in one relaxed mass, a familiar sight emerged.  People, living their lives, experiencing their world.  Caught up in their own stories and subplots, desires to succeed, forget, and just smile they simply exist in the background of everyone else’s.

To put it as simplistically as I can; no matter where you go, we are all human.

While I did not expect Brazil to have the same culture shock as Japan, China, or South Africa, I did expect it to be different.  But we are all human, how different can it really be?

Through our visits with companies and cultural experiences, the pattern remained.  Walking through Azul’s offices, there were coworkers standing around and joking, others desperately plugging away on their keyboards trying to meet a deadline.  We are all human.  While at Vulcabras Azaleia (the Brazilian Under Armor distributor) I witnessed team members in jeans, quarter-zips, and running shoes giving presentations to others.  We are all human.  On our gondola ride up to Sugar Loaf on a very windy day, a woman gasped and clung to her husband when the cart swung in the wind.  We are all human.  At a churrascaria (think local Fogo de Chao) buried in the side of a business district late one night, I watched two old men get drunk and argue like only best friends can.  We are all human.

The distance may have been greater than I have ever traveled in my life, but the experience reaffirmed one undeniable truth of this world.

We are all human.