When I was a teenager and lived in my home town in Brazil (a small town in the heart of Minas). I’d watch the sunset every day. It was one of the few opportunities I had to be in touch with nature.

I grew up in a farm and lived there exclusively until I was five years old. I spent the majority of my time surrounded by what felt like endless forests, gardens and fields, filled with more animals and insects and things that I remember feeling like I’d never learn everything about them because of the abundance and complexity of the ecossystem around me. I think this magnificent immersion in my formative years shaped me into being a deep nature’s lover for life.

When I was 10, my grandfather sold this farm. This was a terribly abrupt cut in my relationship with nature and this sudden change to live a full-time city life affected me tremendously.

The memories I had of my peaceful existence in nature and my urge to go back to my bucolic paradise would torment me frequently. Living a life of what seemed like endless struggles both with people and the bare structures around me, left a sour taste in my mouth. At the time I called myself an anarcho-primitivist, inspired by silly old philosophers who had their underwear cleaned by their mothers. Like them, I also had my underwear cleaned by my mother and I thought most technology was bad and that human kind did wrong when moved itself away from God’s beautiful creations. I’d hate on the industry I’d see from my balcony, the car noises, the buildings and the capitalists who were financing all of this.

However, there was this one thing that thrilled my imagination, made my heart beat faster and took a deep sigh out of my chest every time I past through it. By the kitchen’s window I could see a massive forest in the distance that surrounded an abandoned steel factory nearby.

One day after re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the tenth time I got inspired enough to try my luck in this whimsical sanctuary in the middle of my city. However I couldn’t go alone on my errands, so later on, in that same week, I talked my best friend into following me into this forest to explore its beautiful sacredness with me. Our parents would never allow such a thing, so the logical conclusion was to skip classes and do it. We hanged out by the gate and waited for a forgetfull employee to leave the door open, adrenaline rushed through as we ran to the outside world, everything tinted with the bright colors of two brave explorers set to go “Into an adventure!”. Long story short: we got robbed our mp3-players by a man high on crack that had a knife.

Not as fantastic as I was hoping. This was the first experience that put me in touch with the wickedness of the world. Before I lived in a childhood’s utopia where everyone is nice to everyone else. Okay, maybe not so much. Some people would do things to hurt me, of course, but I believed only in the extent of their own ignorance, no one was really evil… right? People are good. But, if they’re not, then what are their motivations? How to define if someone is more evil than another person? What is an evil deed, afterall? These kinds of questions woke or gave birth to a thing inside of me, a restlessness that’d follow me throughout all my life.

I’d spend hours writing endless rants about the meaning of life, physics and philosophy. Writing in old school notebooks that weren’t filled up because I was always a bad student that never did homework. I had intense arguments with myself and all the dead authors I’d use to fire up my imagination and creativity in these topics. All of this while contemplating beautiful sunsets. Lots of the time these topics on metaphysics, wuwu hippie magic and unproved shady physics theories would merge together and I’d get myself wondering: what the fuck. I actually miss that a lot. I wanted to be a physicist for the longest time because of these exercises.

Today I went watching the sunset by myself in a nearby beach. Didn’t have any notebooks and no one recently robbed my mp3-player from me.

Still, I love watching sunsets. It’s a moment where even though I have my phone and the whole world’s knowledge, and all of my friendships, and lots of my desires, expectations, fears, loves, inside this little black magic box, I don’t really feel the urge to look at it and let it consume me. I sit still, and I look at the clouds and at the beautiful colors the sun is creating with the help of our atmosphere and its optic enchantments and I just feel gratitude for living in a world filled with beauty.

It also arises antropological questions. All of the times I have gone there, I’m the only female looking person that’s alone and I’m one of the few persons who is alone.

I wonder why aren’t more females alone in the beach to watch the sunset? In Brazil the obvious answer would be: because it’s dangerous of course - but in Europe, I really wonder. Are women less lonely? They’re usually more often surrounded by friends and family? Do they suffer more pressure to be accompanied always? Are women more social beings on average? Or is there actually a degree of concern that their privacy or body or space won’t be respected because they’re females - even though we’re in Europe? I was personally abused by a guy when eating out by myself in a restaurant just in front this beach - so, may be!

Anyways, I like to be alone watching the sunset because it makes me feel alone. I don’t feel like I spend enough time with myself but being there makes me feel like I can finally breath and think.

I watch sunsets today but I don’t wonder anymore about the meaning of life, physics or philosophy. It’s funny to me, how it seems like I became a much more enclosed egocentric person looking so much at the inside.

I hope it’s not a reflex of me becoming insensitive to the rest of the world’s problems because I moved into a place that doesn’t have such glaring problems like Brazil. I hope I’m doing this because my personal life is complicated now, more than it used to be. Maybe the answers I found for these elementary questions are now good enough to ease my soul, and now I feel more comfortable in focusing on improving myself and looking at the inside.

Though, I can’t wait to have the peace of mind and that itchy feeling of curiosity to spend sunsets thinking about the meaning of life, physics and philosophy again.