Whenever I see you in the woods, I see you more alive, and I wonder: is this the good living they talk about? Good living is somewhat like your position on the map, but not those square paper ones. Perhaps a broader, shapeless map that captures everything from the vastness of the lake to the smallness of butter on coffee-soaked bread.

Patience is also part of good living. You had plenty when you taught me to ride a bike and to fish. That day, as I recall, I caught several with that enormous bamboo rod I could barely lift, pulling the fish out by walking backward, dragging the poor thing over the gravel. You seemed quite proud of your chêro, as you call me. So much so that next time I visited the farm, you gave me a fishing rod with a reel—a state-of-art technology. So advanced that I couldn’t learn how to use it and gave up quickly. I think you were a bit sad, but sad memories are also part of good living.

Good living, I think, is more livable than sayable. But there’s a fear of losing it without knowing you had it, right? Being completely well and then, suddenly… poof… you mess up, and everything you enjoyed is gone. And there’s no way around it; even the Bible says, and as you’re well-read in that book, you must know: everything passes, even the good things. Especially those, it seems.

Sometimes it feels slippery like ice. When you think you’ve got a grip, you grip too hard and fall on your butt, and there goes the moment. But patience. Yet the question always lingers, and I think anyone who claims to know the answer is either imprisoned or sells the secret for a million: what would be the path to this good living?

I ponder this quite a bit and think it’s like the wellness program, right? Every morning we have to face it, and at night, review it. The name at least changes, but the confusing part is distinguishing one from the other. The darn thing keeps changing clothes, and you can’t recognize it on the street. And you have to be wary of the cunning ones; they respond to the call but aim to deceive.

Sometimes I look back and catch myself trying to dictate others’ ways of living, and who am I to claim knowledge of what came long before me? It only brings headaches and stomachaches, anxiety from wanting to know more than the body can handle, more than the family understands, more than reality supports. Imagine the weight. Even the body warns, speaks, complains. The stomach growls, the nose clogs, the head aches from being so full, and the lungs feel empty. At times, I tell you and hope you believe, I didn’t even know where I was, but I knew the solution to all my problems. I had the game plan clear, but didn’t even know the cost of electricity or rent. So, what kind of clarity is that which can’t see a hand’s breadth ahead?

And this word I’ve taken and repeated and repeated, good living, isn’t mine; I brought it from the Guarani. They, who are so many, deliberately hidden, simplified in the same fashion, have their own expression for it: Teko Porã. And this expression encompasses what tension sometimes forgets: the territory, the time, the routine, the ancestry, the culture, everything one thinks because it’s of another nature. It’s like a verb, embraces much, but is also fragile.

I walk here and there, walk yesterday, today, from home to work, by bus and by car, happy and sad. In the same way, trying to walk with a broken leg is tough; walking in fear of being killed is tougher.

Eating is easy; I love a sweet, a lasagna, a cheese bread. But try eating with a full head. The stomach may be empty, but depending on the mind… you can’t touch the plate, even feel repulsed.

Health is that too, but it’s the verb of verbs. If it helps or makes life easier to have it so hidden among the muscles, in the air, on the way to work, in friends… perhaps it’s not a question to be asked. The answer lies in another register, sometimes not even within us.

If I’ve learned anything in my time in São Paulo while participating in the Indigenous Network, it’s that sometimes the obvious isn’t clear. The culture, the territory, the Indigenous person refused to pay rent for the land that was already theirs, and they cut the power. Thus, what was obvious became hidden in the dark. And darkness brings fear; “who knows if there’s a scorpion,” you always warned me when I entered the cluttered little room. So everything becomes dark, even the sky, even the sun. And the only light available makes you lose more than find—imagine the confusion. No sage is immune to mistaking a helicopter’s light for a star, even if just for an instant. But having faith is important; you never know.

The Marco Temporal is a helicopter in the sky, familiar yet distant. But ask if it’s Venus, Saturn, the Three Marys? Following those, even Columbus got lost and ended up in genocide.

Since we love music, you must understand. For me, deep down, good living is knowing where you came from. The tone of the music is in the first line, but it’s essential until the end, especially when we get lost.