The true difference

Could it be that they live better than we do? Would I like to have their life? What would I be like if I had been born in an Amazon Tribe? Who would I be?

These are some of the questions that came to my mind during the photographic exhibition Amaz?nia by Sebasti?o Salgado. An exhibition that we did not leave until they closed, it was a trip to what seemed like another planet, but no, it is here on the same Earth where you and I live.

Sebasti?o captures the greatness of nature very well, he makes you feel small, as I say "puts you in your place". Reminding you that you are part of something immensely bigger than you. Although what I enjoyed the most were the photographs of people.

This is one of the pictures that captured my attention the most (the picture above), it made me think about how similar and different he and I are. How differently we dress, probably how differently we think, how different our goals are, not to mention the difference in lifestyle. But at the same time, and in greater quantity, all the similarities came out, those things that are the same for everyone who is in this existence as a human being, he has a heart and a stomach, just like me, he has to sleep and eat, just like me, he feels fear, rage, love, happiness, just like me. I saw myself in him, and for a moment the existential loneliness felt less lonely.

I felt that existing is the same for everyone. Whether you are a man or a woman in a tribe in the Amazon, or in the middle of a city. We all have a body that works in the same way and we feel the same emotions, fear, shame, anger, anger, love, happiness, fulfillment, peace. During the exhibition I was thinking, could it be that those who live in the tribes in the Amazon live more fulfilled than we do? And I realized that for some reason we tend to idealize the life and circumstances of others, thinking that their lives are better than ours, and we forget that we don't really know that. That life is a unique experience, an experience that depends much more on what you carry inside than on what you have outside. That "inner garden" where we all have the same seeds but each one decides which ones to cultivate; that is where the real difference lies, inside, in what is not seen, but felt. In what you decide that sustains you, if love or fear.

So at the end of the exhibition I had an answer to my question of, who would I be if I had been born in a tribe in the Amazon? Undoubtedly someone very different externally, but internally I want to think that I would have been able to live as fully as I do now. Although the reality is that I don't know who I would have been.

Who am I? I'm Victoria Soriano, a curious woman who likes to wonder about life... and who now shares it.

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