Rhythm and Roots: Reflections from Berlin

Hi peeps,

I wrote these words two months ago, during a visit to Berlin, a city that has often been a source of inspiration for me: a dense energetic mass where ideas quickly precipitate into matter, embodied in the migratory waves that pass through it.

Berlin is a city whose intention seems to be intensity. Here, the currency of exchange is pleasure, the pleasure of a supposed freedom, while the search for identity and the desire to be are lived more as trends than as genuine needs. At least, that’s how I perceive it.

This time, however, my gaze shifted. I paused to observe the incessant movement, the hurried steps of a society obsessed with immediate consumption of experiences, of bodies, of pleasures. At this intersection where cultures, histories, and languages converge, there is evident richness, but also a kind of decay that brings with it an illness of the soul. I sense a collective thirst for a quick cure, for an authentic connection with the peaceful, the divine, the transcendent. Yet there is also a fast-acting poison, one that most are infected by but remain blind to.

The city then reveals itself to me as a somewhat unfriendly place. I sense in people a subtle violence, a roughness adopted as a defense mechanism against the capitalist and avant-garde pulse that Berlin so proudly embodies. The migrant masses, their faces marked by exhaustion and a deep ethnic beauty, offer a human contrast that somehow balances the chaos. And within that chaos there is rhythm, and within that rhythm, an order of its own: harsh, yet vital.

In recent years, I have lived in much calmer places, rich in community. Though not always environments completely aligned with me, there was a sense of closeness, a human warmth that I now, as I write, deeply miss. Within this context, my inner world stirs, poses philosophical questions, and understands more clearly why our souls and bodies are becoming increasingly ill.

So I decide to look inward, to observe where I am in my process. And the answer that appears is simple but powerful: without pause, there is no change.

And I believe it’s a beautiful question we should all ask ourselves: How are we living our lives? Are our genuine desires colliding, or are we simply drifting with the current? What are the tools that bring us sustainability and respect in the environments we inhabit? Are we creating true connections within this dense and accelerated fabric?

The intention behind this reflection is to remind us to value our places of origin, our roots. At times, we must learn to quiet that restless dream that drives us to cross seas and borders, only to realize that the place where we choose to grow, wherever that may be, should be chosen through intuition, through connection with the natural, through a smaller, humbler scale rather than the external gaze of what is fashionable or modern.

We leave behind pieces of our souls in places that silently drain us, marking time and vitality. I don’t say this to discourage anyone from exploring or expanding, exploration is essential, but to remind us that it should have purpose, a timeline, and a path of return. That what we learn may later blossom in a place where we are needed, where we can contribute, and not merely be another number.

It is, I believe, our duty to support smaller communities, to help form a new order. To be pioneers, participants, collaborators. Our mission now is to organize ourselves on smaller scales, where impact becomes real: to sit with the children who represent the future, to learn from the wisdom of our elders, and to cultivate a new rhythm, one that is calmer, more sustainable, healthier, and full of serenity.

In this era of constant acceleration, travel too has become another form of consumption. We want to experience everything, to reach it all at once. Perhaps that’s why mass tourism provokes so much tension: it mirrors our desire to possess the experience without truly inhabiting it.
But there is another way to travel with presence, with belonging,  to explore places with respect, patience, and quietude. To teach, and to learn, to slow the thirst, to digest the world calmly, and thus perceive the true rhythm of each place, each community, each soul.

This was one of the most beautiful lessons I learned living in Portugal: that timeless rhythm of a society more in tune with nature. I carry it with me and apply it to the spaces I host, the pleasure of traveling with serenity, of enjoying the place you inhabit and visit, of recognizing the richness that exists in simplicity.

The impulse behind this writing is to bring awareness to the direction that sustains us. The revolution exists within you, in your authenticity. Nourish yourself through yourself and through others, keeping your center and embodying interdependence. Even if your roots do not entirely sustain the version of you that you wish to become, they hold a deep wisdom, the keys to your true freedom.

Much love,

Val