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Juan could be the fruit of the books that his parents read.
They never read them to Juan, they did not have time. They fought a lot and Juan’s father left the house and his books when Juan was still a child. The mother kept the books in a loft as if putting a sanitary cordon between Juan and the books of her husband who fled.
Over time, Juan discovered those books and began to read them. This is how he discovered his father. One of those books was called The Pageant of the Stars. It was about the stars themselves, their distances, luminosity and other herbs. The stars had names like Sirius, Betelgeuse. Nothing to do with the magazines about the stars that his mother read, called Écran. There movie stars paraded with names like Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak.
Juan grew up and discovered another book by his father: Beyond the River of Death, and that was his first exposure to Brazil, a country that sounded as far away as his parents’ stars. From his mother he read art books and the books by Lobsang Rampa. Those spoke of the third eye, which was not the blind eye that Juan discovered later, but an eye that allowed people to see the aura in others.
In other words, reading the books of one and the other, Juan grew up stumbling between the factual worlds of his father and the fabulous worlds of his mother, both very distant from Juan’s reality. Maybe that’s why Juan never fit in at school. He was said to be odd. Maybe he still is. But Juan became as best he could. And maybe that it is how we all become, from the stardust that we are.
Alfredo Behrens has a PhD from Cambridge University, teaches strategy and intercultural issues at FIA Business School in São Paulo and at Harvard Business Education.
Some of his books can be purchased on Amazon.
ab@alfredobehrens.com