Life review
Writing this life review has led me to immerse myself in the depths of my mind, I have refreshed the memories of many experiences that had been virtually forgotten, but certainly it is in my subconscious marking the person I am today .
After sailing up this river of my life, I have enhanced the understanding of my passion for permaculture.
My name is Oriol Ferrando, I'm from a family that society qualifies as middle class, born in Barcelona on the Catalan's Innocents holy day, 1978.
I do not remember very well, but my mother says that it was one of the best moments of her life.
At five years old my parents sign on me to my first summer camp, after this to the boy scouts, and in a mountain center, and for many years I alternate my weekends between a beach town in Torredembarra near Tarragona, and the Pyrenees mountains, where in both out of the city I formed a strong bond with nature, self-sufficiency and a more just social life.
That contrasted with my life in Barcelona, where I lived most of my childhood and adolescence.
I went to the primary public school where they try to teach me that, first you need a good education to get a good job, and then after make a lot of money to walk with your head held high ...
I remember that although I was very young, I noticed that there was something wrong, I knew that the knowledge I was getting, wasn't going to be entirely practical for my everyday living future.
By age of 10 my parents sing my on to the Trek Union of Catalonia, where I was in deep nature once a month. The strength I had to overcome the challenges at that age still amaze me, we was always crossing our mental and physical boundaries.
There I learned a lot about how to find my bearings and how to enjoy in nature, I fell in love travelling over Catalonia, for me those was my first backpacking trips like going to other exotic country.
When the primary school was finished I went to high school, and whenever I felt more isolated in this way of thinking and living that applied there, so with the age of 15, I made the decision to leave school and go to find a educational system that only teach the things I was really interested, but I was still too young to know what I wanted, I had clear what I didn't wanted but was still heavily influenced by confused thoughts of a fictional future.
I've always liked art and how to express myself in it, at that time this was what I liked best to experience, so when I knew that I could study arts´s applied to profession, I overcame my fears to change and I left the general school.
There I enjoyed my apprenticeship, I think that was what I had to do at that time to connect with a part of myself that had been off in my other schools, creativity. I was almost eighteen years old, with not clear yet the way I wanted to live my present and my future much less, I chose to study indoor design, a specialization that wasn't inconsistent with any of both.
Whilst all these things was happening to me in a school learning environment, I had already begun to teach other children in the Boy Scouts center, in which I was involved since I was 15, this was not the time to let go by the activities scheduled by the oldest, was our responsibility to take up the place, working hard on objectives, activities, assessments ... I wanted to transmit to future generations the knowledge, experiences and attitudes that were not taught in school. To better understand the work I being doing, I attended two certified teachers courses, one of them specialized in boy scout, there I learned a lot about psychology, pedagogy .... and how to pass on my knowledge.
At that time my father died, I only had 2 weeks to say him goodbye, and although at home we have a very romantic view of death, we believe in energies,reincarnation and other ways of living the transfer, were very difficult times where I joined a lot with my mother and my sister and I first saw that there would not be that male figure to guide me and some times try to drive me.
My father with all his good intentions, trying to take me by what he saw as the right way, was a big influence on me and helped me a lot to grow as a person, I had very short time to absorb his passing, suddenly I was confronted with a entirely new life perspective with full responsibility that comes with choosing my way, a responsibility that you can feel the vertigo when that's comes suddenly. Without having no one to blame if things went not well, I had to be more present about what was my freedom and what I had to decide for myself.
Thanks to my mother who always supported me, I could transform the sadness of losing someone really close, to an awakening of another person who has a life ahead.
I will always be grateful to what my father was and gave me, for me he was a good man and I always felt loved by him.
My mother always played an important role in my spiritual life, since I was 17 she started to introduce me her first experiences with the energies and alternative therapies, that in the 90's still looked as witchcraft stories, I stopped going to the doctor and I started to going to a kinesiology specialist. That woman with my mother submerged me in a mind totally different approach to cure, homeopathy, geo-pathic, the Bach flower remedies, oils therapies, mudras, mandalas, cromo-therapy, regressions, psychosomatic illnesses ... and a myriad of alternatives to conventional medicine.
At that age, my mother took me to my first Reiki course, where I started in first grade, and a world that would change my life course and how to understand this.
My friends laughed when I talked about these things, at first I was a little lonely not being able to share my life change experiences, I was very excited with my new experiments with the universe, but we were still a few who could share it. Gradually the concept was integrated into society, and five years later, I made my first course as a Reiki teacher, beginning to adapt my way of transmit it.
In this time of transition with the death of my father and a very intense spiritual awakening, I had to focus in school and spend hours, days, months in a room pulling lines, with the decision already made that this was not my way of life. I saw clearly that what I needed above all was to be outdoors, and I had gotten into the world of indoor design ... influenced by many fears, it was difficult to make a decision, but I had to accept the reality and again, I did not finish my studies.
One of the things that held me back to study again, was the amount of years that I had to invest, being 5 years of your life in a city school is a little heavy to me, my dream was to travel the world with a camera and one day sell my work to national geographic or something like them. Since to 3 years ago , I had passion for the photography, and shortly time after to leave my indoor design studies, I started to study a year of photographic specialist course, which brought me a lot into enjoy and learn this way of expressing myself.
At 19 years old, a few early age, shortly before starting with photography, I left home, I did with whom I consider my first partner and I moved to live with her to the Pyrenees, where I had my first experiences with a small garden that we had, and I learned to work independently with crafts and markets in Spain. They were two very happy years of my life.
At the same time, I thought to dedicate to photography as a professional, I made friends who had a photography shop and we spent every night in the studio playing to experience this world we had in common, I started looking for work in a studies,. . in Barcelona, an urban environment, in which you can breath competitiveness of a elite world, which crashed with my personality. That's when I decided to learn the things that made me feel fully well with myself.
In 2000, I spent a few years living between Ibiza and Barcelona, in my second season in the island, I had a crucial day for me, I remember perfectly, on the roof of my house watching the sunset, it was like a click in my brain in which I pass through feeling guilty of my life style, to accept that and feel proud, I was 23 years old and I always had to struggled to mold my personality to fit into the education I had absorbed from my society, my counter-education process had reached a point to value myself and see the prospects throwing my way of seeing things.
I felt full of life, I lived in a cottage, and near there was a ecologic store where I met and fell in love with my second partner, she was volunteering at the ecological center La Casita Verde and there, I met with the community I would live in the following year. Was in 2003 when we reached the island again, this year we only had just enough money to pay rent or a stroller, and we wanted to stay indefinitely ... we opted for the transport and the hope of finding an abandoned house in the countryside to live.
With much love and a lot of movement, in a week we had the car and we found a four hundred years old abandoned cottage in the woods, until after three months did not reach the property administrator, who seeing that we were giving a good life the place, gave us his consent to run out problem.
There was a filled rain water tank with that helped us a lot, we shared cars, we sold some bread, others work making stone walls, I was with crafts, I tried to live an alternative lifestyle and leave the monetary system, but it was a difficult time for alternative fairs and at our time when I could not change gasoline for good organic bread, finally I had to move out from the island for job reasons.
I went to the Pyrenees where I could gather some savings, and soon after, in 2004, I went for the first time out of Europe, I traveled through Central America, and I spent four wonderful months as a volunteer for the Ecological Center Akumal in Mexico, protecting the coral reef and sea turtles, especially through environmental education at the school, where we created a puppet theater, a recycling program, and presentations and comics to inform and sensitize. That experience encouraged me to return to Barcelona to study an environmental education course , to specialize in how to educate children better in that regard.
A couple of years later, my relationship with my partner had made two separate ways, that per much it hurt to us, we had to accept this and live our lives separate, leaving us free to realize our dreams. I always admire so brave we was when we took the decision to follow our dreams, now after time, I still see us doing them.
From a long time my dream was to travel, I had an unstoppable need to see the world, after to worked hard that summer of 2006 I traveled to India.
I've always identified with street culture, but in this country with more than one billion people, the street is a place where you can learn almost everything.
I was the next five years traveling around the globe, discovering at once from industrial agriculture to the small organic farms.
Spending so much time traveling, it becomes my way of life and I could not conform only with the landscape, I needed to fill myself with something else. Approximately three years ago I met permaculture, I had a long time without a clear concept of that word, after few years practicing environmentalism, self-sufficiency, community living, ... I had not studied this new concept of life, just thinking that permaculture was something that came when we applying common sense when we live with limited resources.
A year ago I decided to find a community where I could live in permaculture and understand it well, I discovered a paradise on earth where people are happy, they accepted me as a member of the community and now we live, learn and educate, experiment, laugh, cry and play together, in a context where common sense and nonviolent communication reigns, following the principles and ethics of permaculture.
Since I arrived in February 2011 I attended to a PDC and nonviolent communication course, and I was able to attend and conduct workshops on permaculture in practice, living and teaching day by day to be more conscious in this infinite world.
I found a place that at this point in my life is what I was looking for, it has opened my mind to a new design concept of my life, which leads me toward a positive change.
Now I'm spending a month in Barcelona, enjoying the family with the birth of my first niece, I come home in February, at Thailand, where I am committed to be at least six months as long-term volunteer at Panya Project, to move on projects , learn better in many ways, and feeling more prepared to pass on my knowledge to others.
Everyone talk of 2012 as the end of a new era, there are many expectations placed on this date, and the global situation requires it, especially for the minds that still think we can live the life of one generation forever in fear to open the arms to a new one.
That things will change ... that's a sure thing, but the fear of change sometimes stops us, the experience of trying something new, which would have been unthinkable from other generations. I think the fear of change have not to stop us, should make us more ready and stronger and in assumption that if we fall is only a process of learning to walk, and the next time we will do our best to do not fall again.
It is difficult if you've spent long time serving eight hours in a job that don't fills you and go back home to watch TV trash, but I think increasingly we understand that power belongs to everyone, and begun to wake up and think to direct our lives and not be directed for others, in which we are all leaders of a united world, insurgent peacefully to create a paradise for all.
Whether or not the system in which we live change, I opted for a life in which I feel proud of myself and I am happy to do what I want, now I'm a good time in my life where I can and I want to do the diploma permaculture, I think to help me grow a lot as a person and inspire others towards a positive change.