3 and half years ago I made a stop on my life and faced the job I couldn’t handle anymore, not because the professional part that I used to love but because I was feeling at the end I was just helping to feed people to be more pretentious in their lives rather than see a positive impact with my work.
Working as an Architect wasn’t easy at the beginning. Desing beach houses when I never was in one before was one of the first projects I had to do in university and it wasn’t really what I expected to be train to be an Architect. I had many doubts I have to say but my skills that showed up how good artist I always were, were more powerful than anything.
Architects are taught to build projects caring on cultural, economics and sustainable concerns but the true is that in the real world this doesn`t matter if decent income don’t come with it. If you don’t believe me, google the word ¨Architecture¨ and tell me how many companies regarding social projects show up. I bet that not even one and on the contrary luxury projects ready for sale are instead.
Is very frustrating that an Architect finds out this because it can be the love for design but at the same time the hate for the aims it has in most of the cases. When I was looking at myself regarding this and looking for options on how I can feel better about my work. I found out that the entire world is just about business world. Everything is just valuable if you can get good income with it. Because yes, our lives run because of money. Money to eat, money to pay rents, money to wear clothes, money to travel, money, money, money. We are trained to work for that without caring much about anything else than ourselves.
Thanks to my current job I have had the opportunity to travel a lot along Peru and Bolivia where I have met incredible people with amazing stories to tell that have showed me a totally different perspective of life according to what most people do.
With all this and lot of questions on my head. I am trying to find the pieces of this big puzzle called world and understand how this works. A few weeks ago I decided to make some interviews to people who offer volunteer work in order to look for answers to some of my questions. And I met Omar, a lovely guy who teaches Yoga for people in jails with his NGO called Fundaciòn Yoga Perù. I have to say that the interview was more than what I was expecting and ended with me feeling more positive about this big puzzle in general and with an extra power to keep fighting for things that worth it without being worried always for money. He never thought Yoga was going to be his income for life and even better to be a good impact for the world for what he is doing and voila! is happening!
Something that I learnt after this is that we shouldn’t go for the same patterns we have been taught before, but on the contrary find ours with our own beliefs. Liberate ourselves of our own judgments could make the big differences in our own decisions everyday.
Have a wonderful week!
Lizeth
Documentary Filmmaker & Fixer in Peru 