I smiled back, I was ok, or I thought I was… Did this inner adolescent in me made me say that? with the fear of being seen, of failure, of being childish. I smiled, as I always do…

-I’m fine, it was just a bad practice…
- It was, but thats fine, he said, that’s normal, it happens. You have better days, and worse days.

And I smiled again, and made a joke out of it, as I always do… Maybe this is just a cover that I created for myself - Laugh, make a joke, and now, run… Don’t let them see you.

Are you truly funny, and playful, or is this a character you’ve created for yourself? I find myself thinking, at home, in the silence of my room, where the feelings don’t need to hide anymore. This overthinking self, that dissects every action, every word, every thought.

I pick my adolescent up, once again, and tell her, that’s ok, we’re adults now, we don’t need to fear people seeing us. We don’t need to fear people asking us if we are ok, and mostly we don’t need to be afraid of saying that we are not ok. Even if, in that situation, you think you should be ok.

Frustration, I guess, was the word for the feeling that got stuck after. Too transparent to not been seen. It caught someones eye, and the fear came from there. Someone saw it, and you, felt it. Being seen, so clearly, with no words. With no choice besides just let them see you.

I’m an architect by trade, but I never saw myself as one, not in the traditional sense. I always had difficulty seeing myself that way. I think of spaces and buildings as an extension of oneself. Just another layer, another home.

I believe that, in a simpler way, we have three bodies: our Physical Body, our Buildings, and our Planet. They all relate to each other. They are interconnected. Have you ever thought about this?

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The Body is our first encounter with this reality. It is what holds us together, our physical form. The Planet is our boundary of life, the system we are part of. The Building is our construction, the materialisation of our needs in physical form, the space that allows our bodies to survive on this planet.

We first created houses to protect us, to give us a sense of safety and belonging. But ultimately, we created fortresses that disconnected us from the whole system.

We are not something outside of, or superior to, the planet and other species. We are just another form of it. We belong here. We are part of a system far greater than ourselves.

Nowadays I work with Sustainability in the Built Environment, and I get genuinely frustrated when people think of it as an architectural movement, or as something that is not theirs to care about.

Sustainability is, ultimately, about the choices we make. And those choices will define how we live. It’s not about saving the Planet — the planet needs no saving. It’s actually about saving ourselves.

What I came to realise is that we are so disconnected from ourselves, from each other, from the planet, that we think this is entirely outside our scope of thought. But the truth is, we may have built cities and buildings so well that we started to believe we are something other than nature.

What we give to others and to the planet is what we will receive from it. We cannot extract, use and ignore without consequences.

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I like to see all three — Body, Building and Planet — as similar in their systems. We all have digestion, in different ways, but we have it, and it connects us. We all breathe the same air. We all live on the same plane and suffer the same consequences, perhaps in different forms and intensities, but in the end, it is all the same.

And I struggle to see only one system, when they all connect to each other.

To be honest, I believe that while we continue to nurture this disconnection from ourselves, it will be very difficult to see our connection to everything else. To believe that we are part of something bigger, that what we do to the planet reflects back on us , we need to look inside first.

Sustainability is about self-knowledge. It’s about empathy, understanding systems, differences, impacts. Not about perfection.

Only when we allow ourselves time to look inside our own system will we be able to see the whole, and understand the true purpose of sustainability.

Only when we connect again with our hearts will we be able to see it. The destruction. The disconnection. The ego. The power-driven decisions, even when we believe we are the good ones.

Only when we stop and face our own interiors, our demons, our faults, will we begin to grasp the full extent of what sustainability really means. The place where everything is connected. Where every choice has an impact. Where we are part of a system, not external to it.

Only when we look inside, truly inside, will we understand that we are not something separate, but ultimately, a piece of this vast system that works together.

And when we arrive there, we will not need to name it sustainability, or give it another concept or framework. Because we will simply know what it means to be connected, and how to live from that place.

I believe we will still have buildings, but not the grey, nature-absent kind. Because those reflect a different way of being.

The cities and buildings we have today reflect our insides. The planetary crises we face today reflect our insides. The colours, the music, the systems, the forms, all of it.

We can look to neuroscience research to support this, or to environmental psychology. We love grey interiors. We love white minimalism. And that reflects something about our psyche.

Grey is the absence of colour, of life. It is correlated with depression. And we decided to paint our cities grey.

White is purity, yes, but when everything is white, we lack life. We have so many thoughts in our heads that we cannot handle colour, personality, art. It is too much to digest. So we go minimal.

Nothing against any of these choices. But they do inform how we show ourselves to the world. And they inform how we will feel inside it.

The lack of nature is about the lack of connection. And I could go on and on.

Our Bodies, Buildings and Planet are one and the same. They are just different representations of the same thing.

We cannot build a sanctuary for the world if we are still living in a fortress against ourselves. The walls will only change when we do.

So it’s not just about looking at the blueprints of our houses. It’s about looking at the blueprints of our own bodies.

The first step toward a sustainable, connected, aligned world is simply learning how to inhabit yourself again.

Hey,

I guess I’m starting this again. I catch myself starting and not quite finishing a lot of things, and I have to be honest, I do struggle with that. There is a little voice inside of me that says: you did it again, another idea, another failure… not quite being consistent, are you? I guess this is not for you, might as well just give it up, it’s just not for you.

But then, I get back to myself and something deep down tells me to try it, just one more time. Maybe it will be different this time, or maybe not. But in the end, something you will learn for sure. Don’t they say that the important part of it all is the journey, not the outcome? That it is in trial and error that you find yourself, your path, your truth?

Well, I guess this is part of mine. Having this idea rent free in my head for years, and trying to make something out of it, failing most of the time, but not quite giving up on it. I think it’s not a lost cause, not yet at least.

I always loved to write, but to be honest, I tend to do it in my head. To imagine all the things I could write about, and then make all those plans, the correct way of doing it, the best platform to share it. Should I share it even? Or should this be just for me? I’m not sure anymore, but I guess the impulse to write and share is still here, so I should just quiet the mind and go for it, whatever the outcome is.

And yes, my mind will definitely try to make this a rentable job. It’s like living with a Dragon’s Den jury in your head. How much is this worth? What is the profit, the growth, the whatever metrics they ask you for.

Writing is, in a way, an escape from the mind, and I guess she, I like to think about it as a she, does not like to be ignored, or asked to shut up. And for that, I understand. But I have to say, when she screams I want to scream back. So let’s write and make peace between us.

So I’m back. Back to what I’m not sure I know, or from where for that matter. But let’s talk about this life of ours, where we have the ability, the magic, of forming ideas in our heads, to then kill them inside, never seeing the light of day. It’s quite a thing, doubting the magic that is born inside of us. Maybe we should try to just be whatever needs to be in the moment, without questioning so much; me convincing myself of it all while I write it down.

I have a world inside, and I suppose you do too. An intimate and unique world that, when compared to others, loses its uniqueness, its light. A world that needs to breathe and needs to be seen, but that we are too afraid of sharing. What will they say about us? About our way of doing things, thinking about things? This kills the purpose of being human, does it not?

From dance, to architecture, to tech and philosophy, I have so many things that I would love to share and nurture outside of me, but for some reason, I always catch myself doubting, trying to perfect it, to smooth the edges to make it fit. Fit what, I’m not sure I know anymore. But well… I guess it’s part of the process.

So let’s start this again (and again, and again), as many agains as we need. Just because we can. We actually can do and redo, start and finish, as many times as we want, in as many ways as we feel up to. And that’s something magic that we tend to think of as a problem. Is it not?

I find us humans quite funny, the way we struggle for belonging, for freedom, for being part of something, and how, in the same proportion, we battle against it. We battle ourselves, some of us, every single day. We battle against our thoughts, our bodies, our lives, our work, cities, countries, families, friends. But we also love in the same proportion when we allow ourselves to do so. And I just get mesmerised by this.

I tend to cry a lot, and with the years passing by, I find myself crying for the most random things. The other day, in Lisbon, I was leaving the metro station, and I saw a couple hugging, and I cried. I cried for the little details that make us so human, the things that connect us all, and that we tend to ignore. The hugs, the kisses on the forehead, the smiles, the eyes on each other.

I have to say that I love it. I love to see humans holding hands, smiling at each other, hugging, the simple gestures that say so much. I tend to think that we find ourselves in simplicity, and we tend to make things so complex.

Look at what I wrote at the beginning of this letter, the perfectionism, the need to have it all figured out, to know it all. But in the end, the love is there, in the little details. In the sun on our face, the sand on our feet, the wind in our hair. It’s in the hug we gave, and the kiss we received, in the word we said, or even just in the one we thought inside. There is beauty all around, and that is the aim of it all.

In the middle of all the chaos, we still see glimpses of love, of beauty. And that says it all.

I have to pause for a second to explain that I do tend to navigate between thoughts and philosophise about things, that’s just the way things work around here. With that said, I welcome you to the seven hundred and first text I’ve shared. Maybe we should name all the things we do as the first ones, and when we do so, we start every day from scratch: there is no end to it, no outcome, no goal. It’s always a one of a kind thing.

So for today, share something, you don’t need a plan, the perfect vision, the complete knowing, you just need to birth it into the world. And maybe , form there you will create more, or maybe, that’s the only one you need to create. This idea that to do somehting, we need to do it for years to come, is quite old, maybe we just need to write one text, and maybe that is going to make the difference to the ones that cross its path.

I have to say, I never quite thought about this, it just formed in my head. Maybe, we just need to post one post, write one text, record one video, say one word, do one job. Maybe we don’t need to do it forever, or even for half of forever. Maybe the only thing we came here to do, was to bring this one little thing to life.

And imagine, if all of us give birth to that one little thing that is begging to be made happen, maybe, we would live a different world. Maybe we would be happier, because we tried, because we made it happen, because we honoured what was inside of us. Nothing more, nothing else.

So, lets raise the glass to first things. To create this one little thing at a time, or only one time. To make it with all the love and care, and let it be, let it sit how it needs to be in the world. Maybe the instagram only needs that one post, maybe the yoube only needs thsat one video, maybe the website only needs that one page, maybe the conversation is just that, maybe you just need that one date, that one night, that one day.

I have to pause for a second to explain that I do tend to navigate between thoughts and philosophise about things, that’s just the way things work around here. With that said, I welcome you to the seven hundred and first text I’ve shared. Maybe we should name all the things we do as the first ones, and when we do so, we start every day from scratch: there is no end to it, no outcome, no goal. It’s always a one of a kind thing.

So for today, share something. You don’t need a plan, the perfect vision, the complete knowing, you just need to birth it into the world. And maybe from there you will create more, or maybe that’s the only one you need to create. This idea that to do something, we need to do it for years to come, is quite old. Maybe we just need to write one text, and maybe that is going to make the difference to the ones that cross its path.

I have to say, I never quite thought about this, it just formed in my head. Maybe we just need to post one post, write one text, record one video, say one word, do one job. Maybe we don’t need to do it forever, or even for half of forever. Maybe the only thing we came here to do was to bring this one little thing to life.

And imagine, if all of us gave birth to that one little thing that is begging to be made happen, maybe we would live in a different world. Maybe we would be happier, because we tried, because we made it happen, because we honoured what was inside of us. Nothing more, nothing else.

So, let’s raise a glass to first things. To creating this one little thing at a time, or only one time. To making it with all the love and care, and letting it be, letting it sit how it needs to in the world. Maybe the Instagram only needs that one post, maybe the YouTube only needs that one video, maybe the website only needs that one page, maybe the conversation is just that, maybe you just need that one date, that one night, that one day. That one thing.

With love,
Inês

O que fazes quando a solidão aperta? Quando parece que nada está bem, onde nenhum sitio te satisfaz? O que fazes quando a ansiedade pulsa dentro de ti, e a única solução possível é arrancar a pele do teu corpo?

Dei por mim com lágrimas a cair-me pela cara, um misto de ansiedade, solidão, aborrecimento, confusão mental. O que se passa? O meu corpo não sabe o que fazer, a minha mente grita dentro de mim: temos que sair daqui. É isso ou devorar toda a comida que se encontra na cozinha.

Subscreva agora

Vesti-me à pressa, peguei no computador, no livro que tinha decidido começar a ler, nas chaves do carro e simplesmente saí. Para onde? O local de sempre, na paz entre o rio e o mar, agora numa noite já escura, onde apenas um resquício de vermelho pôr do sol se encontra no horizonte.

Mudar nunca é fácil, deixar para trás mais um versão nossa que até então fazia sentido. Voltar a questionar o que somos, quem somos, o que queremos. Destruir tudo novamente, na esperança que flores nasçam num jardim onde tudo foi arrancado.

Voltar para um local que reconheces, mas ao mesmo tempo, que te parece tão distante, é quase como entrar num livro de fantasia, passado numa realidade paralela. As pessoas são as mesmas, os locais são os mesmos, as dinâmicas… mas tu és diferente, tu já não cabes nos mesmos sítios, e isso faz-te questionar… novamente… onde é que tu pertences?

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É nestes momentos que a música me salva. Coloco o volume do rádio do carro o mais alto possível, deixo que o som se espalhe pelo meu corpo e me leve a outras dimensões. A música tem um poder diferente, de nos transportar para outras realidades, de reforçar ou alterar emoções, de nos fazer rir ou chorar.

A música, os livros, a arte, são tudo expressões do mesmo. Da emoção humana e de todas os seus layers.

Quando nos permitimos ler aquele livro que nos chama atenção, ouvir em loop a música que nos fala à alma, dançar mesmo sem saber o que estamos a fazer, escrever o que o nosso corpo não consegue expressar de outra forma, abrimos espaço para o velho ir e o novo entrar. E sim, por vezes doí, o sentir tudo o que sentimos, mas não é isso ser humano?

Entrar tanto num história que somos levados a sentir tudo o que a personagem sente, a chorar e sorrir com ela. Quão louco é isso? Acompanhar um livro como se fosse algo real? Ou sentir tanto uma música, que a emoção pulsa dentro no mesmo ritmo? Conseguem ver a beleza em toda a dimensão que nos faz nós mesmos?

Ser Humano é muito louco. É estar bem num momento e mal nos seguinte, é chorar e rir, abraçar, amar, sofrer. É criar e destruir constantemente. E qual a melhor maneira para captar toda a nossa dimensão que não a arte? A arte nos livros, na pintura, na música, na dança…

Subscreva agora

É no corpo que a vida ganha forma…

É na matéria que tudo se manifesta, os sonhos, os desejos, as conquistas, as falhas, as quedas… Quando nos afastamos da realidade presente, do nosso corpo, começamos-nos a perder de nós mesmos. E sim, é mais fácil entorpecer os sentidos com estímulos externos, viver a vida no automático, ignorar e negar os sentimentos que nos acompanham.

A vontade é de colocar outra série, comer mais um bocado, encher o corpo e a alma de dopamina rápida, e varrer para debaixo do tapete a ansiedade que se acumula, a insatisfação, a solidão. Esperar que se deixe de sentir isto tudo. Que se vá embora. E voltar a repetir amanhã, e depois, na expectativa que se resolva por si só.

Mas talvez a ansiedade, o pulsar dentro, seja apenas um aviso de que algo precisa de nascer através de ti, de mim, de nós. Que a solução rápida que nos acompanhou até agora talvez não seja mais a resposta. Talvez o que sentimos seja energia criativa estagnada à espera de ser usada, canalizada para algo. Talvez seja uma emoção que precise de ser dançada, escrita, vivida, sentida.

O que está a espera de nascer através de ti? Aquela arte, desenho, pintura que sempre sonhaste e nunca te arriscaste fazer? O livro, o texto, a poesia presa na garganta, que cresce e te esmaga cada vez mais?

Coloca uma música e deixa-te levar
Ouve o teu corpo, o que te pede
Chora
Ri
Dança
Salta
Grita
Pinta
Lê
Escreve
Cozinha
Liberta e abre espaço
Deixa a criação nascer através de ti

Com amor,
Inês