From Kennedy to Obama

Life just goes on so fast, as American stand-up comedian philosopher George Carlin once said: "here is the present, oops it's gone!" What can we do about our circumstance? Very little indeed.

Let's plan the future? Let's take it as it comes? I'd say the best option is a mix of both. Above all try to enjoy life.

I grew up in Brazil during the military government regime, times of uncertainty when we were afraid to be arrested for anything. When people disappeared and few had the courage to ask why.

I have been through the desperate years of outrageous inflation - times when we would go to buy something in the supermarket in the morning and in the afternoon it would already cost more, way more.

This kind of experience leaves very little room for planning, one got to live now, eat now, go now, because later may never actually take place.

In my 20s I met my first friends from US, Canada and Europe, what a difference. These guys made plans, travelled, were secure. They made it happen. I was praying to be able to travel, they bought tickets and went wherever.

Now Brazil is changing so fast. We are enjoying some stability and wealth - it is the time of the Brazilian dream. Americans are coming to live in Brazil! Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish people are buying properties all over the country - special in the north.

Militaries, walls, economies fell. All this has happened before very my eyes. I´ll be 50 next April and I feel blessed - what a great time and place to be alive. Nevertheless, still it all points to the same direction "change".

Mr. Barack Obama is in Brazil visiting Dilma Rousseff, the first woman president of Brazil. America needs to talk to her neighbors, it is facing a little bit of what we know a lot, uncertainty.

Things change I thank God for that. I will take life as it comes and try to plan a bit more now that I can. I want to be able to make a little more each time later on - I mean, the next 50 years.