The Possibility Fellowship Alumni
Journeying with Gonzalo
A story from The Possibility Fellowship, written by Gonzalo
I always considered myself a curious person, ever since I was a child. It’s just that: how could one not be curious in the face of life’s mysteries, contradictions, beauty, and complexity?
For as long as I can remember and for many years thereafter, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, my dad would pick me up from my mom’s house, and we would drive across the entire city of Córdoba to reach his place. These logistics, stemming from having divorced parents, might seem tedious for a child. But for me, this hour-long journey was one of my most cherished moments because it was the little while when I had uninterrupted access to my dad, whom I admired as an endless source of wisdom. It was my opportunity to unravel what the world was about and understand the vast otherness that surrounded me.
I couldn’t waste a single second of this time that traffic graciously bestowed upon me. My eagerness to ask sometimes didn’t even give him a chance to respond, yet I always felt satisfied with those feasts of knowledge, sustained by my curiosity and his patience, where we juggled the meanings of life, space travel, ancient wars, and advice for everyday life. At the age of 9, I remember one day asking him if he believed in God. I thought I knew that my dad was an atheist, and when he confirmed it, we could together strip God of all his vestments. His response surprised and disappointed me at the same time: He told me that what he believed didn’t really matter, as much as what I wanted to believe.
Today, I have a bit of a beard, just like my dad back then, and I find myself on the other side of the world, far away from him. Yet, I’m still juggling with the same questions. Perhaps it’s those questions, or the curiosity to ask, or simply the fun of juggling, that motivated me to cross continents and unexpectedly join Befriend, meet Peter & Nicola, and simultaneously become an intern and a participant in The Possibility Fellowship. Nicola says I “fell from the sky,” and I think that never before has a metaphor been so beautifully literal. I constantly wonder if the fall was due to causality or chance, and I like to think it was simply a fantastic combination of both.
It takes two to get to know one.
What I originally sought and what I ultimately found on this journey may be two completely different stories, or they may be the same, depending on how they are told. But certainly, the person writing today is not the same one who fell from the sky a few months ago because today there are different people, and above all, different relationships, who help me write these words. There are other individuals who now reside within me and illuminate, with their spotlights, parts of myself that had remained in the shadows of my identity. Areas of myself that, partly out of fear and partly out of convenience, were always pushed to the margins.
Living in the centre undoubtedly has its advantages: privileges that are not devoid of certain high costs. Perhaps that was the purpose the Fellowship held for me, different from what it held for others. Could I find within myself those hidden marginalities that, at first glance, seemed to only exist in the other, in otherness? Maybe the tireless ambition to understand the world was more of a timid curiosity to know myself. How much of myself, in reality, did these others come to show me? How much of me is also within them? It takes two to get to know one, and perhaps with just one, you can get to know them all. This safe space, inhabited by open minds and open hearts, has been the best ground to sow seeds that will emerge in their own time and form.
A sense of nostalgia accompanies me as I write this article, as it not only concludes my journey with the Possibility Fellowship, this little book but also marks the end of my time in Australia. Although, to be fair, I can hardly speak of ‘closures’ after having participated in the Fellowship, where I couldn’t (fortunately) satisfy my curiosity but rather increased it, where I found some answers, but above all, invented new questions: a time, a place, people, connections that, with great care, affection, patience, and humility, have (once again) opened up a world of infinite possibilities for me.
I think a lot about which are the most important learnings and what will unfold from now on… paraphrasing my dad and attempting to capture in one sentence what this experience has been: it doesn’t matter so much what I believe, but what, for me, for you, for us, is possible to believe.
This story was written and gifted to us by Gonzalo as he concluded his experience in The Possibility Fellowship 2023.
