Opinion – Zeca Camargo: Against time, wind in favor

I’ve been getting really emotional lately. These are the times, the impatient will say. But this story of the family that, faced with the progressive loss of vision of their children, decided to travel the world, so that they could see its wonders, really moved me.

Yes, I’m sensitive. For example, I cried at the Círio de Nazaré last Sunday. I always cry, it’s true, but this time it was with the young faithful of Nazinha (the saint’s affectionate nickname) with books on their heads, symbolizing that they entered college: gratitude not for an acquired material good, but for the conquest of wisdom.

I cried with the same wisdom winning the first round of the presidential elections and getting even stronger to win the second. I cried with the recovery of my mother’s health. With my newborn nephew’s first smile. With a beautiful sunset in Belém and even, unexpectedly, listening the other day to “O Mundo Anda So Complicado”, by Legião Urbana.

But when I read about the Lemay family last week in The New York Times, it was like… uncontrollable crying. And, when I saw the report on “Fantástico” about them, last Sunday, I cried the same way.

In case the story has escaped you, the summary: with three of their four children diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare disease that causes gradual loss of vision, a Canadian father and mother decided to go out into the world so that Mia (11 years old), Coli (7 years old) ) and Laurent (5) to capture everything their eyes could store while they could.

The expedition itself, which has already passed through some countries in southern Africa (with a special stopover in Zanzibar), through Cappadocia (Turkey region), through the Gobi desert (Mongolia) and now through the islands of Indonesia, is already exciting. . But for me it has an even more special meaning.

Recently, as I’ve shared here, I had (successful) surgery to correct a detached retina, and during my recovery, I was often haunted by the possibility of failing to see the world.

In imaginary inventories, I rescued the places I collected in my life and, in informal balance sheets, I was happy to have had the chance to see so many beautiful things, so many beautiful people.

But I think what moved me the most was realizing that the mission of the Lemay family’s trip was even greater. According to Edith, the mother, they wanted not only to show their children how beautiful this world is, but even if they knew how other children live in distant places and, thus, could perceive how privileged they are.

This hit hard on my own experience as a traveler. More than once, in Madagascar, Cambodia, Jordan, in the hinterland of our Northeast, to name just a few places, I realized how special it was for this tourist who writes to you to be able to travel the world and keep not only images, but experiences, learning, gratitude.

It is these exchanges that, as I insist, make us more human. The children of the Lemay family will return from this trip different. Undoubtedly, these children will become more interesting adults. And make this world a better place.

The vision they will lose in their eyes will perhaps be replaced by an even more powerful one, which many people seem to have irretrievably lost: the one that allows us to see the other, aware of our own differences. And that makes it not an excuse for war, but an open door to unity.

That’s about it — to use the endearing social media cliché. We cross borders to learn, not to conquer.