After my last post about that supposed happy ending to my migration story, I received greetings and congratulations from relatives and friends I had not seen in a long time. I also got messages from a few readers asking a rather more interesting question.
How did you do it?
That is what this post is about. Not explaining how to succeed in Germany, because if I had that formula I would probably already be selling it, but rather telling the story of some of the coincidences, decisions, and failures that eventually brought me here.
Luck?
For many years, I thought I had simply been lucky. Extremely lucky.
Perhaps there was even some divine hand quietly pulling the strings so that I would end up in Germany.
Because, let’s be honest, how else do you explain a lower-middle-class kid getting a scholarship to work on a project in Germany without contacts, connections, or those famous social strings people often pull to open doors?
To complete the irony, the university I attended ended up closing a few years after I left.
For a long time, I took that as a sign.
As the years went by, I discovered that if I really did have a guardian angel, he must have been working part-time, because there were quite a few unpleasant situations he could easily have spared me.
What I did find was something less mystical and much more interesting. A chain of events that, looking back, somehow connect.
I would never have won that scholarship if I had not attended a seminar taught in English.
I would not have understood that seminar if I had not studied English while attending university.
And I probably would not have persisted with English so stubbornly if I had not failed it for almost two years beforehand.
Sometimes you get somewhere thanks to a surprisingly elegant succession of small failures.
Still, I am not going to dismiss luck completely. In 2009, for example, I avoided being caught in the middle of the Miramar Beach shooting because of something as ridiculous as having a bicycle accident a few hours earlier.
Some things can be explained.
Others you are simply grateful to have survived.
The Confetti Kid
My aunt recently reminded me of a scene from my childhood.
At birthday parties, while all the other children rushed toward the piñata trying to grab a toy, I preferred picking up confetti from the floor, throwing it into the air, and smiling like a tiny lunatic.
She would end up embarrassed, accepting some consolation toy for me.
No, I did not have learning difficulties. Nor autism.
I understood perfectly well how a piñata worked.
I simply did not care.
With time, I realized that this said quite a lot about me. I was never particularly concerned with doing what I was supposed to do, especially when I could not find a good reason for doing it.
And what does any of this have to do with emigrating?
Quite a lot, I think.
When you arrive in another country, sooner or later you start reconsidering who you are, what you want to keep, and what you are willing to leave behind. You also discover that many of the things that seemed important back home stop mattering once the scenery changes.
And to do that kind of reassessment, it helps not to spend too much time worrying about what other people expect from you.
Because we do not all want the same toy.
Some of us still prefer playing with the confetti.
My Best Failures
If we are talking about failure, I have a fairly dishonorable catalogue. I could probably devote several articles to it, some with endings worthy of a Korean soap opera. But there are two failures that, viewed from a distance, ended up changing the course of my life.
The first happened when I was twelve.
My mother made an effort to send me to math classes because I was constantly flirting with the possibility of failing the subject. After a fairly serious conversation, I promised I would do my part.
And I did.
I studied mathematical reasoning, endless calculations, square roots, and everything else that, at twelve, can feel like a sophisticated form of torture.
Then came the famous five-question exam. One question, the hardest one, was worth half the grade. The other four, considerably easier, made up the other half.
After studying and practicing for days, I failed.
I had solved exactly the hardest question and got the other four wrong.
My second great failure came a few years later, when I wanted to take part in a Work & Travel program in the United States.
I was not rejected for the visa. In fact, a year later I got it on my first try.
I failed before that.
I did not pass the agency’s English test. My level was not good enough yet. I could have tried again, but I decided to wait another year and prepare properly.
Both failures hurt.
After the math exam, my father called me stupid. And when I failed the Work & Travel preselection, some university classmates mocked the idea that someone like me thought he could end up in the land of the gringos.
Someone like me?
I suppose they meant someone ordinary.
I am not going to pretend those things did not make me doubt myself. Of course they did.
But I also discovered something rather useful.
I had failed, yes, but each attempt had left something behind. At twelve, I was already capable of solving the hardest problem on the exam. And years later, I could understand almost an entire interview in English, even if I still got tangled up when answering.
From then on, failure stopped feeling like a sentence.
It became more like an old acquaintance who showed up from time to time to remind me that I could still keep moving forward.
Conclusion
In an age when everyone seems to be competing to achieve and reward perfection, we sometimes forget that failure also helps prepare certain victories.
That does not mean we should start failing on purpose as if it were some lucky ritual. It is more about learning to look at those setbacks with a little less shame and a little more perspective. Especially when we spend so much time comparing ourselves with half the world.
In the end, perhaps all of this can be summed up by a phrase I once heard from Facundo Cabral.
“The best never wins because the best does not compete.”
I am finishing this after saying goodbye to Mili, a little cat who was not mine, but whom I ended up caring about very much. She lived for almost twenty years, which for a cat is already a long and well-lived life.
Her family is going to miss her.
