“FIRE!! FIRE!!” .- 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

… the next door neighbour at the caravan park was yelling and my dad didn’t understand exactly what was going on.
But screamed back: “No problem, no problem man!” (add a thick Spanish accent to make it more realistic!)-

The next door neighbour insisted and started running.

Dad walked calmly towards the van, laughing, trying to explain in Spanish that he was cooking and the alarm went off because of the smoke and heat inside the van.

The neighbour does not understand Dad, ignores him and keeps running.

Next, the neighbour comes out of the van with a ball of fire in his hands and starts stomping on it. Dad now starts running!!!

🏃🔥🔥🔥

Turns out the packaging that he left next to the stove caught on fire and that time it wasn’t a false alarm, the fire was legit.

Holy shit! That was a close call!
Vans go up in flames in seconds if you are not careful!
Haha…crisis avoided!

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, my mum and dad and my in-laws are travelling together, they made it to Uluṟu and are now on their way back.

I’ve been trying to normalise the “family concept” since I left home over 20 years ago.

When you’re 20 years old, with an ocean and a whole language in between the two families, it’s hard to create the typical family connections you expect when you live in the same country and language.

I wanted to use this newsletter a little differently again to share a couple of important lessons I’ve learned. Let me rewind.

I left home really young, especially by Argentinean standards.

I know that my parents were always encouraging of anything I ever chose to do, but in hindsight and as a parent myself, now it’s kinda nuts what I did and I can only imagine the stress I must have caused my parents.

I left behind the opportunity to become a professional for free (uni is free in Argentina and my parents had gone to huge efforts to provide me with a rent-free apartment) and arrived in Australia with some savings and huge anticipation.

A few months after arriving I rang my parents to tell them I had a job!!!:
“Awesome son, what is it?”
“I am picking macadamia nuts in Australia”.

Holy shit can you imagine?
That decision simply doesn’t compute!
Believe it or not, they never once said anything to me.
Not even a: “Dude for real? Macadamia nuts over free tertiary education?”
Nothing.

Like I said, in hindsight, the nerve and patience and unconditional support my parents gave me despite my crazy decision still perplexes me.

The hurty bit for them (including my sister), but for mum in particular at the beginning, was that we weren’t a big family.
So me leaving meant the only son left and the only sibling left.

Again in hindsight and given the context at the time, it was a big deal to leave.

These days I have no doubt my kids will live all over the world and will move multiple times… but back then it was massive to decide to leave my small town.

For over a decade, all I wanted was to make sure I saw them often enough to plug somehow the guilt, to make it almost familiar and “normal”.

It wasn’t easy - we were busy, they were busy, it’s not cheap.

But this recent trip is somewhat redeeming to finally be able to “normalise” being so far away.

Letting them come and grab my car and drive to Uluṟu.
It’s like we are normal! Ha!

My nephew is coming next and then my sister!
I am sure more amazing stories await.

Lessons:

1. Careful with judging or getting in the way of your kids/friends/partner’s decisions.
I don’t know if what my parents did is what I recommend everyone in every circumstance to do, but shit, it’s a good lesson to remind ourselves that sometimes backing your kids or partners or friend’s curiosity and desires can eventually pay off. Hold nerve.

2. It’s never too late to make new friends and to be courageous.
My in-laws and my parents are daring to invest in a new relationship and travel together well in their 70s.
That is amazing! And again, I can’t thank them enough for showing me, my pretty wife and my kids how to live!

3. Ponder who your loved ones are, support them and encourage them to pursue their dreams as they are, crazy and all.

Love

Gus

My recommendations:

Not often do I get the time to do podcasts! So here!

The crew at Little Fish Podcast were epic and made it for a super relaxed free flowing chat about life, success, career, and more - have a listen!

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