Hi, I’m Adrián and I’m glad you stopped by our site. Together we’re building a community of people who don’t forget to live their lives and who, every now and then, don’t forget to check in with their mom either.
We live in a fast world, and in the rush of everyday life we often forget what really matters.
We forget to live in the here and now. We put our lives off until later, chasing paychecks and material success. And yet what we’ll all remember most are the moments and the experiences. Time spent with the people we love, but also time spent with ourselves. At home or out in the world.
So, does living life mean traveling?
It might, or it might not. That’s up to each of us.
Personally, I feel most “alive” out in the world, in the unknown, often relying only on myself or on the kindness of the locals, as I like to call the people who live there.
In places where things like heating water for tea or taking a shower aren’t a given. That’s when I realize most how much I really have, and at the same time how little I actually need to be happy.
But swept away by the big wide world, I sometimes forgot to check in back home while I was busy collecting experiences, and then I’d get a message from my mom:
“Are you alive?”
“Čau mami, stále žijem” (Hi Mom, I’m still alive) was my reply.
When I suddenly lost my mom.
That’s when I understood the second meaning of this message too.
As a thank-you for the life she gave me, I decided not to just get through life, but to live it to the fullest. Here and now.
– 02/03/2022, Rota Vicentina – Fisherman’s trail, Portugal –
I realized it during a 10-day hike along the coast of Portugal, where I headed a month after my mom passed away. I planned to cry my eyes out there, but the tears never came. Instead, in the freedom that walking along the ocean filled me with, I felt happiness, determination and the strength to live the best life I can, as my way of saying thank you.
For my birthday, I had the first T-shirt with this slogan made and took it with me on my trips to Nepal and Sri Lanka. When Denník N ran an article about my travels and my story, with a photo of me wearing that shirt, the requests for “merch” came pouring in.