Labyrinthi 

Labyrinthi arose from an experience, from a sudden illumination. To walk and feel that life has a path that winds in a thousand ways is to deduce that life is not a straight line, but an ordered chaos that, full of energy, leads one to its outcome. A chaos that becomes an adventure, an adventure that brightens and darkens, that takes on ups and downs, long stretches in which it seems that one has finally reached the end, and short stretches that suddenly do not. There is not a single labyrinth, but as many as there are people in the world. There are no simple lives; all have their large or small labyrinths, full of questions and half-answers, as long as a bend in the path does not appear that leads one to change the direction taken. A single labyrinth contains within itself many more than meets the naked eye, and all the labyrinths in the world form a single, enormous one, made up of all of us, that encompasses us all and suffocates us all, but also gives us life. To stop permanently in the labyrinth is to cease to exist with dignity. We must walk, even if we sometimes rest within it, along its long white walls that lead us nowhere definitively, only to continue the path we've set out on.The sky is the ceiling of this experience. The journey begins with the first heartbeat, a movement that ends when the internal clock stops. Starting and stopping doesn't necessarily mean reaching the goal; the streets can lose you in a ceaseless movement that doesn't lead you to your center, where the true intuitions for navigating the confusing path are found. Moving forward means growing in the knowledge of internal routes, those that mark the way and provide the pleasure of being alive; itineraries that, by dint of repetition, we learn as safe paths and that more than once put the journey in crisis; paths that later become alleys, alleys that suddenly become avenues, avenues that end and we must begin again. The heartbeats accelerate, pause, and align with the rhythm of the plot of life that unfolds at every moment. If you don't learn to listen to your innermost palpitations, those deepest within, you jeopardize the meaning of this ordered chaos that forms a continuous whole. Without an inner gaze to guide us, the narrow passages we must navigate more than once become tunnels of fear, spirals of terror that expel us from the true center, that center that locates and provides the coordinates for navigation. Navigating the depths of the soul is only the part that concerns those who travel this vital labyrinth; the rest is gratuitous; it does not depend on the pilgrim, but on the Life that lies beyond this substance of daily existence. At the center of the thicket lies that space of serenity and calm that is yearned for with centripetal passion: this encounter with oneself that nourishes and feeds what is true and that, inevitably, leads us to the other, to the recognition of diversity and unity beyond our skin: a centrifugal force that expands to conquer all that is beautiful and good that surrounds the being of the traveler and that now propels him outward, toward the exterior, to the periphery in search of his brother; Like a heartbeat that draws and expels life, the labyrinths of life become two-way paths that teach hidden wisdom to those who dare to go to the center of the wilderness.

Paulo Medina