BETWEEN DEPARTURES - A BRIEF REFLECTION

He came without ownership. Without a flag to plant, or a story to claim.

He arrived quietly. He learned to wait. To listen before looking.

Over thirty-four years, Rodrigo Rangel de Alba crossed every border drawn on the map. All 197 countries. Not to complete the world, but to let the world complete him.

With each place, something stayed. A face. A gesture. A moment of trust. Little by little, his life became interwoven with lives far from his own. His heart learned new rhythms. His understanding grew heavier, deeper, more human.

In every country, he found difference. And within that difference, something unmistakably familiar. Life itself.

The world showed him its beauty, unexpected, fragile, generous. It showed him love in its simplest forms: shared meals, open doors, unspoken kindness. It showed him hate, too. And fear. And division. It showed him its horrors, without explanation or mercy.

Through it all, he came to understand what he has often said himself: “The best university in the world is the world itself.”

He learned that none of these truths exist alone. They live together, side by side, shaping the same streets, the same lives.

He crossed borders not to collect them, but to understand what lives beyond them. The world did not reveal itself all at once. It offered fragments. Silences. Brief permissions.

It asked for patience. It asked for respect. It requested understanding.

After all these years, one truth remains clear: A piece of him belongs to the world now. Not to one country. Not to one language. But to the shared space between us all.

If there is such a thing as citizenship beyond paper and passport, it is earned through presence. Through listening. Through staying long enough to be changed. This letter is not a conclusion. It is a moment of gratitude.

To the streets that allowed him to walk unnoticed. To the people who trusted his presence. To the time it took to learn that witnessing is not entitlement, but responsibility.

He leaves nothing behind, but encounters remembered, captured in photographs to be shared with the world. He carries forward an enduring gratitude for the world that

shaped him.

And as this year comes to a close, one truth feels especially present: To have seen the world fully is not to own it, it is to belong to it.