What's your biggest life lesson?
Franco (29): “Life is not something you can control. It’s like a water slide - you throw yourself into it, arms up, and just laugh.”
Since three years ago - when I wasn’t feeling great - I began asking everyone I met who inspired me one simple question: “What is your biggest life lesson?” This as a way to learn and be inspired
I’ve talked to so many different people along the way: the director of a meditation center; an ex–pathological liar on the streets of Paris; a man who lost his four-year-old child to cancer; a guy who traveled through South America for two years on a scooter; and many more. Because everyone has a story, and everyone is an inspiration. We all play the game we call life, but it’s a difficult game - and everyone has experienced something that can teach us a lesson for our own journey.
Realizing that true wisdom can be found in the everyday person you meet on the street, I started writing down the answers people shared with me. My mission is to inspire others to be more vulnerable and open about what they feel and think. In a world where everyone feels pressured to perform and show only their successes, we forget that even the most successful people have their struggles and problems. Come along on my journey of discovering how to live life, how I become inspired by the people I meet - and hopefully you will feel inspired, too.
Today’s inspiring story is about Franco, a twenty-nine-year-old guy from Peru who currently lives in Hamburg, Germany.
“Life is not something you can control. It’s like a water slide - you throw yourself into it, arms up, and just laugh.” - Franco
Enjoy the read!
Love, Bibi
Franco’s Biggest Life Lesson: “You are the owner of your own decisions”
I saw Franco (29) a couple of times in Germany because he was in the friendship group of my boyfriend Julian. He was always happy and smiling, which caught my interest. I was curious about his story. He texted me last week when he was traveling in Portugal: “Can I maybe crash in your campervan for one or two nights this weekend?” We spent time together with friends, and he was so chill, so much fun, and at the same time so wise. While sitting in the morning sun in the Portuguese forest with a coffee in our hands, I had to ask him my favorite question: Franco, what is your biggest life lesson?
He pauses and replied: “What’s my biggest life lesson? I mean, I don’t know if my life is old enough to say that I actually have a biggest one, but I have, for sure, different ones in different phases of my life,” he begins. “So I wouldn’t say that it’s actually just one. There were different ones at different times. But if he had to distill them, it would all circle back to one moment, one sentence whispered to him on a motorcycle, one message that shaped his whole life: “You are the owner of your own decisions.”
"Life is not something you can control. It’s like a water slide - you throw yourself into it, arms up, and just laugh." - Franco
He was 19 at the time, still in Peru, navigating what he describes as a life led by the expectations of others. That day, stopped at a red light with music playing in his ears, something inexplicable happened. “It was like an out-of-body experience,” he recalls. “I felt a hand on my shoulder, and everything stopped - even my music. And I heard this voice say, ‘You are the owner of your own decisions.’” Franco couldn’t stop smiling for hours afterwards. It was a message that anchored itself in him, quietly rearranging his whole future.
Around the same time, he had just returned from a silent retreat - a four-day Catholic experience recommended by his religious aunt. Though Franco doesn’t identify with a specific religion, the retreat profoundly shifted something in him. “After a day and a half of silence, you start talking to yourself - and answering. It feels like you’re connecting with something wiser inside of you. I think that’s when I first met that other part of me.” It was the beginning of a deeper awakening. Growing up in a privileged family in Peru, Franco had always been aware of the big contrast between different social realities.
“There’s a huge gap,” he explains. “If you have money, you live a different life.” He started questioning his environment, even changing universities after realizing how strongly appearances - like the car you drove - defined your social worth. “What are we doing? Why am I part of this system that judges people like that? I didn’t want it anymore.”
That discontent and clarity eventually led him to Germany - a semester abroad that transformed into a new life. But before leaving, another two defining moments happened.
“I was walking, kind of lost in thought, questioning everything - my beliefs, my direction. And then this old man just stopped me on the street. Out of nowhere, he said, ‘If you live your life out of your values, the ones you have now, you’ll live a good life.’ And then he disappeared. It felt like another sign, another nudge from the universe that I was on the right track.”
And then came the inner child experience. On a simple afternoon in a park, swinging in a hammock, reading a book, Franco was approached by a curious little boy. “He asked me what I was doing. I said, ‘Reading,’ and we started talking. There was such purity in him - this raw curiosity that was so genuine. I saw myself in him. Or at least the part of me I had left behind.” That encounter inspired Franco to revisit the places of his childhood and rediscover the joy, simplicity, and authenticity he once had while playing as how he did as a child.
*Me and Franco enjoying our ‘floating breakfast buffet bar’ we builded as we were little children!
“I think my inner child always wanted to make people happy, to please others - not from a place of need, but from love. That’s when I realized I wanted to work in tourism, where you live to create unforgettable experiences for others.”
When he finally moved to Germany, things began unfolding almost magically. A scholarship - not for academic performance, but for his personality. A chance encounter on the street that led to meeting his current girlfriend. A job. A new language. A new home. “I didn’t control any of it,” he says. “But it happened when I started living out of my values, not others’ expectations.”
Franco describes his spirituality as undefined but present. When I asked him if he could sum up one big lesson from all these experiences, he smiled thoughtfully. “I think, that life is actually something you cannot control, and you don't need to understand and control it. You have to throw yourself into it. You have to enjoy it. It’s more like a water slide - you throw yourself into it, put your hands up, and just laugh.”
“I don’t know what ‘IT’ is. I don’t want to know. But I believe there’s something greater. And I think if you live true to who you are, this something will guide you, or catch you when you jump.” For him, it’s not about answers - it’s about trust. “We humans always want to explain everything. But sometimes you don’t need to. You just have to live it.”
At the core of Franco’s journey is this belief in radical honesty and unconditional love.
“Everyone deserves love. When I meet someone, they have all my trust and love - until they show me otherwise. And even then, it’s not about getting something back. I give because love is about giving, not expecting.”
When asked how someone else could get to this way of living this “water slide life,” Franco smiles. “It’s their decision. I can’t tell someone how to live. But I can say this: stop listening to the noise. Not your parents, not society, not even me. Listen to yourself. Be the owner of your own decisions.”
Prachtig Bieb!! 💜