Yesterday as I was getting ready to sleep, something drove me to my bookcase and I'm still trying to understand if it was me that pulled that book out of the bookshelf or was it the book that pulled me out of bed.

The book I'm talking about is “The silence of the sea” or in it's original name “Le silence de la mer”, the author is Vercors. It's supposed to be a book of the French resistence that was written during the II world war, but fortunately for all, Vercors missed the target and wrote one of my all time favourite novels. It's a very simple history about the relations between persons, and if I may say so, in a very strong way.

Yesterday I read the book again, and although it has a very hard ending (I'm not being a spoiler, everybody know how the war ended), it gives the reader the ability of feeling everything a bit more grey… a little less black and white.

And I'm glad I re-read it… I sure needed to feel things a little more grey!!!

When I entered 7th grade I became the best student in the class. That happened only because I came from one of the top schools in Lisbon , were the level was much higher.

With that new status, I became convinced that I was much better then any other kid in class. Fortunately I had great teachers that realized and made me bring my feet back to the ground.

On the end of the year, I missed a test, but as I was a good student, the teacher dismissed me from doing it. One week latter he turned the tests and there was a girl that got 100%, I replied immediately that the test was too easy and anyone could do that… my teacher heard and challenged me to do it, in the next class. I accepted! I studied a lot during three days, always with the illusion that I would have 100%. When he gave me the test, I thought to myself: “This is really easy!”.

The test was the same that all other kids had done two weeks early. I done it, and I didn't achieved 100% (fortunately :D ). My teacher called me apart when he gave me the test, and said: “See??? No one is better then anyone in this class… all you have is better background, and on this test you had a little bad luck. But you are not more or less intelligent that any of your colleges.”

Thanks to him, I learned not to think I'm better (or worse) than others. If I always try my best, then I'll have no need to feel ashamed not to achieve something, and if my best wasn't enough, there's always something (probably someone) that will help me to achieve my goals.

PS: Wouldn't the world be a better place if there wore more teachers like my 7 th grade math teacher