If you read How Much Can Duolingo Teach Us in the New Yorker, you know that its founder, Luis von Ahn, hails from Guatemala and that this language learning platform uses AI to generate content.
For the past two years, in the run-up to my trips to Portugal, I’ve used Duolingo religiously, despite discovering that it teaches Brazilian Portuguese, which has different pronunciation and sometimes different vocabulary than its European counterpart. A Millennial trapped in a Boomer body, I like the daily learning prompts and can’t resist the challenge of maintaining a streak.
Sometimes, and maybe AI is to blame for this, the sentences I am asked to learn are nonsensical. For example, I struggled with the immediate real-world application of The shark does not enjoy pineapples, though I tried to remain open-minded. But the one sentence I could never imagine uttering is:
Eu gosto da minha barriga
Literal translation - I like my belly.
Duolingo translation - I like my big belly.
Maybe that’s a Brazilian thing or maybe AI is onto something.
I love the Portuguese highway service stations, where you can count on clean bathrooms, a gift shop, a snack bar and an outdoor seating area – the perfect place to refresh yourself with an espresso and a Delicia de Tentugal or Pasteis de Nata.
At your destination a few hours later, it will be time for lunch, a meal to be lingered over with a nice glass of vinho branco, sparkling sangria, or um imperial beer, followed by another espresso and a leisurely walk. Afternoon gelato? Don’t mind if I do.
Minha barriga e muito grande.
There are other physical pleasures to be had, especially here on the Silver Coast, a region of great beauty where you can swim, bike, run, hike, indulge in all manner of wind sports and, as I’ve mentioned, immerse yourself in pickleball, though yesterday my barriga and I learned the hard way that it’s best not to play after one of those big lunches.
In my informal research on what brings expats to Portugal and what people are looking for in retirement in general, the concept of joie de vie keeps coming up.
(An acknowledgement here that I am referring to a subset of people who have enough resources to have the luxury of choice in where they live and the time and good heath to partake in recreational activities. I am well aware that this is not the reality for far too many people).
And it’s not just in Portugal. Carpe diem seems to be a hallmark of this latter stage of midlife. Someone I know has rekindled romance with his high school sweetheart, 50 years later. Someone else is doggedly working to turn the farm that has been in his family for generations into a thriving and sustainable organic legacy vegetable business. People are making art, pulling up stakes, setting sail.
The thing is, once you are over 60, you see too many of those Facebook posts announcing that someone was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer within weeks of retirement or worse, someone didn’t even make it to retirement.
In a word, we don’t have time to fuck around.
On Substack, I read story after story of delayed or defiant gratification.
My new European friends here shake their heads. “The pace of life in America is crazy,” says a German woman, who with her French husband lived in the US for 30 years. They tell me how open and filled with possibilities the US seemed when they first arrived, in contrast to their more restrictive and bureaucracy-stifled European lives.
My newly retired American friends here talk about eating lunch at their desks, always being on call, and the nagging health problems that turned out to be stress-related. But it’s not just the US. I know from the Economist headlines I’m barraged with, that burnout is a global phenomenon.
At lunch and at pickleball, our international band of seekers talks about spirituality. physicality, materialism, minimalism, consumerism. I learn about stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy of virtue, personal ethics, and self-control which has a following here.
Last year, at a wine tasting in the Douro valley, I admitted to our server that at home I measure out my wine in four-ounce allotments. He looked at me incredulously. “You should never measure your wine,” he said, shaking his head. Back at home J caught me pouring wine into a measuring cup. He looked at me incredulously. “Remember what you learned in the Douro Valley? You can apply that philosophy here.” But I can’t.
We are driving along the A17 highway towards Aveiro listening to Fleetwood Mac. With the windows down, a sharp whiff of eucalyptus wafts through the air. I feel happy, the way I did when I was young and wanted nothing more than good music to accompany an all-night road trip and maybe a Denny’s breakfast when we reached our destination.
The next day, I fill out my weekly unemployment claim, write a cover letter for a new opportunity, upload it and my resume, and hit submit.
It takes us a little while to realize those are goats we see from our limestone overlook at the Pegadas de Dinossauros (Dinosaur footprints) Monument in a coastal national park with the longest sauropod track in the world. Goats that may have figured out the secret of happiness. It’s the kind of vista that makes you question your belief or lack of belief in God. There are so many creatures with unique adaptations to fit their circumstances, chasing things we cannot know or see. Chasing their version of happiness.
The wind picks up and J heads off to the lagoon where he will mount his smallest foil board and use his smallest wing ever to rise up above the water and fly off into the distance and his definition of Nirvana.
How did Duolingo know that there would be a gut feeling guiding me towards the insights I came here to learn?
Eu gosto da minha barriga.
Well, Alison, that 4 oz serving is a Weight Watcher’s guideline, and in these times of anti body shaming and O, O, O Ozempic, WW’s stock has plummeted way faster than the weight loss of their members--so much so that they have bought into another weight loss drug that they’re offering WW enrollees (see long essay by Ruth Marcus in 6/12/23 Washington Post). So this nearly 80 year old longtime WW and lover of wine, Portugal, and travel in general, suggests you dump that measuring cup and eat your cake, drink your wine, and if you wish, go O!
I have to mention that four ounce allotment business ... what was the reason for it?