Reviewer: Zsuzsa Viola
Do you remember when you dared to dream big as a child,
and do you remember what you wanted to be?
As a kid, I wanted to be a 007 agent.
I was drawn to the elusive, mysterious world.
I wanted to find out who the bad guys were.
And I would have saved people during my missions.
As the years went by, I had similarly adventurous notions
that once I grew up, what I was going to spend my life doing.
But suddenly, I noticed that I was pinning up yellow folders,
writing reports, and looking at boring accounting items,
the same meeting every day, where the company is being worshipped,
but in the meantime, it wasn't enough for a raise.
I'd been given enough money to pay the joint rent,
and I could drink beer instead of water,
but after umpteen experiences like this,
I couldn't pretend to care about what was going on around me!
Imagine, there were times when I was ordered to work on Saturdays,
and they hoped that they could win us over with a free lunch.
Or when my eyes went nuts
at the thousands of rows on spreadsheet,
and they just encouraged me, saying, Dani, keep going like this.
At this business, I was good.
If I had stayed, I would have come into a comfortable career path.
But I didn't want to do an occupation
in which I took no pleasure other than my salary.
I felt limited in this environment,
and that's what put the stamp on that period.
After a long deliberation and a lot of thinking later,
I dared to say that I have seen enough,
thank you very much, it is time for me to change.
All of a sudden, I found myself on a plane.
The stewardess was waving, but I wasn't really paying attention.
And that's when I realized that I was my way to Brussels alone,
after I quit my job the day before.
I had no specific purpose, but I knew one thing:
that I had to get away from this environment,
and the fact that I ended up on my own,
that was entirely a coincidence.
I tried persuading my friends to join, but the time, the destination,
the ticket price -
I do not remember what it was,
but there was something about it none of them liked.
As soon as I arrived in Brussels, I felt eccentric,
as if everyone was staring at me and thinking:
"Poor guy, he travels alone, he must have no friends."
Then I thought, "Wait a minute.
People do a lot of things on their own,
so why can't I take a long trip alone?"
As the days passed, luckily, I felt better and better.
I began to break out of my ordinary environment,
and the trip abroad was good therapy.
It must have been the end of August,
when during my travels, I was able to heartily enjoy the sunshine,
the beautiful view of the parks and the mood of my favorite music.
At this point, I was looking at the sights of London,
and I thought that the London Eye, Big Ben or the British Museum
would have the greatest impact on me.
However, it wasn't what gave me the utmost happiness.
The happiness was in the freedom, which I already knew so well
but had lost somewhere along the way, like a package.
As I walked through central London,
I was able to walk like a reborn man.
I released my remaining barriers and moved on to a sense of spontaneity.
I banished procrastination, uncertainty and moodiness from this environment.
Instead, I looked with optimism and trust in the future.
I spent a lot of time alone,
and I will be honest with you, sometimes I was bored.
But in the meantime, I had thoughts
that I buried in myself a long time ago.
That's when I understood the significance
of being able to look at my own life;
like a director, that's how I looked at my own movie.
To do this, I didn't even have to travel far,
neither to an exotic place nor to a palm-tree beach.
Instead, my spiritual world traveled,
and I experienced that that there were no coincidences.
My previous neglected, forgotten music-playing reawakened
when my landlord in Nice showed me how to play the ukulele.
I passed myself to my sense of adventure and audacity again
when I was riding bikes with my landlord's son
in the 2,000-meter-high mountains.
Imagine, it also happened that my nonexistent dance skills came to life
when four Mexican girls taught me salsa in a bar,
or when I was able to help someone,
like Tim, an English tourist who lost his phone.
I also got my inspiration for photography again,
when I shot a beautiful sunset picture in a narrow little street.
I know these experiences may seem small,
but they meant a lot to me.
I got into a positive spiral
which I couldn't and wouldn't have wanted to come out of.
I've rarely experienced this intangible feeling since then,
but at that time it found me in the right place and at the right time.
At first, the fact that I was traveling alone
seemed dangerous, fearful,
and I have to admit, sometimes I reckoned even strange,
but as I met more and more people
who also roamed the cities alone,
I thought it would be unusual if someone had come with me.
I feel lucky that I acquired experiences
that allowed me to break away from my habits
and to enjoy the little things again that I'd been looking for in my life.
Not only did I realize that I wanted to take more photos,
to play music and deal with people,
but I also learned about myself -
that I wanted to spend more time with people
who could motivate and inspire me.
After that, I traveled alone several times
until I could finally leave the world of numbers,
and I had to go through difficult periods
to be able to find my own path.
For a long time, I thought it's done, that's all, it's over.
I had to let go of my childhood dream for good.
But I stuck to my adventurous ideas,
and I realized that only those limits exist
which I set for myself.
I didn't become James Bond.
And unfortunately, I didn't participate in secret missions either.
But in my own way, I became a helper.
Now, I can find out
who the bad guys are and what the bad things are,
and the course of my mission is,
so to speak,
I'm working every day to get people out of their bad behavior
so they can live a better life.
(Applause)