Letter to My Younger Self: choices, character, and the road from suburb to world. /by Farlley Derze

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Author’s note:

I’m 62, and I’ve learned that life and time always walk together. I have few complaints and many memories, though there are some regrets, as is common. I wish I could redo a few things, but I can’t go back in time. So I wrote this letter to talk to the young man I once was and warn him about certain events, places, and people. Why not? Not to fix the past, but to honor it. Between the military uniform and the piano, study, work, and travel, I learned that character remains amid wants and needs.

Dubai, September 17, 2025.

Hello, kid, hello my 18-year-old, hello, Farlley.

How are you, boy? Do you miss school? Is the military enlistment going alright? You’re probably thinking, “I don’t know how it will be; I just have to endure it.” Trust me: you won’t regret it. Your neighbor, Elson Campos, a soldier in the Brazilian Army, is right when he says, “You’re going to be military.” He will guide you down that path, and you’ll build a career. You’ll spend a year in the army and then move to the Air Force. Oh, before I forget: be careful with the way you look at his daughter’s little blue shorts. Her brother, your friend Elson Campos Filho, has noticed; he isn’t naïve. But, between us: what a sight, what a pair of legs, huh? I’m not saying don’t look. I’m saying, be more careful.

When you enter the Air Force, you’ll spend two years in Guaratinguetá, in the Paraíba Valley, interior of São Paulo. Be prepared for cold, foggy mornings. Study with dedication, some classmates will be dismissed from the course. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. You’ll face hard moments, including the suicide of a colleague right beside you at the firing range. Remember, you’re in the nursing course, and the firing range is part of your training, so handle the situation professionally. Attend your friend’s autopsy, and before sleeping, say a prayer for his family.

Your time at the Air Force training school will leave wonderful memories, like your parachute jump. I’d better keep quiet so as not to violate the space-time continuum, right?

You’ll graduate and receive the Certificate of Specialist Sergeant Nurse of the Brazilian Air Force. You’ll work in Rio de Janeiro for a year at the Air Force Gerontological Home, caring for older adults and listening to their stories, which will prepare you for the future. Then you’ll be transferred to the Aerospace Medicine Center, on the second floor of the Ministry of Aeronautics.

Destiny is astonishing. In that building, you’ll meet again a dear friend, João. That reunion will bring back memories of your adolescence together, strolling around Sacra Família and Pedra Sonora, in Rio. Not everything is flowers. When he’s past 50, João will undergo a liver transplant, but neither of you can know this yet. Before that, he himself will oversee the bureaucracy of your transfer from Rio to Brasília. Yes, you read that right. You’ll leave Rio with your beloved and your twin sons. Brasília will be good for you. When the chance appears, don’t hesitate.

Your friend from Guaratinguetá, S. Costa, will work in Curitiba and will visit you when your house is under construction. Yes, kid, you and your wife will build a mansion in the Jardim Botânico neighborhood in Brasília. You’re wondering where the money will come from. Don’t worry, you’ll gather a good sum through your own work. Your parents and father-in-law will be proud. Your mother-in-law will depart this world very early, and I’d rather not dwell on that. Just know that years later you’ll host João and Patrícia at your home, and your other adolescent friends, Elson and Márcia.

Before you leave Rio de Janeiro, I’d like to warn you not to lend your motorcycle to a certain guy while you’re playing keyboards at a suburban bar in 1985. You’ll have to go home by bus in the middle of the night, and I wish I could stop that and spare you the rage. Destiny has rules. It’s awful when our trust is betrayed. Someone asks to borrow the bike and steals it. That’s how it is, kid: take it as a lesson to strengthen your character.

After that, you’ll buy a Maverick, ready for many adventures. You’ll drive that powerful car up to the Região dos Lagos, the radio blasting the hits of the day. I know you’ll push it. There are no speed cameras on the highways yet and no internet, so the world feels like a strip of asphalt to test the engine. Wonderful: a young Air Force sergeant flying in his Maverick, windows down, wind in his face.

Three years later, in 1988, you’ll buy another powerful bike, a Honda XL 250 (trail), and you’ll visit S. Costa in Curitiba. You’ll do the 800 kilometers in ten hours, two less than many cars. Every year, you’ll spend Carnival in Curitiba, going by motorcycle or bus, and once in a new car. The Maverick, by then, will have been totaled after rolling on Avenida Ayrton Senna. I’d love to shout and warn you not to floor it, but it will happen. The old Maverick will spin at 200 km/h and roll several times, ending up upside down in brush, wheels still turning, in the dead of night.

Was that enough to learn? Of course not. On a Carnival trip to visit S. Costa in Curitiba, the highway police on the Régis Bittencourt will stop you. I know it’s tempting to speed in the new car, a Volkswagen Santana. When the officer pulls you over and asks, “In a hurry, are we?”, you’ll say you’re trying to outrun the storm, pointing at the black clouds. He won’t care about the storm; he wants to know how you prefer to settle the speeding issue.

You’ll answer, “You can ticket me.” He’ll be surprised, realizing you won’t hand him cash. The first big drops will fall, and before they soak his uniform and ticket book, you’ll hear, “Get going, kid; use your head.” Thankfully, on the wet road, you will drive like a gentleman from then on.

In the 80s, you will enter the music college. It will do you a lot of good. You will meet a miner who will be in Rio de Janeiro to take singing lessons. You will build an authorial work called “Metabolar”, which involves music, literature, and theater. Thanks to this work, you will be invited for an interview in São Paulo on the largest interview program on Brazilian television, the Jô Soares program. You and this friend, Luiz Alberto de Filippo, will be inseparable. Together, they will record a track on vinyl in tribute to Ary Barroso at the invitation of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall. It will be your first recording experience.

The 1990s will arrive, and you’ll meet the love of your life, marry, and have twin sons. I can’t reveal details, but at 62 I see you two doing Sudoku in Dubai. In fact, this morning, as I write this letter to you, she’s writing about the most famous cats in literature, film, and cartoons. We’ve been married nearly thirty years. You want her name, but I can’t violate the space-time continuum. We both know that in the ’90s, in your early thirties, you don’t believe in love at first sight. Neither did I. Looks like destiny will prove us wrong. Oh, buy the score for “Clair de lune” and study it well; you’ll need it to win her over.

One more thing, kid: your future wife won’t enjoy finding a poem in her purse. We both know she left it open at Teatro Café Pequeno, in Leblon, where you met and worked together, you as the play’s pianist, she in lighting design. She went to the dressing room to talk to the actors, and you, on an ingenuous impulse, wrote a poem and slipped it into her purse in the lighting booth. If I could warn you, I’d say: don’t do it. She’ll be furious and think you were snooping. You know the rest: she’ll turn down all your invitations for coffee at the Ipanema Bookstore.

No use, I won’t reveal her name, but you’ll know she’s your wife when you meet her at the theater. Despite the scolding for slipping the poem into her purse, she’ll keep it, so take that as hope. The good news is she’s here with me now. She finished Sudoku and is taking a nap, beautiful as ever. So, kid, take the scolding on the chin and don’t give up. Our sons are 27 now.

Damn, I think I’ve already violated the space-time thing. But I need to warn you of something I just remembered: it’s about your trips to Curitiba every year to play chess with S. Coast. That time you went on your 250-cylinder motorcycle, damn boy, S. Costa will also rent a 250-cylinder motorcycle. If you can avoid going to Ponta Grossa together, I don’t know how to ask you this, but you shouldn’t go. Give up this trip. Two crazy people speeding on a highway in Paraná. On the way back, your friend will skid, will come out of the asphalt, and the dust will rise like a storm of misfortune. The fall will be ugly; the motorcycle he rented will suffer breakdowns; your friend will get hurt. I think you’ll regret this tour.

I remember another incident in the 90s in Rio de Janeiro. You’ll help your guitarist friend, Fernando Ávila, recover money someone owed him. He’ll invite you to go settle it. It nearly cost you dearly to go to that far-off neighborhood, you and your closest friend in music. When you arrive, a gang will surround you. You’ll think fast, slip your hand into the pocket of your black leather biker jacket, and threaten to fire a shot. The gang, armed with stones and clubs, and you with your hand in your pocket, finger pointed: a bluff, right? No one moves. You back away, get in the car, and escape disaster. Did you get the money back? I don’t remember; do you? I just know you were very lucky. Very lucky.

There will surely be moments when you’ll wonder if it’s better to leave Brazil, convinced the country is unjust and violent. You may face car thefts and gun threats, so don’t fight back; stay alive. Hard times make people tough. In a few years, you’ll see what I mean. It may mean stepping away from people you trusted. I’m talking about colleagues who seemed to enjoy working with you but will betray you. You’ll know who in about a decade. Over thirty years of work, you’ll have positive and negative experiences. Value the ones that bring great joy and much laughter. Not everyone deserves your trust, and it’s okay to learn that.

Let’s talk about incredible moments, like recording your first album of original compositions in July 2000. You’ll get a phone call at home from a studio. The voice will say, “Farlley, I’m a fan of your work. Do you want to come to the studio now to record your album?” You’ll answer, “I don’t have the money to record an album yet.” The voice will say, “I want to record your album charging nothing. I just want to say I engineered Farlley’s first record.” The album turned out beautifully and now lives on streaming platforms, even though they didn’t exist then. I’m proud of you.

Do you want to know about other wonderful moments? When you are living in Brasilia, you will meet a man who will give you much joy and trips abroad. He will sit in a restaurant where you will do a show with a singer. Save the name: Gloria Maria. A piano and voice duo in honor of International Women’s Day. In the show, the man I mentioned will ask to sing. Save his name: Antenor Bogéa. He will sing “Ne me quitte pas”. He will be your best friend in Brasilia and, believe me, a friend for life. You will record an album with him in Athens, Greece. He will send you to represent Brazil at an international jazz festival in Cape Verde. He’s a diplomat. There will be many trips through Spain and France, besides Rio de Janeiro and the northeast.

Then, on a fine morning, February 21, 2013, on your 50th birthday, your retirement will be announced in the Air Force bulletin. In two years, you’ll be living in Madrid with your wife and sons, and the year after that, in Miami Beach, Florida. You and your beloved will rent a car for a road trip across 26 U.S. states, crossing southern swamps, the midwestern desert, Arizona’s red rocks, and California’s beaches and mountains, a journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Your wish to live abroad will come true in retirement. As Mom always said, “What’s meant for you won’t be taken away.” You’ll spend two months in Cyprus, two in Athens, a month in Paris, a year in Madrid, a year in Miami Beach, six months in Bangladesh, and two and a half years in Dubai. That also includes shorter trips to Munich, Brussels, Barcelona, Toledo, and Marseille.

See? So many great, joyful moments are coming. You’ll finally grow fully alongside the love of your life, something not everyone finds. Who would have thought that kid from the suburbs would publish several books, earn a PhD and a postdoc? You’ll have fun daily solving chess puzzles, sometimes asking your sons for help. When you look in the mirror, you’ll see wrinkles and thinning gray hair, but there’s nothing to complain about. You did your part, kept your adolescent friends, Elson, João, and S. Costa, all gray now, and believe me, they truly love you, as does the guitarist Fernando, your four oldest friends.

Read this letter patiently and be strong, because you’ll lose your mother-in-law, father-in-law, and your father while you’re living abroad. Handling those emotions will be hard, so lean on phone calls with your wife, who will face it all alone in Brazil. She is strong and will hold fast. It will wear on you, but there’ll be nothing you can do from the other side of the ocean. You must stand firm. Life is never 100% fair, and you’ll learn how true that is.

Thank you for your resolve in keeping your job in the Air Force, resisting big temptations and invitations to live solely off show business. Thankfully, you didn’t quit your work as an Air Force nurse, balancing the morning routine with the nighttime gigs. I’m grateful; I owe my retirement to you.

In the end, young Farlley, it’s about learning to enjoy the journey of life: from military service to your favorite retirement pajamas; from a musician’s late nights to a nurse’s early mornings; from Guadalupe and Guaratinguetá to Brasília and Dubai; from the fights to the well-earned rest.

There are potholes on this road we call life, but you can, and will, overcome them all. You fought, and you flourished. You are young where you are; I am gray where I am. Don’t let pessimists bring you down. Keep being yourself. You will make it. I am proof.

Tricolor greetings (to my Rio football club I support).
You are 62, Farlley.

P.S. Tell Valkyria I said hi.

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