The Older I Get, the Smaller I Want My World to Become: Be Like Denzel Washington in "The Equalizer 3"

There’s a scene in The Equalizer 3 that has nothing to do with the action.

Robert McCall sits in a cafe in a small Italian village. The owner knows his order. The locals know his name. He walks the same streets every morning at the same hour. He eats lunch at the same table. He reads and observes. He belongs to a place in the quiet, unhurried way most people only experience on vacation, that feeling of being somewhere rather than passing through it.

It is your typical Disney movie scene where everyone knows and loves you.

That scene stayed with me longer than anything else in the film.

Not because of the fantasy of being a retired operative living in Italy. But because of something much simpler and much more achievable.

The man had learned to live slowly. Because of this reason, he had the respect of the people around him, not for being a Gringo or not because he demanded their attention, but because he had been present long enough to earn their recognition.

I’ve been thinking about that scene a lot lately. Mostly because I’ve started to realize that the life it describes isn’t a fantasy but an intentional choice. Salvador, Bahia is my choice.

I want to be honest about where this essay is coming from.

There are things I thought I wanted that I no longer want. Ambitions I carried that I’ve started to set down not because I failed at them, but because I looked at them clearly and realized they were never fully mine to begin with.

The shallow dating culture I spent time navigating in Brazil, the ficante culture, the rotating door of connection without depth. It was a fun experience, but I don’t feel the need to participate in it anymore. Not out of bitterness but from clarity. I know what I’m looking for now, and that isn’t it if that opportunity ever presents itself.

The hustle of digital writing as a primary income source, like the algorithm-chasing, the constant production, the pressure to be visible, consistent, and growing. I’m stepping back from it as an identity. I’m content living part-time in Salvador and returning to the US to work when I need to. That rhythm suits who I actually am better than the one I was performing.

I thought I wanted more, but what I actually want is deeper.

This is what getting clearer looks like for me. And Salvador, Bahia is where that clarity is taking shape.

There’s something compelling about Robert McCall in The Equalizer 3, especially for someone who identifies as an INFJ. But if you strip away the action and violence, what many people are really drawn to is something much quieter:

• Living slowly without everyone’s expectations.

• Being respected without demanding attention.

• Having a small circle of genuine relationships.

• Walking the same streets every day until they become home.

• Spending afternoons in cafés, reading, observing, and talking with locals.

• Having enough financial independence that time belongs to you.

That kind of life is very achievable in Salvador, Bahia.

If I were designing that lifestyle, it might look something like this:

Everyone has their own version of what slow living means.

It’s about doing things with enough presence that they actually register. It’s about staying in the moment and taking in the experience without content creation or anything related. It’s the difference between consuming life and creating life, between walking a neighborhood and knowing it, between being somewhere and belonging there.

I’ve been in Salvador long enough now to understand what belonging here requires. It requires patience that tourists can’t afford and most expats won’t invest. It requires a willingness to be nobody long enough to eventually become somebody, not famous, not followed, just known by people who are part of your aligned tribe.

For me, my life in Salvador is the waiter who knows my favorite churrasco, the street vendor who knows I like Caja, my neighbor who knows I am gringo learning Capoeira.

McCall had it in that Italian village. I’m building it here in Salvador, Bahia.

It is going up on a Tuesday.

Back in 2016, there was a popular song called “Going up on a Tuesday”. The song was about partying on a random day during the week.

Just like the song, the goal is to make a boring Tuesday exciting with routine.

Wake before the heat starts to fatigue you. Walk along the waterfront while the city is still quiet, or the scammers come out. Experience the kind of quiet Salvador has before it becomes itself for the day.

Go get some rocket fuel coffee that your foreigner taste buds are not used to.

Do an hour of reading and writing in Portuguese and English both, because being a student of this culture rather than a consumer of it is the only kind of presence one should be interested in here.

Make movement a priority. Not for aesthetics but for the simple maintenance of a body that can keep doing this for decades. But doing it for aesthetics helps with self-love.

Nothing dramatic happens.

That is the entire point.

Many foreigners never become part of Salvador because they’re always sightseeing.

McCall became part of a town.

Visit the same bakery, café, and fruit stand regularly. Remember people’s names, and eventually, they’ll remember yours too.

• Read for an hour over coffee.

• Write in Portuguese and English.

• Practice capoeira or exercise

• Eat lunch at a neighborhood restaurant.

• Spend the afternoon exploring a different part of Bahia or working on my writing.

It sounds boring, but that is where great things are created.

This is the distinction that matters most to me now.

What I’m interested in at the moment is committing to spending the rest of my short but interesting life doing it here, earning Bahia. The Afro-Brazilian traditions that run deeper than any tourist attraction can convey. The specific history of this city as one of the most African places in the Western Hemisphere, a history that has everything to do with who I am as a Black American man and why being here feels like more than just living abroad.

People here can tell the difference between a foreigner who came to consume and one who came to understand. Being the second kind takes longer. It costs more, and the price of admission is humility, patience, and the willingness to be wrong, confused, and slow to understand.

It is the only version of being here that interests me.

McCall didn’t need a crowd. He needed a handful of people who actually knew him.

I understand that now in a way I didn’t when I was younger and still convinced that the size of a social life was a measure of its quality.

I identify with being an INFJ, and I have learned how to be emotionally self-sufficient yet needing the right people around me, not necessarily a lot of people around me.

What I’m cultivating in Salvador is small and intentional. One trusted person who aligns with me, A few real friends and people I can sit with for hours without performing. My capoeira community, the most organic way I’ve found to belong to something real here. A handful of local people who engage with my writing and help me with my observations.

That circle is not large. It is not supposed to be large.

The INFJ in me has always known this and has spent years ignoring it, building wide networks, maintaining superficial connections, and performing the social life I thought I was supposed to have. What I’ve learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, is that depth and breadth are inversely correlated for someone wired the way I am.

I need fewer people and deeper presence. That’s the architecture of a social life that actually sustains me.

I’m not going to romanticize this without naming what makes it possible.

Living the life I’m describing in Salvador requires a level of financial clarity that most people avoid thinking about until it becomes urgent.

The math of Salvador is genuinely different from the math of most American cities. What $3000 - $5000 a month barely touches in New York or Los Angeles creates a quality of life here that most Americans would describe as comfortable without hesitation.

Getting there for me means returning to the US periodically to work, maintaining income streams that follow me digitally and brick-and-mortar businesses, and making deliberate choices about what I spend money on versus what I spend time on.

It is not a life for someone who is still trying to accumulate. It is a life for someone who has decided that time is the asset worth protecting.

McCall wasn’t chasing promotions as a top hitman for the government. He had decided what enough looked like. That decision is more than any specific income number, and it is what made the life possible.

I’ve made mine.

There’s a kind of success that doesn’t photograph well.

There is a peace you get when you stop algorithm chasing as a digital writer.

The goal is to make my work quieter.

I’d rather spend my time writing about:

• Philosophy

• Travel

• Global Citizenship

• Brazil

• Introversion

• Culture

Not chasing algorithms or begging for my peers to network with me.

Just creating meaningful work over years.

After decades of intensity, a meaningful life can become very small in the best sense.

A familiar street at the same hour every morning. A handful of people who know you without needing to be updated on who you are. Work that matters to you whether or not anyone is watching. Enough peace that the sunset registers as the event it actually is rather than the backdrop you scroll past on your way to the next thing.

That life is not a consolation prize for someone who didn’t achieve enough. It is a deliberate construction. It takes as much intention as any other ambition or maybe more, because the culture you came from will spend a significant amount of energy trying to convince you that stillness is failure.