Me

It was both. I had to do what I did to be where I am today.
    We all grow up at our own pace. While there are people who have the good fortune to grow up with the guidance, counsel, and care of their parents, other people have to adapt to circumstances and become adults very early on in life. For better or worse, this was the case for me. At the ripe old age of twelve, an opportunity came my way that would change my life completely: Menudo. It was one of the most successful bands in history, and becoming a part of it was a dream come true, everything I had always wanted. But like all great things in life, the experience did not come without a great deal of sacrifice. I had to leave behind my family, my school, and my friends—everything that I knew. I sacrificed my youth and my innocence, and even though today I know I will never be able to recover these things, I can wholeheartedly say that I have no regrets. It was very difficult, but that’s what becoming a man is all about: confronting the challenges that life throws our way, and learning to grow with them.
    But when I first returned home, I still did not see how my new experiences had changed me, and I did not realize how much more I still needed to grow. On many levels, I was already very much a man—I had lived, traveled, and had my experiences—but back then I did not see the spiritual path I would need to walk in order to connect with who I really am. During the time I was in Menudo I learned a lot and matured at an alarming rate. Not only did I learn to sing, dance, and everything you need to have a career in show business. I also started to experience the world on my own, far from the protective gaze of my parents. That said, I did miss out on some of the essential things in life, and all of the uncertainty, fear, and confusion of adolescence did not take long to hit me hard when I returned home. It wasn’t until I returned home to my family and the island I had left behind that I noticed the feeling of emptiness inside me. Like many, back then I believed happiness was something I could find outside me, and not within.

TWO
    MEETING DESTINY
    BACK WHEN I USED TO DRIVE MY FATHER CRAZY ABOUT how much I wanted to join Menudo, I remember feeling that if I made it into the group I would never have to worry about anything ever again. I would earn money, I would live with the other four guys, who in those days were my idols, and all of my dreams would come true. I thought that if only I could get into the band, my life would be made because I knew in the deepest part of myself that I wanted to be an artist. Nothing was going to stop me from achieving my dream. What I didn’t know was that the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line, and to achieve my goals there was still a lot of work to do.
    In Menudo, everything was more or less routine and predictable, and the only thing I had to do was follow a series of rules that were given to me. But after I left the band, my career stopped being a straight line and turned into a series of points that might, at first glance, seem haphazardly dispersed. Instead of focusing on continuing to be a musician, I dabbled in a bit of everything, because these were the opportunities that came my way. That’s how I ended up working in film, theater, and television before I came back to music. If it hadn’t been for the variety of those experiences, I wouldn’t have been able to open up to the destiny that awaited me. Today I ask myself if this was about destiny at all, or if I myself was somehow creating it through the great power of consciousness.

FINDING MYSELF AT HOME
    WHEN I RETURNED to Puerto Rico after five years with the band, I felt totally lost; it was almost like I didn’t know who I really was. Part of me wanted to distance myself from the entertainment world, but during the time I spent with Menudo, show business had become such a profound part of my existence that it would have been like removing a major organ.
    A lot of my unease probably had to do with the fact that I was seventeen years old, and like most boys my age, I felt I was at a crossroads in my life. I was faced with a series of grown-up decisions, but I was facing them with the mind of a child. Ironically, while the time in Menudo forced me to grow up and learn things at a much faster pace than normal, on many levels I was still a child. From age twelve to seventeen I never had to make a decision for myself (my clothes,