These Days

Today, I believe in inspiration.

Today, I believe that the suction can be broken when it needs to be.

Today, I believe in the power of belief.

This is a post for me, and only for me. If you, whoever you are, read it, all I can hope is that you can learn to be inspired by the little things. Things like a blog post that is desperate attempt to learn something about inspiration.

These days, my mind is my enemy. I don’t mean that to sound melodramatic, even though it is. These days, I wonder a little too much about what it means to be happy. It just seems like something that we pretend to search for when we know that there is just too much or just too little to ever be able to find it. And those people who say you have the power to determine how you feel are either naive or uncomfortably optimistic.

I can’t stop thinking about Aracely, the nine-year-old girl I met in Bolivia. These days, she is my inspiration and the foundation of my belief. She held a book titled “Inglés: Fácil y Rápido sin Maestro,” English: Easy and Fast without a Teacher, close to her chest and wrapped her small arms around it like it was the most important thing in the world. Can you even imagine? How could I have been so naive? We talked, stumbling over fractured Spanish and English, fascinated with each other. She pointed out confusing concepts and words in her book, and I did my best to explain, baffled by the illogical logic of my own language.

The most coherent thing I can say is that it was a paradigm shift. Seeing someone so dedicated, so passionate, so excited to learn, was beautiful and profoundly humbling. Somehow, in that moment, the world seemed simple. She was the last piece of the puzzle, and suddenly, I could see the whole picture. I still wonder if she had someone in her life who had inspired her or if her seed of passion took root on its own.

These days, and especially today, I want to help someone find their passion like Aracely had found hers, to see a face alight with the glow of a unique passion, but most of all, I want to see her again.