A normal, round, orderly day, I get an email. They ask if I’d like to write something, anything… Well, it seems interesting. I look closely and see it should have a common theme, “PHILANTHROPY”… Hellooo??? And what on earth is that??? Let’s go talk to Mr. Google…
And I sit in a chair, in front of a table and try to write something about the world… phew… what a bore… how hard and complicated. And I forget about that word, PHILANTHROPY. Sounds like a boring word…
I’ll write later, it’ll be better… maybe on my sofa, with my cat next to me who gives me so much love, it’ll be easier.
Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a “normal” world, a normal and “round” world. Today I’ll take the girls to the park, tomorrow we’re going to the cousins’ birthday party, Friday is a special day but we’re tired, Saturday we have to go out for a family walk but we have to have fun, so we go to the mall because it’s cold. Today is Sunday and it’s hug day, Sunday’s hug. Maybe we’ll go help my friend Pepa who’s moving but maybe… because I might suddenly not feel well and can’t… Once upon a time there was a woman-mother-wife (maybe by now almost only mother-wife) who lived in a normal-round-orderly world.
But if one day life decides your life is too normal-round-orderly, maybe, just maybe, it becomes strange-semicircular-disordered. Friday you’re not tired, Saturday you decide not to go back to the mall and Sunday I do whatever I feel like and I don’t want a hug that isn’t a bear hug.
Maybe within that disorder a crowd appears shouting and you don’t hear anything beyond your eyelashes, but if you close your eyes, your ears and even your feet, maybe, just maybe, you manage to see beyond, to see that the world really has no shape, nothing is normal and that shape, order and color are up to you.
If one day, in that new “chaos,” you decide you have to row against wind and tide, even if the words hurt, even if breathing hurts… maybe you’ll realize there’s a world beyond, a different, small, shapeless world. One day in that chaos, maybe, you start to realize that you’re the painter of the picture, that nothing happens because of… “OH!! WHAT A COINCIDENCE,” and that you make life yourself and paint it whatever color you like.
Maybe one day you realize that if you manage to enter the soul of an immigrant, if you manage to play and laugh with someone autistic, have a nice conversation with a Roma person, dance nonstop with the neighbor’s child with cerebral palsy, maybe if you dedicate a few days of your “wonderful free time” to being with and understanding those “not normal, those weird or not ordinary people,” only then, if you do it with your soul, without thinking about what they’ll say or how they’ll look at you… maybe if you end up crying because it’s not fair, because you realize there are happy beings in their disordered, basic, shapeless world, because you realize you’re rich and fortunate and very ungrateful… Maybe then you’ll realize that the world really has no shape, that “normal” doesn’t exist, and that the more you give, the happier you are… and that it’s ADDICTIVE too. Because suddenly you discover a generous, kind, sensitive world, where you just have to put on your fellow human’s shoes and walk in them to realize it’s worth giving without expecting anything more. Just feel, communicate, laugh, get moved, and live.
And watch out, because it has side effects, consult with a specialist and don’t take without medical prescription, because great friends may appear in your life, people who smile at you because they love you, people who look you in the eye because they miss you, and sometimes you might even get sincere hugs…
Once upon a time…. A normal, round, orderly day, when a “woman” received an email. She sat down, opened it, read it, and that day discovered a new word she didn’t know existed in her world: PHILANTHROPY!
CÁSCARAS!! (Wow!!)
Sonsoles Cervera
Collector of smiles.