On a normal day, round and tidy, I receive an email. They are asking me if I would like to write something, or anything… that seems interesting. A closer look tells me that it should have a theme: “PHILANTHROPY”. Hello?? And what is that? Let’s speak to Mr Google.
I sit down in front of a desk and try to write something about the world… I am feeling lazy… this is difficult and complicated. And I can’t help but forget this word, PHILANTHROPY. It sounds boring…
I will write it later, that will be better…. Maybe on my sofa it will be easier, with my loving cat besides me.
Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a “normal” world, a normal and “round” world. Today I’m going to take my daughters to the park, tomorrow we’ll go the cousins’ birthday party, Friday is a special day but we are tired, Saturday we have to go out for walk with the family but we have to have fun and we’ll go to the mall because it’s cold outside. Today is Sunday and it’s time for a hug, the Sunday hug. Perhaps we’ll go help my friend Pepa who is moving houses, but only perhaps…. I might suddenly feel down and may not make it… Once upon a time there was a woman-mother-wife (maybe almost only mother-wife) who lived in a normal-round-tidy world.
But if one day life decides that your life is too normal-round-tidy, then maybe (only maybe) it will seem to you that it is weird-semi-circular-untidy. On Friday you are not tired, on Saturday you decide not to return to the mall, and on Sunday you do whatever you want and don’t feel like a hug unless it’s a bear‘s hug.
Maybe, inside that disorder, a crowd shows up shouting and you don’t hear anything beyond your eye lashes; you close your eyes, your ears, down to your feet, and maybe, only maybe, you manage to see beyond it that the world really does not have a form, that nothing is normal and that you decide its form, order and colour.
If, one day, in this new “chaos”, you decide that you have to row against the tide, even if words or even breathing hurts, maybe you will realise there is world out there, different, small, without form. One day, in this chaos, perhaps you start realising that you are the painter of the picture, that nothing occurs by… “OH! WHAT A COINCIDENCE”, and that life is what you make it, and you can paint it whichever colour you want.
Maybe one day you realise that if you can reach the soul of an immigrant, if you are able to play and laugh with a person who suffers autism, you have a lovely conversation with a gypsy, you dance non-stop with the neighbour’s son who has cerebral palsy, maybe if you give a few days of your “wonderful free time” to be with and understand these “non-normal, different, unusual” people, then and only then, if you do it with all your soul, without thinking of what others will say or how they will look at you will you realise that the world has no form, that “normal” does not exist and the more you give the happier you are. And it’s addictive. Perhaps you will end up crying because it’s unfair, realizing also that people are happy in this untidy world, basic and different, and that you are rich and lucky and very ungrateful. Suddenly you are given the opportunity to discover a world that is generous, gentle, sensitive in which you only have to wear your colleague’s shoes to realise that it’s worthwhile to give and not to expect anything in return. Only feel, communicate, laugh, feel emotional and live.
Be careful, it has side effects, make sure you see a specialist and don’t consume without a medical prescription (!) because you may well find your life filled with great friends, people who smile because they love you, who look at you in the eyes because they miss you, and may even give you the sincerest hugs…
Once upon a time… a normal day, round and tidy, when a “woman” received an email. She sat down, opened it, read it and that day she discovered a new word of which she was unaware in her world: PHILANTHROPY!
UNBELIEVABLE!!
Sonsoles Cervera
Coleccionista de sonrisas.
