calm

"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet." -Roger Miller


It was just one of those nights. I sat in a bar after the Chile soccer game ended, with my blue cast propped under the table slowly sipping my very cold beer and once again realized I was surrounded by good people. Several hours later, my friend turned to me after our very deep conversation about our lives in Santiago, and said "I think the best reason that there are new volunteers here, is that it reinforces to me how many good people there are in the world." She was right.

We didn't know each other four days ago. Four days ago, my foot wasn't broken, and I didn't know I would sit and have an incredibly hilarious deep conversation with new people that have ventured to Chile from all over the world. What an amazing place to be. Our conversation this night turned to this talk about... "calm." People told their stories, their dramas, we laughed and made fun of past relationships, reasons that drove us to be volunteers in Santiago. We were all so different, but giving each other so much in these moments.


Then the word was passed around, calm. As soon as I heard it I knew I would write tonight. A sense of peace has entered my life that was never there before coming here. There are 11 new people that came to Santiago in the last week to donate their time, money, passion and lives to help children and families in need. We already have well over 20, our family just keeps growing, yet in all the jobs...all the places I have lived, I have never had such a sense of peace and calmness in my life despite chaos. In the past 6 weeks I have been in and out of doctors offices, broken my foot, lost my cell phone, spent two month's rent on medical testing and had to call in sick a number of times. How am I still calm? I really started to think about this, I have no drama in my life, I have no bad feelings, I have no one I wish I could say something to, nothing to dislike, nothing to worry or stress about. I don't understand it, because I know that this is not true. It was not true when I was hysterically crying in the emergency room on Monday, it wasn't true when I had my break down on the island of Chiloe because I hadn't eaten anything but rice for four weeks, but the moments have come and passed and again and again I am shown the goodness of people. I am surrounded by people who care about others more than themselves.

"So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains. And we never even know we have the key."
So I sat in my office today on my wheeley chair and my brace propped on a different wheeley chair working on some presentations for the week and realized I felt like I was at summer camp. In all the places to break a bone it's not so bad to do it at a place where you are yelled at if you consider trying to go to work. This is SO not New York, after coming from a job where you were castrated for taking an hour off for an appointment or coming in 5 minutes late even if you worked 10 hours overtime every week...to a place that encourages your sense of self, your personality, works on your strengths and makes you grow as a person. I know I have said this before, but life has slowed down. I am enjoying everyday to the fullest, and I am starting to truly understand this saying. I am not convincing myself that it could be true, but actually feeling it everyday. If there is something in life that is causing you stress or anxiety, then it is most likely not worth it. You get to decide your fate, you get to decide who takes the punches, so at times I have my mini break downs, then I come home laugh about how ironic life can be and take a cab to the bar to meet up with some new amazing people with my foot propped on the chair next to me.



Maybe it is traveling, maybe it is the constant excitement of what is to come, who you will meet, what you will see, and the unknown, but life can be this way. Life is this way for me now. Life gets to be what you make it, and if you want to enjoy it, then I wonder now what so many people are waiting for...their next big break, the next job will be better, maybe next week I will like him more...it's not going to happen. Find happiness in the moments that surround you and if they are not there, then its time to start searching.
"Today's problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them." Albert Einstein

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