Today I had a very interesting and inspiring conversation. I met a man from Spain named Angel who, together with his wife, founded a non-profit a few years ago that works to better the lives of people living in La Prusia (Nicaragua). A friend of mine had volunteered building houses through Angel's organization this summer and shared about his adventure with me, which first sparked my interest. Long story short - I met Angel today and was fortunate enough to speak with him for about two hours, a conversation that certainly gave me some food for thought. He shared with me about his life and the more and more I listened to Angel, I realized something...he never talked about himself. He spoke of what he learned from other people, how he enjoys helping other people, and continued to ask me to share my story with him. After we talked, I was blown away by how unbelievably selfless a person Angel is, even in his words.
Angel shared with me about his first trip to Nicaragua, an experience that "shocked" him. Angel then explained to me how he believes we as people are overwhelmed by the things we learn. It's actually kind of funny because sometimes I can't help but feel like we receive all this education about the world and then no one really knows what to do with the knowledge we gain. I think it may be because we are afraid our energy will be a wasted effort. For instance, when we learn about the severe poverty that much of the world lives in, a societal issue that would take millions if not billions of dollars to fix, we are too overwhelmed to do anything about it. Angel answered this by smiling, shrugging his shoulders, and replying "well, I may not have millions to give, but that fact surely isn't going to stop me from giving what I can and impacting the lives of a few people, instead of impacting no one. I am doing the best I can, and while my work may seem small scale to some, to those affected, it isn't." Angel told me that learning theories is one thing, and seeing realities is something entirely different. He also said to me "sometimes we experience things in life that change us, we will see something and it will grab hold of us; and if you are anything like me, you cannot from that point go on pretending a world other than our own doesn't exist."
On my ride home, stuck in aggravating outskirts of Boston traffic, I began to think about the things I know to be true in life, but either just ignore or pretend aren't reality. I came up with quite a list, and I'm sure we all would if we stopped to have this type of internal dialogue more often. I came to another conclusion- there are already a great deal of educated people in the world, who have lots of money. So, maybe these two aspects aren't the only pieces of the puzzle, and maybe, we are our own biggest roadblock of all. Perhaps the real first step is for everyone to just stop pretending. After all, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
What has grabbed hold of you? And what are you pretending hasn't?
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