In search of the wind to ruffle the smile | WEEK 282

Today, @galenkp suggests we share a photo of ourselves from when we were younger as a starting point to explain what changes and initiatives we've implemented to improve ourselves and how we've developed since then.

Personally, this suggestion is perfect for me, allowing me to reminisce about those moments in the past and write these words for you while I pause on my journey to recall a past weekend—perhaps even this one, if I let my imagination wander.

This first photo I'm showing reminds me of when I first entered university to study for a law degree. It was a year of constant change in many ways. Fortunately, something I was grateful for later, I was forced to abandon my academic career.

This was something I came to appreciate over time because, while I find the professions derived from this university degree interesting, I don't think I could have endured practicing it in the midst of a social and legal system as incoherent as that of my country.

My nature, which has always inclined me to help everyone around me, even if it means being left destitute, could and should be expressed through another profession that would allow me to do so, to some extent. That profession was Psychology.

Psychology has allowed me to develop in some rewarding ways at times. Yes, I have received various awards, including an award from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, but that's not all it is.

For me, human interaction is more important, the power to allow others to rediscover their own tools and recover their smiles, to dare, why not, to walk backwards someday and laugh about it because it worries me—something that @galenkp also encourages us to mention—that so many people are so unhappy simply because they don't dare to do something as simple as smile... like that, precisely, to simply be happy, whether it's with a sincere hug, the conquest of the person who makes you vibrate, the caress that breaks the routine, the pause on the path, the precise sigh, the pure gesture of children who come up to kiss you...

All these elements contribute to our finding ourselves in a gray society, in its solitude of networks and superfluous masks, where there are many who prefer to lower their faces, smile at a screen and not at the person right in front of them or at their own, thus preventing hearts from beating in color and in genuine freedom.

I'm taking this opportunity to pause for a coffee. This reminds me of another detail from the suggestion @galenkp made. He asked us to speculate about what we would talk about if we met in a bar during a random trip.

Well, we would talk about whatever he wanted, whatever he needed. I would tell him about my dreams of traveling the world, exploring every uncharted corner, meeting artists I didn't even know existed, talking with people from all cultures, and my desire to be a millionaire so I could help the countless poor people who live on Earth...

I would tell him about the lights of my country, those lights that refuse to die even in the darkness that reigns in the streets.

I would tell her about the bridges that remain despite the passage of time and tell her to let her hair down from time to time, just as I am doing now, allowing the wind to guide my steps on the path.

I'll say goodbye now, but not before asking you to remember to smile and hug those around you.

Sending you all a hug of light!