This quote changes my life.
When I was at school, my mother made me quit my religion classes for fear that I would become a priest.
According to my mother, I used to hide at night to pray for hours.
I don’t remember; I was very young.
What I do remember is when I moved away from spirituality.
It was at university.
The descent into hell
To pay for my studies, I started working in a discotheque open every day of the week.
I spent years there, serving drinks to delinquents, ex-convicts, beggars, university students, and alcoholics.
Eventually, I became an alcoholic myself.
Every night I drank half a bottle of Ballantines, Passport, or Jakie, countless shots of tequila that customers would buy me, and smoked an average of 3 packs of Luckie Strike a day.
In that job, I went through everything: guns were pointed at me, I was beaten up, and I even had my heart broken by a woman.
I became friends with some of my customers. I remember one in particular, Peter, very well. Peter died of a heart attack on Christmas Day, and his son found him on the living room floor. Peter was addicted to cocaine, and one day his heart gave out.
One day I couldn’t take it anymore, and I left my job.
Things didn’t get any better.
Looking back from my 20s to my 33s, it was a dark and dangerous time. — I still wonder how I survived.
When I was 33, I started meditating, doing yoga, and researching Buddhism. And that made me better. But I didn’t get entirely healed.
I was still smoking a lot.
Then my loved ones started to die, among them my grandfather, whom I loved like a father.
I recovered somewhat from all the drama, but I became a disgusting person: I used people, thought I was a victim, and took advantage.
I ended up alone, with a lot of hate inside me.
But something magical happened.
One day, around 2017, I started writing on Twitter, and little by little, the light dissolved my darkness; thousands of people began to identify with my writings and heal me with their virtual company.
My Twitter account became a meeting point for a community of people who haven’t had a good time.
People with fibromyalgia, people with cancer, people with schizophrenia, people with severe depression, and people full of loneliness started to arrive.
And during these six years, I have answered all the messages they have sent me, and I have been able to every night (we are talking about hundreds of thousands of messages in 6 years).
Most of the people who write to me are Christians: Catholics, or Protestants.
And around 2021, I bought a 1960 Reina Valera bible to understand them better and write better tweets and books, to serve them better as human beings and give them back so much love they have given me over the years.
The phrase that changed everything
Reading the bible one day, I came across these words of Jesus,
“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing; and when he comes home, he gathers his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” — Luke 15:6
This sentence clicked in my head, and it was like integrating that child who prayed in secret and the confused and faithless young man with the adult I am today.
I cried a lot reading this sentence—a lot.
Because I know how much shit is in me. I know how deep the darkness of my soul is and how mean my heart can be. I know how many times and in what ways I have sinned.
And just imagining that, EVEN THEN, someone is willing to come looking for me gives me goosebumps.
Final Thoughts
Who wouldn’t want to have someone like that around, a friend who can pick you up when you are lost? A friend capable of forgiving you anything. A friend capable of loving you unconditionally.
Someone who, after having failed so many times, finds you, takes you back home and celebrates to the four winds without feeling ashamed of you, someone like Jesus.
I still study a lot of New Age and comparative religions, from TAO to I Ching, to the Koran, to Buddhism, to Hinduism. But I always come back to him because I know that despite me, he is always with me.
He never gave up on me, and I can write these lines today as I open my heart to you, and why not say it? I cry with gratitude.
Thank you for reading.
A virtual hug
AG
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