This lesson is my mantra every day.
Life is not about what happens to you but how you react.
And that’s something that seems minor, but it’s not.
There are authentic living legends, Michael Jordans and Venus Williams, of this game called life.
People who, if reality were a video game, would play it in inferno mode and come out victorious.
People are capable of bouncing back again and again from catastrophes.
People who make my problems seem like minor issues.
People who overcome illness, loss of loved ones, bankruptcy, or all in a row, or all together, and still get up with a smile.
A smile is so powerful that even the worst storms can’t sour their day.
My most loyal reader
I remember a reader who answered my daily tweets with poems she made up until one day, she stopped.
After weeks of not hearing from her, her daughter contacted me.
This was the message she wrote to me via DM.
Dear Malafama:
With my mother’s permission, I am writing to you.
I am Ana, her daughter.
It’s been almost a month since my mother flew away.
A tumor took her away, and now she rests in peace.
I am writing to thank you.
You can’t imagine how much you meant to my mother.
You gave wings to her creativity, and she felt inspired and fulfilled by leaning on you.
Under your words, she created.
She woke up from a drought of years and returned to writing.
The fountain became a river, poetry was born from the sea, it rained on her free hand… and she was pleased.
She waited for your agenda, your poems, to create her own.
She felt himself blooming in a hard time; you appeared in confinement, and you became a garden in her loneliness — a flowery garden.
Alberto, my mother, sang verses thanks to You.
Thank you for the inspiration, the permission, and the company you gave her.
A hug.
Sincere.
She never said anything to me.
While replying daily to my texts, she never told me what was wrong with her.
She didn’t want preferential treatment; she didn’t want my sympathy.
She wanted to bite into each day and devour it eagerly without anyone pitying her.
Today she is an example of life for me.
An example of strength, of how to face life even when you have everything against you.
An example of how to react to life’s surprises — often unpleasant —.
We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we face it. My reader did it with poetry, which made me understand the power of words, beauty, and life.
If I could give you only one piece of advice, this: control your reactions; it seems minor, but it is not easy, and it will always make a difference.
And I want to say goodbye to this article, with the phrase that my reader ordered to put as an epitaph on her grave, “She died as she wanted to live, smiling.”
And that is what I ask you to do, that you may live smiling despite misfortunes and misfortunes.
Peace and good.
AG
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