Unseen angels

In the early stages of life, things are easy, though you don’t feel that way. The sentence my father used to say, "You'll appreciate going to school when you start working," can only be truly understood once you start working.

During childhood, you go to places, listen to teachers, and play with friends. Life doesn’t feel fragile because your parents are in charge.

As you grow up, you realise that your parents are fragile too, even if you didn’t notice it at the time. You also learn that friends come and go, and making new ones year after year isn’t as easy as it once seemed.

Then, you appreciate how easy it was to talk with friends at university—no filters, no pretences. I believe you only start to become truly aware of other people after that period, and at the same time, you become accustomed to seeing people come and go in your life.

At the early stages of my career, I was much more innocent than I am now and made some good friends with whom I am still sporadically in touch. However, I also recognise that, starting your career, you begin to be disappointed by some people because trust is difficult to earn and very easy to lose. Year after year, after some disappointments, your mask (or persona) becomes harder and harder in order to protect your sanity and cope with the nine-to-five routine.

The thing is, you never really know people in a work environment. The game of masks is always there, and I believe friendships only start once that game is over. Yet again, it is another test to see how many people remain. Not as many as you expect. The show must go on.

I had a teacher who said, siempre nos acompañarán aquellas personas que en un momento acompañamos — those who we once accompanied will always accompany us. It’s true, and sometimes, when people close to you move on, a part of you goes with them. In these cases, I find comfort in Stoic philosophy: not trying to control what I cannot control and being ready for the worst-case scenario. Nothing is guaranteed. Today we are here; tomorrow, we may be elsewhere. That’s life.

Wandering the world ten years ago on an almost non-existent budget taught me how little I need to survive, how close one can be to homelessness, and that when something feels very bad at first, it can also lead to really good things. Also, I don’t go to church as my grandparents would like—hopefully, they forgive me—but I do believe in God. It’s hard not to believe when you have seen how people thrive under horrible circumstances. From a technical point of view, we might never be able to prove God’s existence; the debate is a cul-de-sac. However, when you see parents forgiving the murderer of their own child, you begin to question everything. How is that even possible? The code needs a breakpoint for review.

Also, the experience of God has been very real for me on many occasions, especially when I’ve been through storms. There has always been an angel that made the storm bearable—sometimes simply the presence of someone, just being there without judgement. That is the pure presence of love. Something you can never un-experience once you have experienced it.