Please, stand up with me and promise you
will never stop doing whatever it is you love doing. Please promise you will
never quit enjoying life and been positive about things that you love, just
because someone else says that you’re not good for them. You know why?
Because we are over seven thousand million
human beings in this world and, even so, no one has the right to diminish you
or your love for anything. Not one person, dead or alive, can do that? Not your
teachers (good or bad) not your parents, not your so-called friends, not people
you meet once or people you talk to a lot. No one, simple as that, can tell you
what you are able to say or not, what you can feel or not or what you can think
or not.
Attention! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
learn from others, as that is one of the most beautiful and bright keys in the
world. Learning is not only about techniques and structured forms to achieve
something. You can also learn by hearing someone speak about their opinions,
about what they love and what they hate. You can even learn a lot from the
world by looking at the people on the street, in a market or on the bus. You
just have to be attentive and be open about it all, not judge it and render it
“useless”. Remember, even in the most horrible person, there’s a thread of good
and even in the best person, there’s evil sleeping, so don’t rush in your
judgments.
Whenever you have words, whenever you feel
like you must say something, please, do. Who cares what others will think? Your
need to speak and be heard and learn is much greater than fear of ridicule.
Besides, we can only be ridiculed if we subject ourselves to those awful
feelings. When we own what we say and do, no one can really out us down using
our own words as weapons.
Never be that person who attacks for
attacking, who tries to put down someone else in order for you to be on top.
First, the world will never remember you were on top, only you. So, think about
this: will you be able to live with yourself knowing what you had to do to be there,
to be on top of the world? Guilt is a very slow poison but once it’s inside, it
will act without a doubt.
One of the most important things is to observe
and listen. You will never get too far in life if you don’t do these two
things. Stop and look at every side and see what happens. People always have
different opinions about things and that’s not bad. Don’t try to impose your
view on others, try to understand them and see why they think that way. If you
think they’re wrong or not, that’s not what’s really important. The trick is to
know how to learn to take all of that that you are not to build yourself
better, to make yourself a greater human by learning from what is close to you,
as well as from what is far.
And please, accept criticism when it is your
turn to be in that spot. Be able to hear when people say things that you don’t
believe in, thing that might even make you uncomfortable. Remember the world
will never revolve around you or them, so just open up your mind and listen and
learn, no judgments.
No one, no matter your religion, your
ethnicity, your sexual preferences or your eye color (anything), will ever be
on a position to tell you to shut up, to stop saying whatever it is that you
believe in. Because after listening, after learning, after mashing up those
things with your experience and your decisions, then you can say what’s on your
mind in the best way possible. In a structured way, a proper message can be
send to others about whatever you believe in. And you know what’s the best about
it? People will listen.
When opinions are built on solid ground and
with strong conviction, people will respect them, no matter if they agree or
not because, again, that’s never been the point. People focus too much on right
and wring and false and true, but it is most important to acknowledge that the
world is a mix of all of that. The world is built on our truths and our lies.
What would the world be with our lies? Better o worse?
Never let your morals attack someone else’s
just because your conviction is too strong. Conviction works when it is used to
explain and set your message straight. It’s never good when you use it to
diminish others and to demolish everything other people have built close by.
Respect is also one of the best ways to go about
in life. Because how can you listen to someone, how can you expand your
knowledge and your mind in general when you have no respect for others, or
worse, for yourself?
Many people have said that the first thing is
to be honest with yourself and respectful of your own being. That means that
you know your limits, you know exactly who you are and how you exteriorize that
and also how we behave inside, in our minds. You are the only one to be able to
choose the limits of your life and whichever you chose, that’s great, but
always have them in mind and remember that your rights, in law, end when other
person’s rights begin.
Some are too fast to judge someone because he
or she did this or that but they fail to understand that they are seeing it all
from their personal points of view. They say certain things go against their
morals and decide to ignore the morality of the person that originated whatever
it is that is under siege. Yes, they are people that can have doubtful
moralities but there are others that seek to impose theirs on every single
person they meet. How can that be better, how can that be good in any form? Has
imposing ever worked among humanity?
You just have to be true to yourself and
honest and respectful of yourself and others, never forgetting that you have a
voice. You have a right to say and to think and to do and to stand up and shout
if that’s what you want to do. And these rights you have are not consequence of
the human law, but of life. You are a biological being that, for better or
worse, evolved into what human being are today. Nature gave you vocal cords,
the ability to stand up, the ability to walk, and run and, maybe best of all,
nature gave us a brain.
Inside that brain, there’s a universe we
haven’t even begun to understand. An entire universe resides up there, inside
our skull and every single person has one. It doesn’t matter if they are right
or left wing extremists, if they are women or men, if they are old or young,
black or white or speak English or Spanish. We all have that universe inside
our skulls and we all have the capacity to decided what it is we do with it.
Do we use it only to go forward, like in a
video game, or do we fill it with information, with all of those beautiful
things we like and even those things we hate? Because we are all an amalgam of
those two opposites. Our own little universe can have so much and it helps us
be a fully formed human being in the physical world. All that information
inside that thing inside our skull, is what makes us... us. And we are not on
the side of it as that universe is ours. So we can control it.
We can learn with it, we can listen with it,
we can refute and fight and struggle with it. It won’t be easy and it cannot be
easy. Because life, the mere concept of life, is so vast and incredible, that
just cannot be an easy thing. We will have to face our demons and we will have
to meet a lot of people that we won’t like.
But we will also feel people that, when they
smile, we feel better and warm. People that make us believe there is a way out
for humanity. And, also, life’s about looking around and living whatever it is
that is happening around us. Enjoy your moments with your pet, reading a book,
standing on the street as it rains or on a plane. Learn to feel your way around
those moments, those precious moments that, after all, are only yours because
when you feel something, it’s instantly personal. No one else will feel it
exactly the same and you will never feel what others have felt. And that is
tragic and beautiful.
Finally, I think we can agree that this
message is expected to make everyone who reads it believe they do count and
that no one has the right to shut you up. Inteligence is only relative. Speak louder, make your voice be
heard and never let people put a hand over your mouth. Bite if you have to
bite, kiss when you want to kiss them and just fight your way to wherever you
want to go. Life’s not a struggle, the struggle is to live among humanity and
that’s only achieved when you take into account what I’ve just exposed. Cheers!
