Personal Reflection

Every person with a parent has been sat down by them and been given a deep, serious, and stern talk. As you read this you most likely have flashbacks to that one talk that still lingers in your mind and their words still affect you to this day. Being given those talks is simply how we all learned when we were young. There is one talk in particular my father gave me that I still think about. My father and I were in Paris, France when he gave me this talk. To be more specific, we were in the Trocadero- the open area filled with magnificent small staircases in front of the Eiffel Tower. He sat me down in those steps and said “Son, listen to me when I tell you this. You have a true gift.” But as a 9 year old I remember thinking to myself “wow, do I have superpowers? Can I controll fire?”. Unfortunately for my 9 year old self that wasn’t the case. He followed by telling me that I have the ability to change people, He told me that I affected people i such a positive way by just being who I was. According to him, I connected with every person I met in such a way that he had never seen before- take in the fact that this a 40 year old businessman who has an almost endless contact list on his phone. I took absolutely nothing from this talk 8 years ago, I’d gotten sat down by him countless times before, I thought it was just the same thing again. For the next 6 years that memory would continue to linger in my subconscious thoughts, but it wasn’t until I became a 15-year old that I understood what he meant. I’ve now myself noticed that I have this “gift”- so why not use it in my life? One of the things I hate the most is cockiness, so when I say this I don’t want to sound one bit cocky; but I’ve caught on to the way that I treat people and the way they react, and it is true what my father said. Don’t get me wrong, i’m not loved by everyone, there’s people out there that 100% hate my guts and would do anything to get rid of me, but that’s just a few out of many. I was given this for a reason, and I’m not going to waste that. I want the purpose of my life to be that I do something helpful, not just with myself, but with other people since I have the ability to interact so well with them. I want to be able to change the lives of others in the most astonishing and positive way possible.

Behind a desire to achieve something there has to be motivation to achieve it. What I want out of my life is to be able to look at both my parents dead in the eyes and say “your sacrifices were worth it- everything you did for me was worth it.” My mom and dad were in their mid-30’s when they dropped their lives. They packed our bags and took us out of Colombia. Everything they had built for 30 years- family, friends, jobs- gone. For the sole reason to give my brother and I a better life, a better education, a better opportunity.