Maybe, when you were twenty years old, you didn’t spend a semester tucked away in a tiny town in Austria, reading Wojtyla and T. S. Eliot and taking overnight trains all over Europe. And maybe during those months you didn’t live with your best friend from college and two crazy Nicaraguan girls, the four of you in a beautiful room with dormer windows and hardwood floors and a view of mountains, laughing and crying and trying to figure out how to change your duvet covers together. So maybe you were never exposed to the magic of Latin pop music, and maybe you didn’t listen to Lucas Arnau at your desk when you should have been studying or put Fonseca on your iPod and dance on your walk to the grocery store.
But I did. And I have loved that music—songs like this one and this one—ever since. Not necessarily because they are musically excellent (whatever that means), but because they are vivacious and colorful, and because they helped me to sing and dance and laugh when I was sad and struggling.
Today I found a new song, by an artist I don’t remember hearing before, and it’s sticking to me with unexpected force. I don’t speak Spanish but I have enough French and Latin to understand some of it, especially in music, and the words of this one jumped out at me:
“pintarse la cara, color esperanza,
tentar el futuro, con el corazon.”
Tentar el futuro...tempting the future. With our hearts.
Isn’t that how it feels, so much of the time? Like wanting things, desiring things and striving toward them, is the best way to insure that we don’t get them? As though dreaming is the equivalent of writing Kick Me! in big black letters across the backs of our shirts.
But it’s not, you know. At least, I don’t believe it is. I think the happiest people are the ones who hope for, and confidently expect to find, great and beautiful joy in life. Not because they escape suffering—no one does—but because they know the secret: that joy is hidden everywhere, even in and through the most difficult circumstances. That the One who creates us has a greater capacity to give than we have to receive. And that nothing good is withheld from us except when He needs that space to give us something better.
That’s the kind of person I want to be: the kind whose hands and heart are open. I want to give, and to receive, and to give again, grateful for the blessings of the moment and strong in faith for the future. I want my face to be the color of hope.
you are a balm! This is going to be my motto for the week: As though dreaming is the equivalent of writing Kick Me! in big black letters across the backs of our shirts. But it’s not, you know. At least, I don’t believe it is. I think the happiest people are the ones who hope for, and confidently expect to find, great and beautiful joy in life."
ReplyDeleteThat the One who creates us has a greater capacity to give than we have to receive. And that nothing good is withheld from us except when He needs that space to give us something better.
ReplyDeleteThat is beautiful.
My eye was caught by color esperanza -- the color of hope. I think you "caught" the gist of the song without knowing the words! ;-D
ReplyDelete