This I Believe: A rough draft
Hope: an expected desire; confidence in a future event
Maybe one day you would like find out my real name. While that day does not come, you may rest your eyes on mine and learn what the meaning of Keiko, this chosen name of mine, is. Perhaps this way, you will see that my chosen name is an important part of who I am, it holds a bit of my essence, something that is not usually noticed by most people.
I am dexterous at freeing myself from definitions, but I can show you a little bit of who I am by telling you about the things I like.
I like possibilities. There are two kinds of possibilities I particularly like: exclamation points and question marks. Exclamation points excite both the listener and the speaker. They represent the sounds of the soul. Exclamation points carry a little bit of a flourishing surprise, a sensation that can make your eyes tremble and open wide, blink rapidly, and on a more remarkable note, exclamation points can make your eyes embrace people. I like question marks because they make me travel places, meet people; discover, they push me to be someone I thought I could never be, someone I thought I could never become. Question marks have the power to disclose, to inform, to bare it all.
I also like the challenge of every day life: the challenge of having to do mundane things. Some of these things are so dismal that most people don’t even appreciate when they experience or see them. So, I engage in the boredom and the excitement of real life. I observe real life; I touch it with my mind. I live real life in its complexities, beauty, problems and obstacles, in its little pieces that not only do not make any sense, but also do not exist. What keeps me going is this challenge: having a normal life, with its routine and miseries, with its joy, with its big and little surprises. I keep an eye on what’s happening and another one on how I feel. So it seems like there are two people in me who live and face this challenge: the one that suffers and bleeds, the one whose skin is marked and already a bit wrinkled. And there is the other one who is touched and moved by simple gestures of gratitude and trust. The one that gets teary-eyed easily, and the one who laughs at herself, the one whose emotions are unpredictable because she is only human and she was born with what I may call, if you will, what can be a curse or a blessing: she feels everything too intensely.
I am also fond of stories. I‘m akin to the simple storyteller who shares with others what he has just seen. I like the content and the meaning behind stories. I like to know their whys and their contexts. If possible, I like to know the exact geographic place where the stories took place. I like the contexts so I can picture it in my mind. The faster I can process the story the better because there’s a part of me which gets a bit tired and imaginative easily. I like to know the name of the streets, what the air smelled like, what were the expressions on his or her face. I like to set up a play of events for the stories I cannot experience. Stories that I may only invent and imagine by listening to someone else speak.
I like people who overcome odd circumstances. People who strive to learn, who have the guts to improve themselves and people that do not give up. I like people who do not take life for granted. It is true that we do not know what comes after the things we perceive as reality here and now, but you might as well let your pores get drenched in magical things and let your mind be blown-away by what you can experience. I like people who are feverish and passionate and have the audacious aim to dream of a better something.
I like the prospect of borrowing from different cultures. I see in that the first step towards tolerance. I see in that a possibility to empathize and to change. Not to assimilate or to get acculturated, but to understand, to recognize us as neighbors even if we live in different continents, to acknowledge our same needs, same rights, and same responsibilities.
Now that you know what some of the things I like are and why I had to choose Keiko as my namesake, I want to tell you what I believe in: I believe in knowledge. I believe in education. I believe in the power of books and good libraries. I believe in reading. I believe in the magical and amazing power of words. I believe in this feeling that excites me when I open a book and I can read it. Or better yet, when I am able to read a book in a foreign language. And I can express my feelings borrowing from a culture that is so different than the one I first learned.
I believe in the beauty of sharing knowledge and inspiring other people to learn. In order to do that, we have to able to teach.
Maybe one day you would like find out my real name. While that day does not come, you may rest your eyes on mine and learn what the meaning of Keiko, this chosen name of mine, is. Perhaps this way, you will see that my chosen name is an important part of who I am, it holds a bit of my essence, something that is not usually noticed by most people.
I am dexterous at freeing myself from definitions, but I can show you a little bit of who I am by telling you about the things I like.
I like possibilities. There are two kinds of possibilities I particularly like: exclamation points and question marks. Exclamation points excite both the listener and the speaker. They represent the sounds of the soul. Exclamation points carry a little bit of a flourishing surprise, a sensation that can make your eyes tremble and open wide, blink rapidly, and on a more remarkable note, exclamation points can make your eyes embrace people. I like question marks because they make me travel places, meet people; discover, they push me to be someone I thought I could never be, someone I thought I could never become. Question marks have the power to disclose, to inform, to bare it all.
I also like the challenge of every day life: the challenge of having to do mundane things. Some of these things are so dismal that most people don’t even appreciate when they experience or see them. So, I engage in the boredom and the excitement of real life. I observe real life; I touch it with my mind. I live real life in its complexities, beauty, problems and obstacles, in its little pieces that not only do not make any sense, but also do not exist. What keeps me going is this challenge: having a normal life, with its routine and miseries, with its joy, with its big and little surprises. I keep an eye on what’s happening and another one on how I feel. So it seems like there are two people in me who live and face this challenge: the one that suffers and bleeds, the one whose skin is marked and already a bit wrinkled. And there is the other one who is touched and moved by simple gestures of gratitude and trust. The one that gets teary-eyed easily, and the one who laughs at herself, the one whose emotions are unpredictable because she is only human and she was born with what I may call, if you will, what can be a curse or a blessing: she feels everything too intensely.
I am also fond of stories. I‘m akin to the simple storyteller who shares with others what he has just seen. I like the content and the meaning behind stories. I like to know their whys and their contexts. If possible, I like to know the exact geographic place where the stories took place. I like the contexts so I can picture it in my mind. The faster I can process the story the better because there’s a part of me which gets a bit tired and imaginative easily. I like to know the name of the streets, what the air smelled like, what were the expressions on his or her face. I like to set up a play of events for the stories I cannot experience. Stories that I may only invent and imagine by listening to someone else speak.
I like people who overcome odd circumstances. People who strive to learn, who have the guts to improve themselves and people that do not give up. I like people who do not take life for granted. It is true that we do not know what comes after the things we perceive as reality here and now, but you might as well let your pores get drenched in magical things and let your mind be blown-away by what you can experience. I like people who are feverish and passionate and have the audacious aim to dream of a better something.
I like the prospect of borrowing from different cultures. I see in that the first step towards tolerance. I see in that a possibility to empathize and to change. Not to assimilate or to get acculturated, but to understand, to recognize us as neighbors even if we live in different continents, to acknowledge our same needs, same rights, and same responsibilities.
Now that you know what some of the things I like are and why I had to choose Keiko as my namesake, I want to tell you what I believe in: I believe in knowledge. I believe in education. I believe in the power of books and good libraries. I believe in reading. I believe in the magical and amazing power of words. I believe in this feeling that excites me when I open a book and I can read it. Or better yet, when I am able to read a book in a foreign language. And I can express my feelings borrowing from a culture that is so different than the one I first learned.
I believe in the beauty of sharing knowledge and inspiring other people to learn. In order to do that, we have to able to teach.
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