Historia de Un Adolescente – Truth.

“Pórtese todos los días mejor.” (Behave better each day) Those were the last words my father told me. I could still envision him sitting on the passenger side of his car as his driver drove away.  For some reason I knew then and there that I would never see him alive again and those words have always remained with me, because I never truly followed his advice.

 Except for his business, in which he would invariably tell the proverbial business lie, our father was a brutally honest man. Those who knew him used to say “His word was gold,” which was true in the business sense. But in a relationship way he was also heartlessly cruel. At times, when he was confronted with the truth about something he had done or was doing, he’d remain silent rather than lie or to admit the truth. But I always knew when he was lying; a sly smile would always form on his lips. Even though he spent less time with me than with either of his children, he knew me best. He knew that I would do anything within my power to achieve what I wanted from him.  His actions with my mother had conditioned me to become this way.

I’m having a very difficult time writing this, it’s hard to admit the truth but I’m hoping that “The truth will set me free.” ‘What is the truth?’  I ask myself. “Is it about who I am? Or perhaps about what I’ve done?’  I’m struggling with it. “Can anyone truly describe who they are? Or what is the truth about them? I’ve been many things and yet I can’t really define which is the real me. “Can any of you reading this define your own truth?” if you can, please let me know.

“What is my spiritual truth?” All my life I’ve internally debated on that subject. I’ve tried to reason about it until a dear friend presented it to me in this simple way. “You try to analyze faith and truth from a mortal perspective and you can’t; they are both spiritual ones.” Some things have happened to me that would make another person become more in tune with their spiritualism and somehow, I never could; until now.  Or …am I? I’ve been a witness to how most people, including my father and my oldest brother, tried to find spiritualism and religion  in how Shakespeare would write “The years of their discontent” But again, there's definitely a difference between “religion and spiritualism.” To me, one is a doctrine promulgated by man and the other is an internal and individual feeling that shapes your thoughts and actions based on those intangible feelings.  So what is my truth now? Am I really reaching out to find it? Or Am I doing so because of the realization that it’s all coming to an end and want absolution? In truth, I would say the latest but at the same time because of it there have been subtle, almost unperceived events, that leads me to believe that there is indeed something, the collective and intangible “I am” that my friends call “faith.” I'm looking forward to the day in which I can proclaim with certainty that I have “Faith.”

 Most of my maternal relatives’ are Jehovah’s Witnesses’. Their blind faith in the aftermath of life is something that I’ve admired from afar but have never been able to accept or visualize. “Wouldn’t you like to see your mother waiting for you with open arm again in the coming kingdom?” My aunt Lesbia, always asks me and I would always respond “Yes” -just to please her- but without really believing it. Ironically, even though I've never preached one religion or another to them, all of my children  have acquire  that “Faith.” I also have a few friends that have tried, in vain, to steer me towards it but although I've resisted it, without realizing it, I’ve led my own path towards it.

I've seen the foot and the top of the hill. I’ve experienced the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; I've seen the clear blue skies of success and the stormy, colorless days of failure. They say that once you've been to the top of the hill the way back to it is easy because the path has already been set. Wish I could say that's true. I guess it all depends on the person and the reasons behind the stumble.  I struggled for 15 years to reach the peak only to be sent spiraling down by the personal and vindictive agenda of one individual who had competed through his life with a rival only to end up selling his radio stations to the same company that his rival had sold his. It did not matter to him that he was no longer the owner but an emeritus employee of the new conglomerate, his only goal before departing life was to destroy, to eradicate all of the evidence of existence that his opponent had created and by coincidence the future of many people who had devotedly served the radio stations for years. In retrospect I came to understand that it was the nature of business equal to the baseball analogy that “Once a new owner comes in, he brings in his own coach” and simply because of that I lost my team. But it hurt me deeply and the fall was so hard that I've never been able – or perhaps have not wholeheartedly tried - to really recover and return to the confident and happy me that I was.  “This is depressing” some of you might be thinking and I don't disagree but it does have a happy ending or a least a “Truthful” result that might be of some consequence to you.

With the exception of “teaching” I've done a series of uninspiring jobs in order to merely “survive” and only to find myself in the same rut. Once you've reached a certain level -through work and determination- it takes a resolute mind to reach it again and in all honesty, mine wasn't. The society in which we live has a tendency to look down on you for failing and that along with some other personal mistakes made it significantly harder to climb the mountain again. In search for myself, I left Arizona and moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. There were other objectives in the move as well. I was confident that by doing so I would help a true friend achieve what his lack of time was not allowing him to do and at the same time create something that would benefit us both, economically and emotionally, but it wasn't to be. Although I had his full economic and moral support the task that he assigned me was one that -in retrospect- he himself could not achieve; one that because of his personal relation with the person or “task” was even more impossible for me, although I've never tried harder to achieve anything in my life. It was- as I called it – “an exercise in humility” that gave me a certain perspective about life and through it I was able to learn at least the theological meaning of personal “spiritualism” as displayed in the bodies and attitudes of two friends – and if they read this I’m sure they’ll recognize their influence- that taught me that there's no winning percentages in bearing anger towards another person and that it's more liberating to forgive and forget. I’ve tried to forget although I’m not sure I’ve forgiven.

Again, I've deviated from the subject at hand “Truth.” It happens. I'm trying to correlate the thought with the story I'm about to reveal, so hang with me. Because of health reasons I had to return to Arizona and soon after that had to deal with the realization that the savings were gone and I needed to work in order to survive. After going to the Department of Unemployment- only to find that I was ineligible- on my way home I stopped to say hello to my old boss and friend. In conversation about life at the present time, I told him about my situation and went home. Later on that evening I received a call from his assistant and made a date to go see him the next day. He had a job for me. The job involved the distribution among the Phoenix area Hispanic community of a Children Story and a caricature character name "Donkey Ollie" and it's christian messages. Doing so would invariably help the Missing Children Campaign, which in itself made the task a lot easier and gratifying  but it still meant hand delivery. I thought about it but one thing tortured my mind. I would have to deal with people that on past occasions had known me as the Hispanic Radio Station Manager and now would see me in what to my way of thinking was a job below me. I prayed hard the previous night in order to erase the ridiculous feeling out of my mind. "No job is below any human being  as long as it was an honest job."  I thought. As it turned out the first place I stopped on the following day was a Meat Market and Bakery by the name of Estrella. As I walked in I immediately recognized the voice. She had been part of my administrative team at the radio station a few years before and now along with her husband owned the store. I recognized her but it took her a while to recognize me. I was now wearing casual shorts and a baseball cap while she had always seen me wearing an executive suit. The encounter was liberating. What I once was had no bearing on who I now am. We spoke amicably about old times and as I left, I felt that the same respect she once had for me was still there. The truth is not in whom I was, its evident in who I now am. In realizing it without shame lays the truth.

The next time I write I will return to the original idea which was to show you in each individual blog a translated segment of life, love, truth and lies within “Historia de Un Adolescente.”  Until the next time…Adios.