All The People Who Improved Your Life

Dear Insane Minds:

Last week I returned, for things in life, to my childhood neighborhood. I was in the street waiting when a woman stopped in front of me to ask if it was me, you understand.

She had seen me on TV a few days ago and had connected the dots between the name and my current face, which is quite different from the face she remembered 30 years ago.

She remembered my name because she had been a volunteer for several decades at the library where I was growing up.

In my house there were no books or any adult reading references. When we had to buy the first (children’s) novel because of the school’s obligation, we didn’t even know where to go to buy it, I’m really telling you.

We went to ask the neighborhood stationery store and yes, they had books there. And I bought any one, which did not hook me or anything like that. It wasn’t a crush, come on.

But a teacher insisted that I read and challenged me to do so.

He made me read The Neverending Story. And there yes, there it happened. I remember reading that book under the covers with a flashlight so that my parents would not get angry, not because they were angry that I read, but because they believed, with good judgment, that there was time to sleep and I could continue with the book the next day. But no, there was no time.

When a book catches you, there is no time for anything else.

They are two worlds: your real life and that other that you are living through the written pages. And you have to divide your time between those two lives and, the truth, in the face of Atreyu’s adventures, little could make my material life.

That book opened the door for all the other books, for those that I have read and for those that I have written, for those that I have dreamed, for those that I have half, half read and half written, for the corners of my life.

The librarian told me that they only allowed to take two books at a time, but that they had to make an exception with me , and let me take three.

She told me excitedly, as if that made sense to her.

And I listened to her like a lover, taking the dimension of how much good they had done me with that exception, with that volunteering of hers to dedicate her free hours to write down borrowed books and return dates, to open the library and be patient with all that pack of Insane little minds that we would go there to forage for food.

Sometimes it seems to us that only great things have transcendent meaning in our history and in History. But no. Our history is full of small everyday things, of gestures that we forget over time and that have been the gestures that have changed everything.

And sometimes life gives us these gifts.

To be standing on that street, for her to pass by, for her to recognize me as the shells of life, to dedicate her time once more to telling me things, and for me to be able to tell her that she changed my life with those gestures. And we gave each other a real hug.

And it all made sense for a few moments.

To all the people who dedicate your time to small things just because, because they have a meaning for you, and that we have never recognized you, that you know that you are changing many small lives.

Happy week, Minds!