The truth is in the details

There is a world-famous poem by Machado that says:

Traveler, your footprints

are the path and nothing more;

Traveler, there is no path,

the path is made by walking.

By walking, the path is created,

and when you look back,

you see the trail that will never

be trodden again.

Traveler, there is no path,

only footprints on the sea.

This poem, which I have read to my children several times, can lead to various conclusions. The one I draw now I have discussed several times on this blog.

"Your footprints are the path and nothing more"...

I want to talk about this now...

When you look back, at first you do not see your routine footprints, the ones of everyday life, the footprints that you have to make, that must be made but that, because of their automatic nature, will have disappeared when you look back, leaving few memories of them.

The footprints you will see when you look back are those of the day you fell in love, of the day you decided to do something that perhaps you weren’t supposed to but you wanted to, of the day you worked hard for something and in the end it succeeded, of that match you played where people applauded you, of that magnificent story you invented for your children… and a long etcetera…

Thus, as I have often said in this post, the wonderful things in life usually happen when you make an exception, when you do something unplanned, when you skip what should be done and do what you truly wanted…

You cannot do that every hour of the day, nor every day, but it must be done with some regularity… there must be exceptions in life.

Last Monday I made one. And it made me happy to do it… in fact, happy enough that it was worth writing this blog post.

Last Monday, Carles Capdevila (director of the newspaper ARA and a speaker on early childhood education among other topics) was coming. It was at nine at night. He was in the neighboring town where my children attend extracurricular activities.

I wanted to go but I thought it was at eight, shortly after my children finished their activities… knowing it was at nine made me reluctant to wait… I was tired and so were my children… I could have stayed and let my partner take care of the kids… but in the end I went home… even though I wanted to go and also wanted my older daughter (9) to accompany me.

When I got home I felt bad for not having gone, and I felt sad that my daughter couldn’t hear him… he is a very entertaining speaker…

I discussed it with my partner and he said… “then go… you will regret it later”… and I thought… “I’m very tired, my head hurts, my daughter will go to sleep too late… but it’s true that I’d really love to go”…

I grabbed my older daughter and the car and we rushed to the talk. To the town from which we come in about 5 minutes…

We arrived late but we arrived.

The hall was full… we sat down and had a great time. We laughed a lot at everything he said. He is a true showman when it comes to communication…

While he was giving his speech he was also reflecting… wow, this man was sharing a piece of himself, his thoughts, his reflections, his time… we were having an amazing time, laughing, learning, reflecting and above all making an exception… turning my normal Monday into an exceptional Monday… A Monday that will endure over time compared to all the other Mondays that will soon fade from my memory…

How can I thank him? How can I give him a piece of me, even if it is just a thousandth of what he is giving us?

I thought it would delight me to give him the story I wrote… it is a piece of me, of the way I see education…

But I had a problem: I was in the neighboring town, I didn’t have any story on hand and if I waited until the conference ended to go home, it wouldn’t be there anymore… and if I left earlier I would miss a segment of the conference that was truly worth it…

I pondered that there was a family near where the talk was held who had bought the Sant Jordi book. I dedicated the story to their children. It is a family I know and trust… Could I “borrow” the story from them? Was it right? Was it acceptable? I don’t know, but I felt like doing it…

At the end of the conference, I explained the idea to my daughter… she was amazed… she thought it was a cool idea but also fun… we planned to go around 2 or 4 minutes past midnight to grab a story that someone had sold to me, and that was dedicated, to give to a man I do not know but whom I would very much like to thank…

We ran to fetch the book at the neighbors’ house, they gave it to us and we ran back to catch up with Carles Capdevila… he was still signing books…

I gave it to him and explained that it was a somewhat surreal situation… that I wanted to give him my story as a token of gratitude but that I had none… and that I had “borrowed” it from some neighbors… I explained that it was dedicated but that the dedication was not for him… it was for the neighbors who no longer had it…

He laughed, jokingly asked if it would cause any problems, and I told him no, that I would bring another book for the family.

A couple of days later, I gave another book to the family that I had “borrowed”, with a much better dedication than the first.

In summary, I was telling them that thanks to them, who had given me the book they had been sold a few days earlier, I was able to make the second exception of the night, the second unplanned act… which was to give them my story, to someone I would very much like to have it. Therefore, that story—which they no longer have—now carries an exceptional history that will make us all remember that day… and the second story, for me, now has a much greater value than the first story I sold to them. The first story came from a buy/sell operation… the second story comes from an exceptional operation…

Even though I almost didn’t do what I did, that Monday was an exceptional Monday shared with my daughter…

We will remember the shared laughter, the rushes to fetch the book and the look of disbelief on the neighbors’ faces, we will remember the line we formed while waiting to gift it, we will remember that it was almost the only minor in the room, we will remember the grandmother who said that perhaps the child was too small to understand what was being said and my daughter was amazed because she had understood almost everything, we will remember the surprised look on Carles Capdevila’s face when we told him we were gifting him a “borrowed” book dedicated to someone else… we will remember countless things that happened in a fraction of a couple of hours… and surely we will not remember anything from the following Tuesday or Wednesday…

And when you look back, as Machado said, you will only see the footprints I left behind but the ones that will endure the most are those footprints like those of this Monday, of exceptional days, of days that are not normal…

Not every day can be exceptional but when I look back I find exceptional days with some regularity… every month, every quarter, every year… whatever it takes but they must be found… that is what fills our lives… at least mine…