Overcoming obstacles seems to be the premise of the year 2020. For many, the different events have become challenges that are seen as insurmountable at first, but after a while we manage to overcome them in some way. Everything will pass. Even the most critical moments in life end up bringing peace and better circumstances.
After the difficulties, we become new people. In most cases we manage to grow, because sometimes the path leaves us no other option. But the struggles of each person are incomparable. Some go through really complicated circumstances, while others drown in a glass of water. On those occasions, we must shake ourselves mentally and ask: what am I complaining about?
The person who has taught me the most about overcoming obstacles and willpower is my best friend. Alejandro Marcano was born with Morquio syndrome and, rather than being a barrier, for him his condition became an impulse to achieve everything he has wanted to in life. I will never forget how he waited every day, before seven in the morning, for a couple of friends to help him walk up the three floors of the building where we studied at university. For most of us, it was easier to get to the classroom, but he was the one who always had a smile on his face and a joke about any situation.
His outgoing, sociable personality and his gift for singing make him stand out. He has not stopped at anything and has always been an inspiration to all of us around him, because he is capable of transmitting hope and, especially, teaching us the value of being grateful, positively impacting the existence of all of us who know him.
At the end of October 2020, the doctors informed Alejandro about another hard challenge he has to face: an urgent operation to decompress the cranio-cervical area in order to avoid irreversible consequences. In addition to facing a complicated surgery in the coming weeks, he must also raise the money to undergo it. And that is where all his friends and family gather, to remember together that difficult situations exist, but not impossible ones.
Sometimes, we must recognize that problems can seem like having a great mountain difficult to climb. No one has a magic recipe for overcoming obstacles, but the attitude we assume in adversity can make an overcast sky and a rainy day have their charm too.
When everything seemed to be in chaos that first weekend after he received the news, while still feeling like a punch in the stomach, Alejandro courageously stepped up, despite all the pain and anxiety. That Monday, I woke up with the assurance that his mother would always be with him and that her soul would take care of Alejandro regardless of the obstacles he faced.
That day, he told me, he began with a particular strength. His mother had taught him one of the most valuable life lessons: Mondays should be valued and faced as a new beginning that life offers, a new energy to take momentum. It’s an excellent philosophy of life. Almost everyone hates Mondays, not understanding that it’s only one day and we give it its intention ourselves.
It is interesting to realize how someone who is living one of the hardest moments of his life has a better attitude than many of us. Unfortunately, physical pain does not help him to make the journey easier but his smile continues, as well as the music that he has carried inside him since birth.
I wrote these lines by hand, illuminated by my cell phone, on an eight-hour journey without electricity in a collapsed Venezuela. But I don’t want to stop, Alejandro has taught me to fight with all my heart for what matters. I gather my strength as I listen to Eros Ramazzotti: “If two simple songs were enough to unite everyone, I could sing them so loudly that the deaf could hear me… Even the walls we never think of can be opened. If only two good songs were enough to help, a thousand reasons could be found to be more humane”.
If a couple of songs were enough, I would sing them, even if Alejandro is the musician and I am the one who is out of tune. There is no doubt I would, if I was sure that those two songs would serve to illuminate his path.
Image credit: Carlos Adampol Galindo