Growing up with very little, teaches you a lot.
A lot about life. A lot about love. Money. Power. Respect. Time. Value. What’s important and what isn’t.
Character. Poverty builds character. Characters. I have seen many.
Fair or unfair, we are all a product of the life we are given. We are not born with a choice. We are just born. The circumstances around that are out of our control.
Who we become, some of those decisions are taken from us too.
I’m not sure who I would have been if I hadn’t been broken so early. If I had ever known what it felt like to be whole. If I hadn’t experienced so much shortage. Pain. Anger. Violence. Hurt. Loss. If the external influences in my life were more positive than negative. If I knew what love was supposed to feel like. Who knows what that Sandra would have looked like today?!? Not me.
Still, I have never been concerned with who I might have been. I’ve never been uncomfortable with who I am. I’ve never been afraid to find out who I will become next.
I may not have been born with choices, but I’ve made many since.
One of the most important choices I made, was in the design of my career. That choice was built around experiences. Feelings. Having felt poverty. Having felt hunger. Having felt homelessness. Having felt a dependence on various systems. I have felt what having nothing feels like and therefore, I have no fear of it.
Not being afraid doesn’t mean I want to ever experience it again. I don’t! It just means that I know what I am able to survive, regardless of how much, or how little I have. It means that I understand the value of something, and the lesson in nothing.
Growing up with little left me with the belief that I had 3 options in life…
1. Continue with nothing. Be content with shortage. Struggle.
2. Search for something different. Something more. Be bigger. Be better. Hustle. Strive for money and power. Live a life of material wealth. Forget what shortage ever felt like.
3. To find a balance. To find comfort. To find true happiness outside of money. Outside of luxury. Satisfaction without concern for the expectation of others.
I chose option 3. Again. Always option 3. The happy medium. Never too little. Never too much. Good enough for me. Plenty.
I built my life around that. Balance. Money would never be my motivation. Power would never be my motivation. Luxury, I didn’t need that. I still don’t. My goal was simple, if I were to rise, it would be without regret. I was content with simplicity.
Minimum wage, maximum life.
Balance.
I’ve lived that reality for most of my life and I’ve loved every minute of it.
When I started my current job, it was part of my journey. A natural progression for the career path I’ve chosen to walk. It came with more money and more power but it also came with much personal sacrifice. It paid more, but I made less. It meant working long hours. Evenings. Weekends. More time away from my family. Less time with friends. Less time for the gym. Less time for school. Less time for recreational activities. Hobbies. Painting. Writing. Less time for all the things that made me, me. Still, I loved it. I loved the possibility of it. How it provided an opportunity for me to work on so many of my different personal passions. How it combined the ability to learn, grow, be creative, be active, be flexible, affect change where it really mattered. It was perfect. The trade-off was worth it. It was just me, happily rising without regret.
As a baby, I was given the nickname “estrelhinha”, meaning “little star” in Portuguese. Told that I’ve always been able to light up a room, I have been known for my smile. It’s the one thing you will never see me without. My smile. Even with nothing, I’ve always had something.
The last few weeks at work have become increasingly difficult. An internal struggle between the love I have for the position/people I serve/the possibilities, and the dislike I have for the egos of some of the people I have to work with. Today was a reminder of the option I chose so many years ago. Happiness.
Somewhere along this path, I seem to have lost my balance. Somewhere along this path, my smile has begun to fade. I needed the reminder. I’m not sure where my path will take me next. I don’t know what choices I will make in order to find that balance again.
When I was in Sierra Leone, we had daily surveillance meetings at the local hospital. In the room where the meetings were held, there was a sign on the wall with the following written on it:
If you lose your wealth, you’ve lost nothing.
If you lose your health, you’ve lost something.
If you lose your character, you’ve lost everything.
I can live with nothing, but I can’t live without my smile.
Time to refocus.
Making changes.
And miles to go before I sleep 