Standing in a
trash dump in Honduras, hundreds of flies swarmed everywhere around me. I didn’t dare open my mouth.
The smell of decay was beyond anything I had ever experienced in my life. Sweat
dripped off my chin. Vultures circled overhead. I wished I hadn't cut my pants
into shorts because I didn't want my legs touching anything.
To be honest, I
got through moments like this by pretending I would be going home that night to
a cold shower with a lot of soap and fluffy white towels waiting for my squeaky
clean hair.
I
looked down at the shoes on my feet that protected them from glass, syringes,
pieces of metal, and contaminated everything else. My eyes were drawn right in
front of me to a scurrying pair of tiny bare feet moving along with no hesitation.
I followed the little girl as she bent over a pile of trash, digging with her
bare hands, picking out sharp pieces of metal and putting them in a trash bag she
slung over her shoulder. This is how she made her money. She sold pieces of
metal for pennies so she could have something to eat.
I
was invited into a one-room shack that day. It was crowded with people who lived
in the dump. There was a 3-foot plastic, pink casket on a table with a little
body with a swollen head inside. I could see his face through a small plastic
window on the casket, an image that was seared in my memory. A few days previous, he
had been hit by a garbage truck he was chasing in hopes of finding a treasure
that would fill his belly. His family was asking for money to bury him.
I
ran outside behind the shack and bawled so hard I couldn't breathe. I
started throwing up uncontrollably. I had never cried like that before.
Something
in me changed at that moment.
My emotional spectrum was stretched. My saddest sad just became so much sadder.
I was filled with shock. Sorrow. Guilt. My heart beats just as that little
boy's did. I just happened to be born into, comparably speaking, paradise. I was shocked
that this was happening in the world while I have been worrying about what type
of car to buy, a car that costs as much as it would to feed this boy and rescue
him from this life for years.
More importantly, in time, my happiest happy became happier as I did get to
experience kids like these be rescued from situations like these. Kids who were
hopeless were given what they deserve - a life. This is what made me
feel ALIVE. This is when I knew I found my purpose. And it was something I could
not ignore.
It doesn't take
a trip across the world to find purpose. It takes putting yourself in a
situation after situation that is outside your comfort zone and NOT IGNORING
what it does to you. When you are truly doing what you are here for, your
emotional spectrum stretches. Failures and successes mean more to you. They
mean the most anything ever has. Your saddest sad becomes sadder, your happiest
happy becomes happier. You feel more ALIVE.
Purpose isn’t
easy to come by. It is not something you can be lazy about. You cannot expect it to hit you in the face. It is up to you to courageously step out and do the things
that don’t come easy, motivate yourself to think outside the box you grew up
in, breathe it all in, and feel more alive by the minute.
