I was telling a 12-year-old girl about my years as a teacher and she asked me why did I left.
Looking back and explaining to her what made me take that decision, I realized that a person in my personal history was the basis for my shift from teaching to another path.
She was a colleague of mine who back then worked during breaks with the Peace Corps, and who one day brought a book with new teaching methods. I asked her to borrow it to me. Then she recommended me to the Peace Corps, I met new people, Interact was born. In addition, my counceling class of students from that time finished school, and I couldn’t find my purpose as a teacher anymore (maybe now it seems crazy, but for me it mattered a lot back then).
I could say that that moment, that meeting with Adriana, the colleague I’m talking about, was a miracle for my life. Many changes followed, on all levels.
I have had such meetings before:
My high school French teacher, along with the teacher who was with me when I was getting ready for college. She, who was always so elegant, in a gray, ugly, communist period, made me want to learn French, to love beautiful clothes, jewelry, perfumes; I would say that I then created an image of the French spirit, to which I aspired all my life.
He, my teacher for a year, made me understand that to be an emeritus student, I must always read, start with the first book, the Bible, and understand that the more I study, the more I will see clearly how few I know.
These were two miraculous encounters for the creation of my mind and spirit.
A closer encounter was with a client of mine, Radu, who put me in touch with an international company. Many changes followed, many experiences, many people met in so many countries.
Sometimes we do not pay due attention to our encoutners, to the people who appear in our lives. Some meetings turn out to be turning points, even if we only realize it too late. When we look back, we realize that we were part of a miraculous encounter for our lives and we had no idea. Maybe it’s better that way, we behaved more detached, more natural. But let’s not forget those people.
