Have A Little More Faith

I used to frequent this place called “La Tiendita.”  Literally, it means “The Little Store.”  And that’s what it was: a little store.  It was a block down the hill from my school.  There was a street at the bottom of the hill, and once you hit that street, you made a right and walked about 3 more blocks.  The store was little more than a doorway into a low cinder-block building.  Inside, it was little more than a room with food and drink, sort of like a compact Quik-E Mart.  More like the supply closet in a Quik-E Mart.

It felt like La Tiendita was always open.  When I was young, I would sneak down there after school to buy a snack.  Maybe I’d buy a Coke.  There were street vendors sitting right outside the school gates, but there was something daring about walking down to La Tiendita to buy something.  La Tiendita lay on the outskirts of what was a pretty rough neighborhood.  It wasn’t the wisest place for a kid to wander around.  And I was a foreigner.

As I got older, I started buying cigarettes at La Tiendita.  There was an irony in buying smokes after basketball practice, but such ironies escape those engulfed by the hubris of adolescence.  If you sweet-talked the person behind the counter, they’d sell you individual cigarettes.  This was an essential tactic when, at the end of the week, you were down to the change left over from all the hotdogs wrapped with bacon that you’d buy from the guy with the cart parked out in front of the school.  Besides, La Tiendita was filled with all kinds of other things to buy.  

When I look back on the time I spent with my friends at La Tiendita, I realize how stupid we were.  Like I said, the neighborhood wasn’t the best, yet we ventured down there just about every day after school.  We never had a run in, we never got into a fight.  Other people did.  At least, there were stories about that kind of thing.  Maybe we were just lucky.  Maybe I’m just a man, a father, who looks back on those days with different eyes.

Different eyes, indeed.  Benjamin Franklin said something like, “Show me a man who was not liberal in his youth, and I will show you a man who has not lived.”  It is by necessity that our eyes change over the years.  When we are younger, we brashly push envelopes and test society’s boundaries.  When we are older…not so much.  We conform.  We adjust.  We hide.  We fit in.  We become much more cautious, and we don’t do stupid things like venture down to the Tienditas of our lives. 

Maybe it’s our youth itself that keeps us safe.  Maybe others look at us, recognize the brashness of youth, and simply step aside, respecting and understanding the cycle at work.  But, maybe, just maybe, we make it down to La Tiendita, drink a Coke and have a cigarette with our friends, and return to school in one piece because we believe we can.  That belief is what is referred to as Faith.

Some Faith we keep in our lives, other Faith we lose.  Faith in ourselves, in our own abilities, is most often lost.  We see it in so many people around us.  We see it in ourselves.  Our Faith gets shaken by the indignities and the failures that befall us between the time we leave our high schools to the time we sit in our basements, the children asleep upstairs, writing about things that flutter through our minds.  I am not alone in this shaken Faith.

Then, the Universe shines a light on our path, highlighting good and bad alike.  Through the eyes of others, through their experiences and trails, I learn just how important it is to have Faith in oneself.  In the work that I do, I am granted a gift that gives me humility whenever I stop to contemplate it.  I am given the gift of trust.  Somehow, someway, I am able to build relationships with others such that they entrust me with their personal lives.  I hear their fears, their aspirations, their doubts, their joys.  By listening, perhaps I provide some level of comfort.  I like to think that the trust I earn and keep grants me permission to speak my mind, to offer an opinion or a suggestion, that, in the end, may make the slightest difference in a life.  If I can do that, then the gift of trust is warranted, and, just maybe, a little Faith can be restored.  For them and for me.

La Tiendita is just around the corner.  Adjust my eyesight.  Start down the hill.  Have a little more Faith.