Traditions

Guest post by - Vicky Ordonez

Traditions are an understanding carried on years and years. I believe that we have all heard about family traditions, school traditions, and country traditions, amongst many others. Nowadays we have the joy and even luck of being born into a world where many traditions have evolved to become much more of our choosing.I embrace traditions with an open mindedness which I believe may lead me to fall in love with some of them and also put me in a place to grant me the ability to be able to create new ones, but not necessarily for people to follow them but rather to celebrate the accomplishment within ourselves.What is more beautiful than a tradition that is born from love and selflessness, a tradition born from nowhere but that celebrates everything.My tradition started when I went back to Ecuador after finishing up high school. With a brand new spirit I penetrated the soul of my broken country. Alone and on the road I found a couple of Argentineans following their hearts in the quest of conquering South America backpacking. Their story was the same as many backpackers; many memories but a few pennies. The courage I see in people that chase after what they really want leaving everything behind gives me hope for humanity on our ability to someday embrace the essence of true freedom without constraint of so much material possession. I took this couple for lunch and gave then the money I had in my pocket in exchange of a bracelet, which once it broke they promised would make a wish of my choice come true. But to me what I saw that I received was overwhelming love and the wish of maintaining the belief in the kindness of strangers alive in their minds, spirit and faith. I kept the bracelet and was soon enough to encounter another kind soul that gave me a second one in exchange for good company and great conversation. This gift was presented to keep the memory of that moment forever fresh in my mind that sometimes when you feel that nobody can relate to you at a given point in time, life comes and smacks you in the face and shows you that you are and were never truly alone. One of the most significant bracelets to me is the pink and purple one that I received from the most generous person I have met in my entire life. I volunteer at “Un techo para mi pais” a non-profit organization that builds houses for very low income people. While there, my heart both truly suffered and enjoyed so many things. In order to just bring some food to the table, this wonderful lady I encountered used to make bracelets. As you may guess she gave me one and refused to take any money. My soul was shaken by this extension of open-handedness from a person with so little to grasp. She told me something that changed my life. She said, “Oh, darling! don’t worry too much it’s just a couple of pennies, but what you have done here and what you have done for me has no price, and it is not just the house you are helping to build but the love and hope you leave with us.”On the day I departed to the country where I currently live in, Taiwan, my brother tied his favorite bracelet in my right hand so I can always have him in my mind when I’m eating, writing, drawing. Little brother, you know this wasn’t really necessary because you are my life; my reason to rise in the morning, my reason to fight, my reason to believe, my everything. My mother also gave me one in a trip where we became closer than ever. I was also to meet a Mexican photographer on a train ride in India. I knew he spoke Spanish right when I saw him. We hit it off right of the bat. I thought I wouldn’t eat that night since I had had very little money on this low budget trip, but I ended having both the best food and the best time in India. We ended up talking the entire way, spent the day sight-seeing and it was then and there that I remembered again the universal brotherhood of the traveling souls. Because I believe that when we travel something special happens within us. A switch is turn off; the switch of culture driven behavior, the way we’re taught and raised to act depending on who or what surrounds us. Somehow, when we travel we cease to be a specific country, specific gender, specific race, and specific label. We reveal to ourselves what we really are; we become united in place where we all feel a bit foreign and a bit different. We learn to become one in order to get us to place where no feels like we have to be just one. He gave me the only bracelet I have that will never break but that one that reminds me that kindness and love from random strangers is not only still there, but more alive than ever. I now have many more as people have learned about my tradition and I wear them proudly everyday. I’m so lucky that I am able to see them every morning with the infinite love of the world on my arms. This makes me strive to love everything and everyone all the time.