By Yamila García
My silence may seem empty, but it’s full of questions. My mom always says that when I started asking “Why?” I never stopped. There’s been a barrier between what I think and what I can say my whole life, and that makes me seem like a very different person from who I actually am. I always have questions, but very few times I am able to put them into words. I try to understand the reason for these barriers, and the first thing that comes to my mind is that I am aware that I communicate differently from the majority. Whether it’s with the choice of words I use, the intonation, or the content of what I say. In addition, I also know that I see things that others do not see and that things which are obvious to others I do not see.
The pile of questions in my head continues to grow with the passing of the years. It mutates, nourishes me with new perspectives, and pushes me to answer several by myself to satisfy my curiosity. In that search, I found a surprise that gave rise to a new (or perhaps very old) passion: Philosophy. My questions were never just based on a result or a simple explanation. I always wanted to know the essence of everything. Watching someone do something not only made me curious to know “why is this person doing this?” but also made me feel the need to know: Why do they think this way? How did they grow? In what values would they have developed to think or act in this way? How does this fact influence the life of this person? And those of those around them? My questions are deep. They not only try to understand how the people around me work but also those in the rest of the world and even existence itself. They aim to analyze and understand everything, almost like an unconscious attempt to do philosophy. I have done this since I was little; my mind never shuts up, and when I discovered what philosophy was all about, I was dazzled! I felt like it was a kind of math without numbers, and that feels like magic for me!
It’s crazy to think that I’ve been trying to avoid the humanities since I was “aware” that letters and history were not my thing. I’ve missed out on a lot of things by pigeonholing myself into the stereotype that many thought of me. I don’t have the power to change what others think of me. However, changing the way I see and talk to myself is something I can and should do. Now I know that there is a lot that I can discover, enjoy, and learn by doing so.