When I used to work for Don Orlando, he made his own chorizo—Salvadorian style.
One day he told me something I didn’t believe.
He said,
“You can do anything you want.”
I looked at him like he was crazy.
He just sat there in his lawn chair, sipping his coffee like it was obvious.
“You have arms, legs, and a mind,” he said.
“Just apply yourself.”
Back then, that sounded like bullshit.
I remember one day he looked at my car—a 2000 Nissan Altima.
He asked me,
“Do you like your car?”
I turned and looked at it like…
what’s wrong with it?
He laughed. A little coffee spilled out of his cup.
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he said.
“I’m just asking… don’t you want something better?”
And I told him what most people say:
“Yeah… but things are hard. Things are expensive.”
What I didn’t understand back then was—
he wasn’t talking about the car.
He was trying to open something in my mind.
Not about having more things…
but about seeing that more is even possible.
At the time, I thought he was full of it.
Now I think…
maybe I just wasn’t ready to believe him yet.
Reader question
What’s something someone told you that didn’t make sense at the time… but stayed with you?
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