Dear Colleagues,
Here it is slowly, slowly making a year of working with you. And now, slowly, slowly, I've come to say that I have a new family here in the team that has always been there for me. I say a family because I spend more time with you than with my family, because whenever I needed help and support, I could always turn to you, and you were always there for me. I say a family because I can trust you that when I need help you will always be there for me. I have been lucky to be part of a great team, to learn so many things from each of you. But to understand what I mean exactly I will ask you to take a few minutes out of your busy time to read these lines.
My move to England has not been easy, my adjustment to everything new to me has not been easy. This past year has meant personal growth for me, it has meant challenges, emotions, failures but also many victories.
I managed to understand what life is about, what true happiness means and how we can make the impossible possible. We, yes, we, bring smiles on people's lips, we make them take courage in them again and we make their old age easier. You may say it's a cliché, but I tell you it's not. I've cried with my clients; I've laughed with my clients, and I've cried every time a client has left us.
We are that handful of people who give them hope, we are that handful of people who sometimes look forward to them more than their family, children or relatives would. We are their help and their youth.
I am always amazed at how much I can learn from these old people, how wise they are and what life stories they have, wow, what stories they have. Have you ever sat down and really listened to them? To understand their stories. To live their story with them. To see the tears in their eyes as they tell you so longingly of their youth. Well, I have stayed, and I can tell you that I live to listen to their stories, I live to meet new people and I live to learn from them.
My dears, if I have learned anything in this year with you, I have learned that happiness is so easy to give. It is so simple to make a man happy. Happiness is simple my dears.
It's not about riches, houses, fame, happiness consists in simple things, in beautiful words, in simple touches you have chosen in the time spent with people.
Off sweet your happiness, what longing, what passion, what forgetfulness. We sometimes forget to be simple, we forget to offer happiness, everything is on the run, everything is just to be, we become easy, easy robots who forget to enjoy the little things.
In closing I leave you this picture, this humble picture, where happiness radiates with the sun's rays gently tearing through our client's fair hair. Happiness is simple, our duty is to live happily and make others happy.
Well that's what I have learned in a year in Agincare, I'm not saying that everything is perfect, I'm not saying that I don't have less good days, I'm not saying that everything is easy, I'm just saying that sometimes we have to lift our heads from the ground and look up to the sky, to let the sun gently touch our cheeks, to let the light penetrate our souls and to think that we are the help that these old people need so much, even if sometimes it seems that it is not so.
To understand the picture, this very nice old lady, has been in bed for months, the tears in her eyes told me that happiness is simple. And all I did was help her out into the garden for a few minutes. But those minutes spent with her daughter, surrounded by flowers are the most important minutes of her life.
Well, what does happiness mean to you?
Yours sincerely,
M.
