My Writing Spark!

I am a Communications student and I am practising online journalism. But talking beyond those sentences…who am I? What do I see myself doing in my life?

Well… I can say that I see myself serving others, and by this means, I would be making myself happy. I enjoy being surrounded by people and getting impregnated with their love, their hopes, their fears and their own dreams.

I love cultures. I am passionate about indigenous cultures from all over the world, since I believe when I am around them, a magical spark surrounds my whole being and I feel connected with them. In the past I have known Canadian Inuits, Moroccan Berbers and since I was younger my parents have brought me close to Mayan communities here in Mexico. I have continued this tradition now with my university, as we go every year to indigenous communities in the south of Mexico, in a miraculous place called Chiapas.

I see myself as a person who enjoys life and somebody who would like to work for the service of others, as I mentioned before. I also feel am an innate writer. When I sense that I need to connect with my own soul, I write. When I feel very happy or very sad, this is when I write. Or when I consider I have a great idea or when there is something that I need to let out, need to shout to the world, I write.

I see my community as a peaceful country. I live in a town called Metepec, but I often feel my “small community” is my country. I love Mexico; I feel is a place full of colours, culture and happiness. At least this is the place I know I grew up in. It fills me with sadness knowing that from some months until today, this image is changing. And it is going down, non-stop.

I would like to see "my Mexico" as the place I remember, the place where I was born and the place that my grandmother describes with passion and joy.

The world for me is one community. Personally, it doesn’t matter where we live, where we come from, the God we believe in or the colour of our skin, we all belong to the same planet and … we all are PEOPLE!

I believe that as a correspondent from Voices of our Future I will be a part of a great community, where we all share the same passion: representing people who might not have an opportunity to speak for themselves and accessing their own right to be heard.

I can think of so many people who they would like to speak but they do not know how to do it in an effective way. I can think from the kids that live in the streets and that cannot go to school because they have to work in order to bring money to their families, to the indigenous woman who cannot earn a decent life with the little money she gets from all of the work she does in her handmade art crafts. Or from the journalist who spends all his/her life writing stories but would like to tell her own, to the marvellous housewife that has a lot to say, but does not know how.

I would like to finish this post with a quote I read, to one that I feel connected with and that I know some of you will as well.

“I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.” (Henry R. Luce)

Thank you!

(Andrea Arzaba, October 2010)