The Yellow World by Albert Espinosa Read Free Book Online Page A

out air, your own air. And remember, the bigger the wish, the bigger the amount of air you blow out. The ideal is for you to breathe out until there’s nothing left inside. End up without any more air to blow out.
    I’m sure that the people who live to be a hundred have blown out like this a lot. This exchange of air, breathing in and out, is what has given them such long lives.
    Antonio died blowing out. I don’t know what he was wishing for, but his mother told me that she was sure his wish had been granted. I believe so, too. Put your lips together and blow. Make another wish.…

10
Don’t be afraid of being the person you have become
    Albert, trust the person you used to be. Respect your past self
.
    —one of the cleverest doctors I had (this was what he told me while he was explaining what the surgery would be like)
    My doctor always told me that he wanted the best for me, but sometimes what seemed the best ended up not being the best. It’s difficult to know how a human body will react to a drug, or a therapy or an operation. But he asked me to trust him, and he emphasized this: “I’ve always believed,” he said, “that if my ‘past me’ took this decision, it was because he believed in it. [Your ‘past you’ is you a few years, months, or days ago.] Respect your past you.”
    This was a great piece of advice. Maybe at that exact moment I didn’t think of it in that way. I was about to have anoperation and I really hoped that his “present him” wasn’t going to make a mistake.
    After I left the hospital I reflected on these words. It was a great discovery, not just for medical purposes but for everything. We tend to think that we make the wrong decisions; it’s as if we think that we’re cleverer now than we used to be, as if our past selves hadn’t balanced all the pros and cons of the decisions we made.
    Ever since that doctor told me about his past self, I’ve always believed in my past me. I even think he’s cleverer than my future me. So when I sometimes make a wrong decision I don’t get annoyed; I remember that I made the decision myself and that it was considered and thought through (one thing is true, I always try to think through and consider my decisions).
    You mustn’t be upset by the wrong decisions you make. You have to trust your past you. Of course your fifteen-year-old you could have made a mistake not taking that class, or your twenty-three-year-old you shouldn’t have gone on that trip, or your twenty-seven-year-old you shouldn’t have taken that job. But it was you who made those decisions and you must have dedicated some time to making them. Why do you think that you’ve now got the right to judge what he, your past you, decided to do? Accept who you are; don’t be afraid of being the person that your decisions have made you into.
    Bad decisions crystallize; bad decisions, after a while, turn into good decisions. Accept this and you will be happy in your life and, above all, happy with yourself.
    My doctor made three or four mistakes. I never threwthese decisions in his face because I didn’t think that his mistakes came from a lack of experience or professionalism. In order to make mistakes, one has to take risks; the result is the least important part of the process.
    I am sure that if we got your eight-year-old you, your fifteen-year-old you, and your thirty-year-old you together in a room, they would have different ideas about almost everything and they would be able to justify every decision they’d made. I love trusting my past me; I love living with the results of the decisions he made.
    I have a huge scar over where my liver is from surgery. The operation wasn’t any use in the end because there was nothing wrong with my liver, but my doctor had thought I had cancer and that if I wasn’t operated on then I would die. This scar makes me feel very proud, makes me feel a lot of different feelings whenever I see it. Everything that provokes a surge of emotions