Darvina, the One with the Dirty Shoes

Darvina, the One with the Dirty Shoes

Once upon a time there was Darvina, the one with the dirty shoes. She loved her shoes that had features of her life printed on them. Shoes that had walked through various places: through palaces, through elegant houses, villages, rivers, forests, through markets, through long roads that life had presented to her.

Every time she passed somewhere, no one noticed her. Her dirty shoes were her emblem, she did not change them for anything in the world, broken as they were, comfortable as a glove.

Once walking along the road an old man appeared to her, sitting on by the highway, shepherding a white sheep. The sheep with its entangled hair and gray stains, picture imaged her broken shoes, gray, semi-white, black and dirty - dirty. It even seemed that they had a bad smell.

Darvina did not care. The world had made her that way. She once had a pair of red patent leather shoes, shiny and clean. They were polished daily, with her sponge dress extended and the driver who would open the door for her to take her to the next elite party somewhere. As a little girl, they would sometimes take her to a piñata with her red-colored dress and pressed ribbons in her dark hair. 

She had had enough. She was through to live in a world of luxuries where the treasures that were sought were very distant from the treasures of  the heart that she loved to find. Her shoes. Her utmost adoration. In that way no one would  turn around to view her with that look, which many times had blown away her sparkle.

For the envies of that past life of luxuries that now seemed very alien and distant to her, had swept her and dragged her to a place where her heart in shreds had to rise.

Being free, she was happy. At times she seemed to be 5 years old. The ways of the world no longer made her heart tick. What was really real made it tick. That which was truly valuable, the plants, the rivers, the prairies, the animals. She communicated with them all the time. Her dirty shoes allowed her to hide among the trees without being seen, which helped her to get closer to them.

With humanity, She could no longer deal with. Her generosity, her kindness and her goodness had often been trampled and stepped on. She returned everything with a smile. Until her body could no longer hold, her soul could no longer endure. She moved into living a different life.

Darvina had met someone very special, that special someone made her see that the stars of the sky were attainable with a direct look from the heart, with a yearning for a sigh of God, a true word of Love, pure,  innocent, without conditions.

The incredible thing was that Darvina raised dust wherever she walked by. it was tornadoes of dust, smoke, and so on, where in the middle she disappeared without being seen. People always wondered, what was that swirl that lifted and rose from nothingness. Her soul Alive, always alive.

A suffering soul that shone and illuminated the sky with her innocence that someone once wanted to steal, yet she fought to recover and retain it.

II

She sat down next to the old man and asked, "Can I help you?"

The old man scratching his head said, "Yes," to which she was surprised. 

"Tell me," she replied.

"Take off those old shoes."

"My old shoes?"

"Yes, beautiful one, your shoes old and dirty." He insisted.

"It's about time you returned to your land, your family, your people, don't you think?" He added.

Darvina stared at him, seas of tears running down her cheeks.

"I can't." She declared. "I worship them,  they are my identity, my everything."

"I understand," said the old man. "Come sit closer, there's something I want to show you."

She sat closer, as he started talking and talking and talking incessantly. She. Listened.

The night darkened and they began to see the stars.

"See that one over there?" The Elder asked.

"The one that is bright, the one that is really shining?" Darvina replied.

"No," he replied. "The one next to it, the smaller one, the one that barley twinkles."

"Ah, yes," she said.

"You see?" He told her.

"Yes, I see." she replied.

"Have you understood?" 

"Yes I have..."  she answered.

She took her treasured dirty shoes off and handed them to Vedas, the old man and began to walk towards her new destiny.

"It will not be easy," Vedas told her.

"I know," she said turning her head to see him one last time, "but I'm ready. Thank you!"

"What for? " The old man replied.

"For making me see... Thank you!"

"Ah," he replied, "go, go ... you'll find it, you'll see."

"I hope so," she said, "Thanks."

"Do not stop looking at the smaller star, She will let you know."

Darvina began to walk away into the horizon, towards her new destiny. 

What was waiting for her was not easy, yet it was the way ... when she disappeared on the horizon, Vedas looked up, smiled and said: "At last!"

Sitting on the grass, he saw the distance becoming dark, and there in the sky appeared, that tiny small star that someday will shine again...