Bursting smile. Radiating joy.
Captured. Forever frozen in a frame.
Free. Free from the weight of the future. Free from all but one responsibility.
My little four-year-old lǎoshī Rosie, my Chinese host sister, was responsible for teaching me the basics of speaking Mandarin. Laughter of delight poured from her lips for both every answer I butchered and every answer I perfected.
Never to be repeated. This special moment - although special does not suffice to explain how much this instance has touched my heart - forever branded me. The way I view children, their intelligence, how I want to raise my own kids, strangers, their kindness, and their ability to impact lives, is changed by one joyful four-year-old.
As much as I want this moment back, it will always just be a moment signed in my memory. The perplexing aspect is, while I will never forget, it is unlikely that Rosie will ever remember. Receiving an e-mail from Rosie's mother after returning to the United States was exciting and heart wrenching, "Rosie really likes you, she always talks about you, waiting for you to play with her". As days, weeks, months, and years pass without coming to play with her, however, I will slip away from Rosie's memory, and I will never fully know the extent I played in impacting her life.
This is a funny thing about life. We walk around investing ourselves in individuals and meeting strangers, and this molds us into the people we are to become. The impact others play in our lives will never be known - the conversation with a stranger on an airplane, time spent with a babysitter, or at age four teaching an exchange student Mandarin. It is impossible to relive life without these experiences, changing one single variable and comparing the outcomes. Yet, these moments impact us to the core, and may change the trajectory of an entire life. Others will never fully know the impact they made in our lives, and in the same way, we will never fully know the impact that we made in others lives.
While Rosie is impacting lives every day in China, she will never know the impact she has made in the United States. Maybe her story will be a catalyst, impacting the lives of those who read it and providing a new insight. Maybe the way she has touched my life will affect everyone I come into contact with; the people I come into contact with might be touched by me because of the way I have been changed by her. While this moment is frozen in the past, her spirit will never die as she has impacted the future of many, whether or not they recognize or know it was due to her.
Every day individuals are impacting our lives and we are impacting the lives of others. We should live each moment as though our spirit, if captured in this very moment, were to live on and impact the future of many, because it some form it might.
I ponder if my spirit in that moment has impacted the future of Rosie's life.
Perhaps I will be a photograph, forever captured in a frame in their home, my stationary being displaying a bursting smile and radiating joy.
Captured. Forever frozen in a frame.