A Ricardo Arjona song came on today and, somehow, I was 21 again.

Not metaphorically.

For a second, I could see the dirt roads. The summer evenings. My friend walking next to me. The two of us heading towards Virgen de los Vientos, at the entrance of my hometown in Argentina, because we had decided we were going to exercise every day.

Walk first. Mate afterwards.

Very disciplined.

We would walk and sing Arjona, La Oreja de Van Gogh, Abel Pintos — loudly and with absolutely no concern for the people around us.

And we would dream.

“We’re meant for big things, amiga.”

I remember saying things like that all the time.

The funny thing is that there was very little evidence to support our theory.

When your imagination is bigger than your circumstances

I was at university in San Rafael at the time.

During the year, my life felt bigger. I was studying, going to a Christian church, participating in activities and meeting missionaries and people from places that, to me, felt incredibly far away.

Germany. France. Costa Rica. Chile. Paraguay. Bolivia.

Meeting them did something to my brain.

Suddenly, the world wasn’t something that existed on television. These were actual people who had gotten on planes and somehow ended up sitting in the same room as me.

Maybe I could go somewhere too.

Then summer would come and I would go back to Malargüe.

And everything became very small again.

I didn’t have money for elaborate holidays. There weren’t endless plans waiting for me. Apart from studying for exams, summer was mostly walking, drinking mate, spending time with my friend and imagining lives we weren’t living yet.

Travel.

Opportunities.

People we hadn’t met.

Places we had never seen.

We had no contacts.

We had no money.

We definitely didn’t have a five-year strategy.

We had Arjona.

And, apparently, an unreasonable amount of faith.

I thought I needed to learn everything

Around that time, I became obsessed with learning.

Not necessarily university learning.

Life learning.

I grew up in a family where many of the things I was becoming curious about simply weren’t part of our world.

There weren’t books around the house when I was little. Art, social events, professional networks — these weren’t things I naturally grew up knowing how to navigate.

There were entire rooms in life where I didn’t know the rules.

So I watched.

I asked questions.

How are you supposed to behave here?

How do people organise this?

What do you say?

What don’t you say?

What’s considered appropriate?

How do people who seem to know what they’re doing actually do things?

I was constantly trying to figure out how to enter worlds I hadn’t been raised inside.

There was a youth leader at church whom I admired, and he used to lend me books.

Leadership. Mindset. Personal development.

I read everything.

Not because I had some sophisticated personal-development strategy at 21.

I just desperately wanted to grow.

I remember thinking:

I don’t have contacts. I don’t have money. I only have myself. So what can I do with that?

The slightly unhinged notes beside my mirror

At one point, I was reading Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

And I took this very seriously.

I would copy sentences from the book onto pieces of paper, cut them out, stick them beside my mirror with tape and read them every day.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I believed that if I wanted a different life, I had to start thinking differently before that life existed.

There is something almost adorable to me now about that girl.

Because years passed.

And nothing particularly cinematic happened.

I didn’t suddenly become rich.

I hadn’t met the love of my life.

I was still living with my mum.

There was no glamorous job.

There was no dramatic movie montage in which all the pieces finally came together while inspirational music played in the background.

And I remember one day standing in front of that same mirror and crying.

I was frustrated.

Marcia, stop dreaming.

Look at where you are.

Nothing has changed.

And then I remember telling myself something.

I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but I remember the decision:

Even if I feel completely hopeless right now, I’m not going to stop believing.

Maybe believing isn’t the same as knowing

This is where these stories usually become annoying.

Because this would be the perfect place for me to tell you that I believed hard enough and therefore the universe delivered everything I ordered.

That’s not what happened.

There were decisions.

There was work.

There were mistakes.

There were things I couldn’t control.

There were probably also coincidences, privileges, timing and people who helped me along the way.

And there are still things I want that haven’t happened.

I am still figuring my life out.

But today, when that Arjona song came on, I looked at my life from the perspective of that girl walking those dirt roads.

And I wanted to cry.

I’ve lived in Dublin for seven years.

I’ve built friendships in another country.

I’ve worked.

I’ve travelled.

I’ve learned languages.

I’ve sat at tables that the younger version of me didn’t even know existed.

Not because I had a secret formula.

But somehow, little by little, my world became bigger.

The years when it looked like nothing was happening

Maybe this is the part I’ve misunderstood before.

I used to look at those years as the years before my life changed.

Now I’m not sure that’s true.

Maybe my life was already changing.

Every borrowed book.

Every person from another country I talked to.

Every uncomfortable room I entered without knowing the rules.

Every question I asked because I didn’t know how something worked.

Every ridiculous piece of paper taped beside my mirror.

Every walk where my friend and I imagined lives completely disconnected from the evidence in front of us.

Maybe those things were part of the change.

The outside just hadn’t caught up yet.

And I think that’s why remembering this today moved me so much.

Not because everything I dreamed about came true.

It didn’t.

Not because I’ve finally “made it.”

Whatever that means.

But because I know there have been moments in my life when reality gave me very few reasons to believe something different was possible.

And I believed anyway.

In myself.

In the possibility that life could surprise me.

And, yes, in something bigger than me — God, the universe, whatever name makes sense to you — guiding me towards the next step when I couldn’t see the whole staircase.

I don’t know whether believing changes what happens to us.

But I wonder if sometimes it changes what we’re willing to do next.

Maybe that’s enough to change quite a lot.

What are you still allowing yourself to believe in, even if your life hasn’t given you the evidence yet?