Dear Pilar

The person I admire the most would have to be my cousin Pilar. She’s basically my age, maybe a couple years older, and she’s one of the most hard working women I’ve ever met. 

Having to go through a serious illness when she was only a teenager, she found strength in music when literally everything else was falling apart. She had to stay at home for nearly a year, no school or going out whatsoever, so she used that time to learn to play the piano and the guitar. While still recovering, she joined a local band and started a solo project as a composer of folk music. When she graduated high school, she decided to become a music teacher. 

She worked to pay for college, and was an outstanding student in her class. Pressured by her family -my aunt and uncle- to pursue a career on classical music, she moved to a small town near Temuco to be a music teacher in one of the poorest schools of the area. 

Today, she’s married and expecting her first baby. Whenever I talk to her, all I get is that she’s grateful for her life and for what she has, and to be honest, I don’t think I have other goals in life than to have what she has, and more important, to be the kind of person she is.