ZOILA
THE PAPER PLANE ENCOURAGER
Meet Zoila.
Recently my sister was walking to the train station when she saw a woman waddling down platform with her groceries hanging off both arms, the plastic handles digging into her skin. The woman caught her attention because though she was struggling, her smile was beaming. She met eyes with her, exchanged a warm “hello!” and then found herself in conversation as they both awaited their train.
They got talking about smiles and strangers, cities and skies, miracles and coincidences, heaven and hell… all the things. As they were talking, Zoila opened her bag and pulled out a piece of paper — from a whole pile — and started to make a plane. Just your standard, generic, paper plane. The kind we all know how to make.
She went on to share of her life, and I’m telling you, she’s like a cat with nine lives. She’s battled illnesses, been crippled, experienced heartbreak, been a victim of violence, escaped danger by digging an underground tunnel, and the list goes on. She’s not only survived it all, but come out strong the other side with a desire to share her strength with everyone she meets.
When she finished making her paper plane, she held it up for my sister to see. But instead of flying it she flattened it between her palms. As she continued to talk about her life, she turned the plane upside down, the tip of it facing the ground, and slowly ripped it in half. She knelt down on the station ground next to her grocery bags and without ripping anything else, began to unfold the pieces. As she did so, she spoke about the importance of our choices, how the ones we make determine the kind of life we live. The torn pieces of paper now laid out on the ground the word ‘LIFE’ with a cross folded out underneath. Some choices, she said, give us freedom, the feeling of flight, will make life on earth feel like heaven.
She then took the letters and started to rearrange them a different way. Though there was wind and trains shooting past, the pieces of paper stayed still. She thanked God aloud for that. She went on to say that other choices will take us down another road, will make us feel like we’re somewhere foreign, will leave us heavy, or as her rearranged pieces of paper said - will make us feel like we’re in ‘hell.’
Her point was that we can’t always control what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond. And our choices, even the small seemingly meaningless ones, will determine what kind of journey we find ourselves on. It’s like Holocaust survivor, Viktor E. Frankl said, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
And that’s Zoila. The past seventeen years she’s been filling her handbag with paper to make planes that will remind people to strive for a life of flight and freedom — right here, right now. And for that, she gets a badge.
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