Painful Truths

Years ago, a criticism changed my life.

I want to share this story because not everyone has had the bittersweet blessing of receiving a bucket of cold water like that. Somehow, we have been trained to reject criticism immediately. We even divide it into constructive or destructive criticism, when in reality, much of its value depends on how we receive it and what we do with it.

In my case, the criticism felt cruel, but it was completely true. Let me tell you about it.

One day, I was chatting with my friend and brother, Jonathan Solis, about an idea, and that is when he dropped the bomb. He mentioned that “someone” (I never found out who) had said this about me when they heard about my project: “Ah, David Azofeifa… great at starting things.”

I was speechless. Hurt. Angry. But as the days went by, I began to realize that this person was absolutely right.

As I reflected, several unpleasant truths came back to me. The first was my abandoned university studies. In 1995, I enrolled in Computer Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (TEC), in Cartago. But my immaturity, mixed with the distance and the fog of Cartago, got the best of me. I tried transferring my IT studies to the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), where I had also attempted to study Economics. In the end, I chose to work, and over the years I could not pull away from the paycheck. That became worse when I took on massive debts because of foolish decisions. That is another story and testimony altogether.

I also remembered other things I had abandoned: family, emotional, spiritual, friendships, ideas. One of them was the incredible CRISTO.NET project, born in a conversation with my dear friend Boris Cabezas and kept alive only thanks to the life-saving intervention of my friend Walter Quesada. What memories.

When I married Melissa in 2009, I was still carrying the weight of everything I had not finished. There I was, with no degree, married to a woman with a master’s in Aesthetic Operative Dentistry. But one day she said something that changed my life: “David, why don’t you go back to school? Since I’m a professor at Universidad Latina de Costa Rica (U Latina), you’d get a 40% scholarship.”

I did not think twice. It had been a desire for years, and the person I loved most in the world was giving me her vote of confidence.

I’ll never forget the day I went to TEC to request my transcripts to transfer my credits to U Latina. Every square meter, every building, every hallway of that place screamed at me that I was a failure. It felt as if the entire TEC was mocking me. It was a devastating experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

That was the beginning of my restoration. In 2010, I started studying Information Technology for Business Management (my wife still teases me about how long the name of my degree is), and I graduated in December 2016. Imagine my joy. Even though I was one of the oldest graduates at the ceremony, I had finally done it.

I immediately enrolled in a master’s program in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, which I completed in October 2018. It felt like I had finally redeemed lost time. Those degrees opened doors to my “promised land” career: the company I had dreamed of working for all my life, Microsoft.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because I know many of you have unfulfilled dreams. Because I know receiving criticism is not easy. Because I understand that not all of us have had the same hurdles to overcome. Because I know some of you feel resigned to the idea that your time has passed, tangled in circumstances that drained your resources, energy, and priorities.

Because some of you need to hear that there is hope, and it is still possible to shake off what your circumstances and your past are telling you.

And because I know that absolutely everything, good and bad, that has happened in my life is meant to be shared. It carries lessons that not only I needed to learn.

I’m extending a hand because I, too, had people along the way who helped me move forward. If you want to talk about old dreams and abandoned projects, let’s chat. If no one believes in your ideas anymore or you feel like your time has passed, let’s talk. Speaking from personal experience: not everything is lost!