Sept. 25, 2008
Gratitude and perspective. Two oft-used words. “Be grateful for what you have.” “Just have perspective.” Good advice, certainly. But it’s like giving someone the parts to a model airplane without the instructions, nor even a friendly tip to get started.
So how do I gain gratitude? With perspective, perhaps. How do I gain perspective? With experience, I believe. And why preoccupy with these intangible, lofty ideas, gratitude and perspective?
Because I believe they are key to happiness.
Here is how it works with us uber-intelligent, evolving, developing, civilized humans:
In the beginning was our caveman. Pretty animalistic, uni-brow and all, Cro-magnon man style, but at least peeing upright. A human, by our human standards. What was happiness to a cro-magnon?
One can imagine it was survival. Life was harsh, food unsure. His one purpose in life, to fulfill his biological function, to reproduce, continue the species. He was helped by hormones that told him, “You horny Cro-magnon, you best get spreadin’ yo seed!” And his hunger, his thirst, his adrenaline, no doubt drove him to desperate lengths, made him take down Mr. Wooly Mammoth like it was nobody’s business. Hormone-driven, indeed.
And then, someone saw a decapitated head rolling and thought to invent the wheel, someone saw some wild beets growing and realized the beets were just like them, they too wanted to propagate their seed, so we obliged, and planted. And naturally, if your food is all in one place, ain’t no need to be a wanderlust hunter-gatherer. That’s right, y’all can civilize.
One can imagine these developing homo erectus were fairly pleased for a while. Likely life was still tough, and they had to fend for themselves. But now they were surviving in large numbers, steady food supply. The adults, remembering the tough old days, gratefully smiled fondly at their agriculture, their surplus. But the children, weaned in a civilized world, lacked this perspective. Some of them clamored for something greater. There must be more to this life....
And then the technology began to rain from the sky. Printing press, sewing and weaving, metallurgy, animal domestication, electricity, telephone, planes and cars and trains, sanitation, hot pockets, all the way up to this very moment, to the Internet and iPhone and everything we have in this world.
Every generation, marveling at this new world with its new technology, recalling what the old days were like. Some started calling them “the good ‘ole days” because there was something nostalgic, something beautifully simplistic in the simplicity of yore.
What had the children done, when they clamored for more? They had improved our lives, made them safer, made survival and a steady food source practically guaranteed. Safer, easier. And better?
What was a successful day for Mr. Cro-magnon man? Survival. Food on the dinner plate. Bearing the cold winter. Reproducing. The things we do everyday, that we take for granted, like they’ve always been this easy, handed to us.
What is a successful day today, for you? Not so easy to define now. For some, it’s how much we got done. How much we earned or gained. Perhaps the friendships or relationships we possess or have. The quantity, the surplus, the magnitude. Better?
Now, I think, is the time to answer the question that we complicate more and more every single day: Why?
Why. Just sit with it for a second, this tiny little word that can forever burrow deeper and deeper, to the very core of our beings, the very source of all that is.
Why. Without even answering the question we should probably consider the value and importance in forming the letters. What does it mean to ask why?
To me, it signifies a pause, a break in the flow of things. The right “why” isn’t cause for an immediate one-sentence answer. It’s cause for a pause. For reflection. A desire, perhaps, to stop and understand.
And once we begin to the understand the significance of this all-too-rare question, then perhaps we can begin to attach it to all it could ask us.
How about: why am I writing this? Good question. I’m writing this because I watched The Invisibles in my Salud y Medioambiente class last night, a series of five short films about tragedy around this world. Killer bugs that affect poor populations without health care in Bolivia, war and violated women in the Congo, child soldiers in the 20 year war in Northern Uganda, African sleeping sickness without government investment in delivering the cure, displaced campesinos, removed from their land that sustains them, in Columbian guerilla warfare.
Death, sickness and war, heavy, blood, violence, rape. The worst of humanity. Things I have never experienced. Things I hope never to experience. I felt sick, terrible, helpless as I watched these scenes. How could we do this?
Beyond the guilt and the heartache, know what else I felt, way down deep? Grateful. There it was, like it was always there, waiting for me to say hi. Grateful that I don’t know these things, grateful I have money in my wallet that buys me things like this delicious Te de Navedad and allows me to sit in this bustling café playing Air, shoes off, writing furiously to answer the question “why.”
I felt grateful for a while because while I didn’t experience the movie first-hand, I gained perspective on my life and my luck, the possibilities out there.
So that’s a “why” catalyst, to why I sit writing. But there’s more. There’s also, “why are you really writing this?” What if we asked this question everyday: “Why are you really doing this?” What would it do?
Don’t worry, I’m not dodging my own question. I’m really writing this because I want to be a happy person, and help spread that happiness to others. I’m writing this because I’m always interested in getting to the core, and this seems like a pretty good start.
Happy. I want to be happy. Not so important to get hung up in defining happy...it’s an emotion, a feeling, a state of being. You know deep down what it is, however you decide to call it. We don’t ever have to agree on a definition of happiness, but I truly believe we can see it, feel it, sense it. Whatever word we use, there is a presence, a vibration to this thing I choose to call happiness.
And this movie, The Invisibles, made me consider this happiness. None of that terrible stuff in the movie has happened to me. Am I happy?
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I’m very happy and joyful. More so in recent years.
Sometimes, no. Sometimes I’m stuck in my own head, cut off from the emotions and needs of others.
And so I wonder, why am I happy only sometimes? What would make the people in that movie happy? Some would be happy to survive, have food on their plate, be sitting with their family members. Where have I written this before?
Ah yes. I remember now. The cavemen. That’s what the cavemen sought. They didn’t seek to buy a new car or iPhone, or to look prettier or be thinner. They sought the simple. They sought survival, basic comfort.
They....oh geez. Ohhhh geez. Pardon me. I was just about to get to a breakthrough point, I’m sure of it, when this caveman sat down at my table.
If there was ever a stereotypical cavemen, he is it. He’s got his loin cloth wrapped around his thighs. Hairy hairy man, hair everywhere. A fantastic beard, and a slightly open mouth, like he’s just as confused as I am about where he is. I suppose they don’t have cafes back where he lives.
This is quite a surprise, to have a caveman at my table. I don’t quite know what to say to him, but it turns out I don’t have to. He’s staring at the tea I’ve been sipping quite unmindfully since I sat down to write this.
“You want some tea, caveman?” I ask.
He grunts like a caveman, in what sounds like an affirmation. The first sip he takes is like an electric shock just ran the length of his slightly stooped caveman body. He grunts at me after recovering, and I understand he wants to know what’s in this magical blend.
“Well, there’s vanilla, from somewhere in Africa where it’s cultivated, I presume.” He raises his busy eyebrow. “Cinnamon, from a tropical region. Other herbs, I’m not even sure what. And electrically heated hot water.” His hairy eyebrow raises even further at the last one. I realize hot water is probably tougher to come by in caveman land. I start to realize the tea I’ve paid little attention to really is pretty darn magical.
Suddenly Mr. Caveman starts sniffing the air like a rabid dog, and I realize he’s smelling the acrid smoke that fills this café like an early morning mist. It’s legal to smoke indoors in Chile.
I start to explain to him. “This is something a lot of people in the world do. 30% of the world’s population, in fact. It calms and relaxes you, which helps people who get stressed from so much work. Interestingly, it significantly shortens your life...statistics say each cigarette takes an average of 5 minutes from your life.”
I see my caveman is pretty dumbfounded at this point. I guess when your life is survival it’s hard to imagine knowingly shortening your life.
I check my watch and see the caveman looking at me. “Oh,” I tell him. “I can only spend a certain amount of time doing this. I have a lot of appointments and things to do today.” I don’t bother explaining further, as I imagine a caveman measures time by the cultivation of his vegetable garden, by the changing temperature of the seasons. Geez, this is like explaining life to a baby....
Babies! That thing we once were! Hmm, babies. Who once told me to live like a baby? Speaking of happiness, in thinking of the most happy people in my life, I have to go with babies.
They’re just so darn simple to please. They’ll play peek-a-boo for hours and scream in delight like it’s new every time. I take my keys out of my pocket several times a day to open the gate to the pension without thinking twice, but give these giggling magic pieces of etched metal to my baby nephew Ethan and he goes crazy. They are a certifiable treasure for him. For me, they’re a tool that lets me in the house.
Why?
Good question. It reminds me of all those questions I asked before all these cavemen and babies entered my life.
I believe I had asked what might make the people in the movie The Invisibles happy, and I said survival, food on their plate, sitting with their healthy family members. Like the cavemen, I imagined, or like babies.
And here’s where I finally get somewhere (signal the celebration drums). We’re not cavemen. Neither are the people in the movie. We’re not babies, either, at least most of us (apologies to you babies out there). No, the only people who are cavemen are those who live in caves, and for most of us, that ended long, long ago.
I’m not proposing we live in caves. We live in houses, pretty sturdy well-built ones, most of them with AC AND central heating. Our sinks obey our command and spit water at us when we turn the lever. I’ll be the first to say, that is pretty darn sweet (“bakan” if you live in Chile).
Yeah, I don’t know how well I’d do as a caveman. I don’t even like caves that much, although I do think the word “spleunking” is fun to say over and over. We live in a modern world. Most of us can’t renounce that. This is our life, and in a way, we would be living in the past if we sat all day bemoaning what has become of our civilization, of all the negative things. We don’t need to feel bad that time sometimes runs our lives, that we don’t always pay attention to our tea, that we smoke cigarettes knowing we’re hurting ourselves. It does nothing to feel bad. But then what do the cavemen have to teach us, if they were then, and we are now?
Who ever said you have to live as a caveman to live like a caveman? Well, maybe the cavemen, but I hear they were pretty rigid in their thinking.
So what does it mean to live like a caveman? First, I think, is just a state of mind. Expectations. If you told a caveman the Internet was down, he wouldn’t complain, he would just sit with you and inquire with a grunt what the Internet is, and once you explained it, he would patiently wait till it was fixed to search “Caveman” on Google images to see if his picture comes up.
Expectations, and along with it that gratefulness and perspective I mentioned at the very beginning of this ditty, before I had even considered a caveman might sit at my table and drink my tea. To occasionally look at the keys we use every day and consider that someone figured out how to make these.
Hmm, but even after all this, even as I write myself into a state of gratefulness and perspective, as I realize I suddenly have this wonderful warm feeling of happiness inside me in this very moment, I wonder if this is still like a de-constructed model airplane without instructions.
I can write this same letter over and over again, stress these same ideas, but will they stick? Will they stick in a world where we all forget this all the time, where the billboards tell me I need more and the TV tells me I should look different? Will this stick if I stay in my same bubble with my same privilege?
I don’t know. I think not. I think we can tell each other to be grateful all day, but I have a feeling it’s the experience and reminders in my life that will make it stick. Reminders:
1. Good friends, certainly, who live joyously and remind me to laugh and not be so serious.
2. Good books, good movies, good teachers who impart this message to me. I want to share the scene that struck me the most from The Invisibles. It’s in the short film about the war in Northern Uganda. The war refugees are gathered inside a building, singing and dancing with joy like you’ve never seen, about the war, about life, pleading for the violence to stop. And they sing “Dancing, we demand that this war ends, that the peace returns.” In the face of mindless senseless destruction they dance. If only they knew how they inspired a privileged kid sitting in a café in Valdivia, Chile, trying to understand in a world very different from theirs.
3. Myself, of course myself, writing or taking pictures or doing whatever it is I need to do to remind myself of the goodness around us. These big three, myself, teachers, and community are indeed excellent reminders. And as we live we start to see that our teachers are everywhere, in our babies and our cavemen and the person sitting next to us, we start to see our community is everyone, that we’re not so different from others. We start to see that myself is connected to all of this, no matter how much we get lost and think we’re all alone.
But I leave myself with this question: where do I go from here? Where do I take this knowledge, how do I remember it, how do I live it? Writing, sharing, exploring, experiencing. Endless incomplete intangible answers.
The most important thing, I’m realizing, is not the answer. It’s the question. It’s continuing to honestly and lovingly ask that question, to live the question and the answer that inevitably follows with purpose, with intention, and yes, a bit of gratitude for simply having thought to ask the question. Shoot, a little gratitude for getting to do this, whatever it is we are doing.
To dig up my Jewish roots, here’s a quote from a Passover seder:
"We must celebrate each step toward freedom as if it were enough, then start out on the next step. If we reject each step because it is not the whole liberation, we will never be able to achieve the whole liberation. We must sing each verse as if it were the whole song‑‑then sing the next verse."
Amen. Dance in the face of everything bad, dance because we give what we can, and that’s always enough, because it’s all we can give.
I posted this in an earlier blog, but it´s a good representation of what a lot of this semester was: reflection. I came here to Curiñanco on Yom Kippur to fast and reflect. One of the most incredible things about my time here was how much time I had to myself, which really let me get to know myself and my thoughts and feelings.
Here you have it, the people of the pensión I called home for about 5 months (minus Diego and la Señora Carmen, perdón). From left to right: Allison, Mati (not to be confused with beverage Mate), Ryan, Jorge, Luis, Manolla (daughter), Jaqui (owner). this was on a boat to an island called Corral featuring old Spanish forts. Damn, it rained a lot. The first month in Valdivia, it rained 29 of the 31 days. I´m still leaking.
Jorge, my closest Chilean friend, and a truly incredible person. He introduced me to mate and helped me get through the rough times. Here we are with a volcano in the background. it´s true, we are in the middle of the road, but we managed to dodge to the side of the quickly oncoming traffic.
One of the best days I spent in Valdivia. Jorge, Allison, Jaqui, manolla, me. We went to the park on one of the first days of sun, played soccer and teeter totter, and ate a lot a lot.
The lobos marinos (sea lions) are one of Valdivia´s main attractions. They have a reputation of biting your limbs off, which is why I look a bit nervous here....
Another of Valdivia´s fames...Kuntsmann, one of the founding German families, has their brewery here. Valdivia is filled with artesan beer, with Kuntsmann leading the way. We had some good times here. Also, the cardboard cutout in which I´m posing isnt so far off...I think I gained about 10 pounds in Chile, a.k.a. land of endless bread.
At our pensión with Alex, me, Jorge. This is our famous "Vamos, Valdivia!" pose, which is one of our inside jokes which will never, ever, get old. It comes from the mayoral race in Valdivia, in which the entire city is covered with huge pictures of the candidates. Alcalde Berger, a gruff looking guy who won, had huge carboard cutouts with him with a serious face and thumbs up, saying Vamos, Valdivia. We are emulating as best as we can here.
Another one of the best nights ever. Me, dressed as tourist. Manola the fairy, Allison dressed as me, other Allison a gypsy. We went to a friend´s cabaña and hung out with gringos, Ecuadorians, Columbians and Chileans alike. They had to drag us out of there, it was so fun.
About 11 gringos gathered at our pensión for Obama election night. Alex animatedly found updates faster than CNN, although he lacked their sweet holograms (still in awe). Notice the celebratory alcohol in the foreground. We were all so excited, Allison actually started crying during Obama´s election speech. One of the times where we all would have really loved to be there for an incredible, historic moment.
Thanksgiving (día de acción de gracias in spanish) at Alex´s Chilean parents´house. The six of us, led by the incredible efforts of allison, put on Thanksgiving, Chilean style, cooking all day. Afterward, we went in a circle and said what we were thankful for. Naturally, I cried. I´m going to post, without her permission :-) what Allison said in reflection about the day:
I am still in complete awe at this entire hike. Up above you can see the glaciar, called Cerro Tronador. We hiked, at extreme peril (sorry Mom!) close to the source to drink the purest water of our lives. Then we climbed up to 6,000 feet and continued to gaze in awe at both sides of the Andes. Just an all around incredible weekend trip, and a nice representation of all the awesome weekend trips we took, from Pucón to Puyeue to Puerto Montt.
Here´s an anecdote for you peoples: Jorge (in the middle) introduced me to the church here, and I went with him about 8 or 9 times throughout my stay here in Valdivia. It was always the incredible music, with the whole congregation singing loudly and passionate, that brought me back. This last Sunday, we all sang a song called "With the Power of Your Love." I was singing at the top of my lungs, and getting pretty emotional, when I look to my left and see a 45 year old women with her hands raised up towards the heavens, praising, and just BELTING out the song, with an incredible beautiful voice that you could hear over the 80 plus people singing. I looked at her and just lost it, the tears started flowing. Afterward they called Jorge and I up since we were both leaving town, and we got to say some words to the congregation. Talk about a first: First good-bye speech in Spanish to Chilean church...that´s something I never thought I would say! Afterwards everyone prayed for us to have a safe return home. This church was truly one of the best things I did here in Valdivia.
Here you have 5 of the 6 kids in the program: Lilly, me, Alex, Adam, Allison (sorry Ian, you shouldn´t have vomited that weekend) in Puyeue, near the volcano peak. We all became pretty close in our own ways, and I feel really lucky to have gotten to share my time here with such wonderful people.
In Cunco with some of Jorge´s family...his 80 yr. old grandma, mom, and cousin. A truly awesome experience to spend the sept. 18 holidays with his family (sept. 18 is similar to our july 4th, but celebrated for about 4 days here). Their hospitality and amount of food they shoved in me will never be forgotten.
