A slice of the past, circa 2005

so much to say, so little time to write. 4% left on the old battery and i'm too lazy to go get the power cord. I need to write more....but i can' t now, so i will simply copy and paste something i wrote a long time ago and let it lurk.

“Quien es el otro?” my Spanish professor asked her small Pepperdine classroom our first morning of Latin American History in my last semester of my senior year. My nervous companions and I glanced at each other, wondering what she could possibly mean by “the other” and who would be brave enough to answer first. I, too nervous to voice my opinion in a language I still felt clumsy in, answered to myself silently: “everyone different from me.” I was embarrassed and ashamed that my answer was so stark, awkward, and ugly. I thought myself well educated in other cultures, I volunteered in schools with a high Hispanic population, I worked in hospitals in poor rural areas of Honduras, I lived in Italy, and I taught English in Brasil, how is it that I could still harbor such a thought. Just a few weeks earlier while building a house in San Felipe, Mexico I met a woman my same age, and we talked in broken Spanish and English, she told me of her three children and the trials of beginning a family at 14. She marveled at my stories of the university. And as I left a few days later, we hugged, and instead of seeing a poor uneducated girl, I saw a strong woman, holding and laughing with her youngest daughter; she had lived a life much different from mine, but not any less fulfilling or valuable. She had much to learn from me, but I knew that the real lesson that weekend was for me. As I sat in that classroom, I began to realize that no matter how many times I had accepted and loved and learned about new cultures, living in them, breathing them and becoming part of them, it is nearly impossible to lose your sense of fear that different is threatening. How do I overcome that? Everyday it must be done. Everyday when I feel that fear creep in, whether it is in my urban diverse city of Portland or while walking the halls of the malnutrition wards of Honduras, I stop myself; I remember the surprising similarities all of humanity has, and, then, I silently celebrate the differences. It is in that moment, a seemingly small and insignificant moment, that I conquer the fear of “the other,” and rejoice in the love of “the different.”

I think I should continue on this vein soon....seeing as i've now actually lived and breathed what it is like to be the other in a far away land full of strange people and strange customs with strange food.

gypsy on