BRAZILIAN LIFE

It’s all becoming so clear. It’s as though Brazil had the power to rectify by beliefs about society, racism and stereotypes, hidden and exposed inequality, materialism, poverty and the hope for a better future. While I now feel wholly confident in my own ideas, I have also taken a new perspective on my perhaps one-sided way of viewing civilization (that everything is horrible and a big mess and there’s no hope- none of this is true!). It’s a hard thing to put into words- the feeling you get when you start to realize your eyes are open for the first time. I feel like I’m just beginning to live life, or maybe I’m just beginning to understand it. There’s this profound feeling lingering inside of me and with each class I sit through and every page of every textbook I read, I put together the pieces of this crazy jigsaw puzzle we call life. Lewis Mumford once wrote that “Habitually, people treat the realities of personality and association and city as abstractions, while they treat confused pragmatic abstractions such as money, credit, political sovereignty, as if they were concrete realities that had an existence independent of human conventions.” We need balance. Everyone needs money to live, but why do we need so much of it? Everyone innately yearns for power, but why must we drop bombs to attain more of it? I’m starting to not only affirm my beliefs, but also question them as well. How can we find this balance? For the first time in my life, I’m learning because I want to. I read my books because I desperately want to know. While we learn about sustainable development in my sustainable communities class, I find myself connecting this idea of sustainability to society. Has our greed led to the dilution of relationships? One night in Salvador, we met these travelers who were all around 20 to 24 years old and in a matter of several hours, I could already feel my world view morphing into something new. On the outside, these kids sitting on the curb selling the jewelry they made from various natural materials they picked up along the way (mainly seeds and other materials from the Amazon) appeared to be desolate. In actuality, they were the richest people I have ever known. They are doing whatever it takes to travel the world and truly learn the things that are important. Behind their tattered clothes and the rows of earrings and bracelets was Eduardo, a guy my age who had been bicycling around South America for the past few months. And Lizzy, a girl from New Jersey who picked up seven months ago to see the world and has been doing so on her own ever since. This is not to say that hitch hiking around the world is the answer to all of our problems- the point is that we’ve reached this place in society where we must find justification for the direction that we take and the paths that we choose. I believe that people must choose to live the life they want to lead. It all goes back to this question of balance. While I know I need to be educated so that I can get a decent job so that I can support myself, I also need to be aware of what I want out of life. Before I can think about applying to law school, there are many things I need to do to become the person I want to be so that I can live the life I want to lead. There isn’t one way. This idea in the United States that there is only one way has literally led to the demise of humanity as we know it today. Desmond Tutu spoke this morning in my mysticism and the religious experience class. His speech was based off of his article about silence. He said that people now see stomach ulcers as a status symbol. People boast about how long it’s been since they’ve taken a vacation or how jam-packed their daily schedules are. This kind of life is not sustainable. First, there is no happiness in living this way. Second, the human mind and body was not created to SUSTAIN this way of living. We need to get outside and run around and breathe in the fresh air that we are rapidly depleting. I’ve never been so happy because I’ve now finally found hope. I’ve found hope that I can choose the life path that works for me and that not only is what I think important, it is vital to my survival. For the longest time, I never voiced my opinions because I thought they were illegitimate. I thought they were illegitimate because it seemed no one understood what I was trying to say. Then I got on this ship- the MV explorer and I commenced on a journey around the world. It is on this ship that for the first time, I’m living in a community of people who UNDERSTAND. I’ve met professors who put everything they have into maintaining their orphanages in Cambodia and professors who have changed lives through their work in the peace corp. And so I’ve finally been able to realize that I’m not strange, and my beliefs are not unimportant- I simply have never lived in the right environment. I’ve never opened my mind to the possibility that there are other options for my life than settling on the east coast with my husband, dog and two kids. I can live in California if I want to. I can work hard and save money and travel the Amazon. I can become an environmental lawyer. I can do whatever I want because I have the power to choose. Today I realized that what all of this means is- I’M FREE.