Do not save yourself, do not set aside the world.
Exactly 10 days ago I got back to Mexico from studying in the UK. This was an experience that marked me forever in so many ways and it came with both it’s sweet and bitter flavors. I got to the UK in September 2015, spent all of the maniac 2016 there and came back to my country in January 2017. During my time abroad both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump happened, so you can imagine how much of a different world it was when I left to when I came back and the challenge it has been for such a peculiar timing.
Personally, I also changed and grew a lot, I learned about art, I discovered the career I am truly passionate about and my thirst and hunger to achieve it grew immensely. But alongside this process of growth and self-discovery, I also witnessed how, in what seemed like a wink, a world that had been moving forward in so many ways like legalizing gay marriage, fighting for gender equality, embracing an inclusive and global community, issuing speeches to stop condemning different faiths and investing on renewable energies … suddenly began to go get scared, and people took advantage of that fear. Us humans are wonderful creatures, when we are bold and willing to risk it; we create great things, develop unimaginable progress and go beyond the stars. But we have our dark, dark side, we can also do terrible things, and this side is most of all triggered by fear; usually a fear for what we don’t understand or what is different from us.
One of the most valuable things I was blessed with while living and studying abroad was getting to know people who are different from me; people with different cultures, sets of minds and ideas from all over the world. I can now call friends people from the UK (obviously), but also from the Netherlands, France, Greece, South Africa, Sierra Leone, China, Japan, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, Canada, India, Sweden and also from the US. All of these people gave me something I could never had had if it wasn’t for our different backgrounds. And while I was being ecstasized with so much richness and culture, both Trump and the Brexit supporters were issuing speeches promoting division among countries, and in both cases these speeches won. Coincidently I was a (legal) immigrant in the UK, from a country between which America wants to build a wall. I have now had time to be horrified but also reflexive about what all of this means.
First of all I had to admit to myself that all of these events weren’t indifferent to me. The truth is they hurt, they hurt a lot. The dreams that I had built for myself during the last year have suddenly been threatened by a very unstable political situation all around the world. The social media kept showing me and showing me all the ways this was going to affect us all, specially my home country. Doubts about my future kept crawling into my mind and fearing I’ve made the wrong choices; among all the anxiety and worry it didn’t seem like there was anything I could do about it. But, as David Foster Wallace wrote, “sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt”, I had to just let it hurt. Running away from inevitable pain and being afraid of pain can many times cause us to do the terrible things we are running away from; when not learning to deal with our share of struggle, blaming it on others and not wanting to appear weak. But then again, DFW also said: “it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak”.
Secondly, I realised that feeling the way I did, made me think of how much worse all the people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen must feel. Banned, with no sense of humanity, from a country where they were looking to escape the horrors of war and an even worse reality. Understanding my own pain made me come a little bit closer to understanding theirs. It made me aware of the magnitude of what is happening, and it also makes me want to do something about it, however little, but something. The same way, I am sure, all the people that attended the Women’s March and the manifestation at the airports must have felt. And it is then pain is what brings us all together. The cliché: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” turns out to be true.
On the one hand I have been equipped with the knowledge of how valuable it is to share among us, to let different people in and to learn from one another, I got to learn what is at stake while on the other hand I am witnessing a moment in time that is the critical starting point of something that can either break us into separation, and even war, or unite us into generating a deep change of a system in much need of renewal.
I have no idea about the actual steps that I can take to make a difference in this matter but when I think about it, despite the fear and the hurt, what comes to my mind is part of the great Mario Benedetti’s poem No te Salves (Do not save yourself), which gets to express my feelings with both eloquence and beauty:
Do not stand still
By the wayside
Do not freeze the joy
Do not want with reluctance
Do not save yourself now
or never
Do not save yourself
Do not be calm
Do not set aside from the world
Just a quiet corner
Do not drop your eyelids
Heavy as judgments
Do not run out of lips
Do not fall asleep without slumber
Do not think of you without blood
Do not judge yourself without time.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
No te quedes inmóvil
al borde del camino
no congeles el júbilo
no quieras con desgana
no te salves ahora
ni nunca
no te salves
no te llenes de calma
no reserves del mundo
sólo un rincón tranquilo
no dejes caer los párpados
pesados como juicios
no te quedes sin labios
no te duermas sin sueño
no te pienses sin sangre
no te juzgues sin tiempo.
