I am discouraged by how much I struggle to be Holy, a believer, or faithful. The more I engage in research, business, technology, and entertainment the more I find myself doubting. I think God has a way of reminding me that I don't have to leave the world to love the world.
I find my doubt is healed by the undeserved blessings I cannot help but be grateful for. The hard part is having to accept that God might be using my intellect, economics, conveniences, and luxuries to help remind me that divinity may not only be seen in nature. I am reminded that even in service there is a reward. Be balanced, don't take more than I need, and have respect are phrases that come to ease my worry after feeling the anxiety of discerning whether I am being blessed or being self-indulgent.
Returning from a immersion with a team studying, observing, and even some being called to Curanderismo has me, once again, remembering to ask for balance. Where there is energy, I'll likely find light. Where there is light I'll likely find heat. Where there is heat I'll find movement. Curar!
Tupac Shakur mentions in rap lyrics that he sees no changes, straight up racist faces, and for a long time I agreed. Now, with faith, I gotta say, I see straight up changes. I can't say I lived a thug life. I can't say I have shared in the darkest struggles that humanity or poverty seems to provide. I don't remember my barrios ever being hazardous, poor, or scary. As I look back on my barrios from the outskirts, from a different cultural group, I notice that they are perceived as dangerous, poor, and, when the sun goes down, scary. People are violent in the barrios where I came from, not so much to be bad asses, but to not be seen as weak. I look on my barrios now and see a whole lotta changes. I also hold the admission that history hints at plenty of things that appear to lack change.
I know there are struggles unique to regions, ethnicities, and cultures that can get overwhelmingly discouraging, but what seems to be common is a desperate yearning for worth. How desirable am I, are you, are we? What can I gain without giving, aka "efficient"? Wealthy, healthy, and obedient seem to be the preferred cultures. These qualities have the highest rank in the realm of worth. The perception that defines these quality's criteria are biased and even prejudice. It has become apparent to me that race is a scapegoat, because when I stare into the abyss of discrimination, I see through spiritual eyes, and see that the root of it all is worried peoples trying to keep, find, or validate their worth.
I think we have a hard time, sanctioning sadness, and it spans across cultures, because it depreciates desirability for most, causing a shrinkage in worth. Grief seems to carry a stigma of illness. I think the perception of sadness as a weakness causes people to avoid, fear, and suppress sadness. I think we fear the lack of productivity and action that can come from being sad. It makes sense to me that America prides itself on being fit, enduring, capable, and powerful, because there is so much cultural sadness that has been suppressed, avoided, and ignored. I have found that dignity and integrity, aspects of a person's identity, are cultivated in sadness and cannot be fooled by appearances, but unfortunately the ego is easily fooled.
There are too many cultures bringing their tired, sick, and huddled masses and aren't or haven't dealt with the grief of saying good bye to the rejecting, displacing, punishing, or deteriorating places that they left behind, or worse were taken from. Likewise they are not able to have enough time and space to integrate a pride for both their losing culture and their newly adopted Culture's attitudes. This grief is spread over generations. Every lineage has a generation struggling with identity, the conquistador, colonist, refugee, slave, pioneer, immigrant, and the transient.
I did at one time buy into Shakur's perspective that seemed to reflect no changes. I bought into the idea that things won't change, until I couldn't ignore how they have. I have my own perspectives that include the noticeable changes. I look at New Mexico's prisons and see it filling with cholo's faces. I see that discrimination changes too. Young boys once, over time and their development, rarely afforded an opportunity to taste America's graces, but often expected to know how to reach out with simple willpower. These vatos locos, raised by parents who stem from a family tree rooted in a legacy of Spanish treasure hunters, then peregrinos, eventually becoming displaced villagers. People who once upon a time were conquerors, now sit in concrete pens, conquered. A culture caught by pioneering Americans resting in simplicity, and now dazzled by America's dream while bitterly denying the pain of not really being desired in its reality.
I cannot yet describe being pulled by an ever growing number of identities, the least of them being American. I am stuck between countries that never belonged to my ancestors, and yet I am tied to a land that feels like a mother. I am critical of a country that a majority of people admire. I am resistant among people hypocritically holding a mindset that understands Christianity but who thrive on lifestyles more fitting of something like capitalistianity. I struggle with both myself. I see changes, some fitting my idea of just and often confused by those changes that seem unfair. I see the dignity in my parent's dilemmas and how they have changed and arrived at their identities. All this has helped me change my idea of success.
I see that the worth my un-primped barrios carry, because mi jente, my people, are succumbing to the monetary and economic gravity of property values, putting price tags on eloquent bosque views, and corrales around pedestals revealing Sandia sunsets, selling out, figuratively and literally. Many are continuing to suffer from the disease I like to call worth, including me.
I am not the same, so I see changes. The way I look has changed. The way I see has changed. The way I love has changed. The perceptions that matter to me have changed. I have changed the way I live. At the same time I still have to live with how so much doesn't seem to change.
I am a tough person to walk with. I am constantly toggling my morals. I make convenient my principles. I hypocritically set boundaries. I safely hike into the wild, skirting the ledge of reckless, feeling the vertigo just enough to remember I am still a scared little boy deep in my soul, but with every tragedy, adventure, and fiasco I grow more and more into a man with a child's curiosity and less childishly curious.
I am an even tougher person to run with. I am not a champion marathoner, but I love the doubt in my mind that wakens when my stiff ankles ache, knees pang, and lungs hesitate. Early on in life, I recklessly tore into the trails of ambition. As life piled on stress I learn to run with a driven strategy, but the same running shoes muddied with a victim's blood.
Now I have to ask permission of my body, starting with my intention, making my way down into my chest, wondering how many breathes I still have left. They are ready as ever. On to my hips where the passion lives. Once the blood flows in these joints, its on! That doubt that wakens, it is the little person in me that wants to play near the kitchen close to grandma. It is the part of me that says "here is enough". It is the part of me that whines "do we have to".
It is the beaten part of me. The rejected part of me. The saddened part of me. The lonely part of me. It is the part of me, I now, put right up top, propped on my shoulders, discouraged and all. I let that part of me sing songs of pity. I find my will to run in the songs of pity. I don't run to race. I don't even think there's a chase. I don't measure very often. It uplifts me, and keeps me looking forward.
Despite my laziness, addictions, abnormalities, and other qualities that set me me unfortunately apart, I am internally magnificent. I am a flawed creature with an adequate capability to progress, making service an expression of joy.
What a treacherous question. When I "people watch" I can't but help but realize that what is really under the covers are my projections. So when I compare the BMW to the 68' rusted pic up it is actually a sadness for the comfort and convenience I am not willing to strive for, but more importantly know I don't need. It is awkward because I felt so close to achieving what might be called prosperity by American terms. I sit wondering what inflamed my desire to find my way back to New Mexico. I sometimes think about the cliche idea that I made it out. The "made it out" that validated the hatred that swirls along with the love I have for my home. What does I was so close mean?
It sadly means I could have lived the dreams my grandparents dreamed for me. It means I might have fulfilled the hopes my parents hoped. I could have been accepted and swam in the sea called America. I might have had the manicured lawn, cleaning lady, and facades that painted me as acceptable. I might have seemed civil, worthy of invitation to the table of fraternal America.
It also means that I would validate my ancestral self doubt. I would acknowledge the projections from taburculosis ridden refugees from the eastern metropolises of America that planted the seeds of inferiority into my barrios. These sick and desperate bodies came with an economy that wasn't superior, but desperate. Had I stayed on the course of American prosperity I would have drowned the remaining dignity that my New Mexican heritage demanded.
I was so close to selling my soul to an American shadow. I walked the edge of prostituting my heritage. I came dangerously close to abandoning a life of service for a life of worth. I had grown into an attitude of self health versus a lifestyle of symbiosis. I almost became so self interested that I left the discouraged and tired people of New Mexico to accept a minuscule role as America's nuclear garbage can.
I sat with a young woman at a bar and listened while she asked me,"didn't you have any good men in your life"? I can say with a regulated heart and passionate soul, not only did I have some chignon men in my life, but I was raised and nurtured by the most amazing Chicana women.
I don't know if I am doing enough to earn what God has blessed me with but I know I could never do enough to repay the privilege gained from the debt my ancestor have paid in doubt, humility, and loyalty to Christ. I am working really hard to love myself and realize I am still a novice at knowing what love is.
I am close to a year into being a counselor. I feel more aware of myself than I ever imagined. I can grasp the contradiction, paradoxes, and hypocrisies I encounter and I don't become as overrun with emotion. I have grown to be capable of non-judgmentality and value my judgmental characteristics.
I practice empathizing everyday, and it goes only so far. I get better and better at it with every story, assessment, and observation. My clients are teaching me to understand that there are rarely the social absolutes that I navigated in my early adulthood. One being that if you just work hard enough you can be anything you want. I know now that some people have subtle or extreme advantage. Some people have trust funds, others have land grants, others have highly educated parents, some lived in convenient places, and some just look more appealing. The simple generalizations that once helped me create allies and enemies is now a complex M.C. Escher painting where proving isn't helpful and only describing has any grip.
I drive home every day and people watch. Asking in my head what did that person do today to earn what they have? How did that person contribute to others or was it all about getting theirs? What makes that person fulfilled or are they a sieve? How come that person needs a BMW to drive the same distance that person with a 68 pick up does? What goes on in that building that they need landscaping? What would life be like without business and money? I accept that what people think what they need is growing and so is there need to feel deserving of everything...me too.
I think about what people spend money on and wonder how interesting and creative their rationality becomes for the waste. It becomes a way of creatively justifying the hints of immorality to counter any contradiction, upholding and building a reason that fits a socially acceptable category. I think everyday that if we only took what we need and shared our extras, would we have poverty, heroin addicts, luxury cars, races, fences, hair stylists, airplanes, electrical grids, licensing boards, passports, visas, or nuclear weapons facilities. Would we need social media? Would we have more gardens than bars? Would we have community fitness versus elite memberships? Would we have a healthier industry around health care? Would be still create economies and products out of wellness?
The brain might function the same way in every human. The brain might release the same types of hormones, synthesize chemical cocktails in the same way, and grow and die in the same way, but each brain will never experience the same scenarios with the same perceptions. We cannot ignore the possibility that individual medicine will not be enough to also be a social medicine. The disease I like to call "worth" manipulates humans into making luxuries into necessities and needs too expensive.
I am learning that there isn't an audience that is looking for a cure but more an industry profiting from the lack of a critical perspective on genuine care of health. The insurance arena, the pharmaceutical arena, and the marketeers of this modern culture of care seem to saddle up the professionals and ride them, feed them just enough, groom them, and appease them so they can themselves escape the existential tragedy of simplicity. I don't understand the value in profiting from human fear of suffering or the actually suffering itself. I have hope in health but not from a business or professional perspective, but from my own change in perspective. Give to Lovelace what is Lovelace's and trust there is healing that will go beyond policies and coverages. The illness might be in what we find worth it because where I see money gravitating is in the bank accounts of a new form of unhealthy people who suffer from the disease I call "worth".
I find myself collecting hours of therapeutic moments. I am guilty of believing I care and then find myself contributing toxically.
I finished my first class for fun. Like nacho libre, sometimes Chancho, when you are a man you take graduate courses with other stretchy minds, for fun. I finished my first semester of course work dedicated to enriching my mind versus my profitability.
It was just as stressful as in graduate school, and I often found myself wondering why the fuck I do this shit. Why, fatherhood, two jobs, and school what was I thinking. Like those self created Crossfit workouts that through the middle I have my throat burning, lower back aching, and physical therapists eagerly waiting. Then the light shines through a crease. I love seeing the light. I live for learning.
So what has this layer of life left me with. What mark is life leaving on my forehead?
I'll start with the soppy poetic shit first.
I see love where hate thrives. I see blossoms of admiration in fields of envy. I see sadness when vengeance torques. I see potential where pools of laziness smolder. I see hope, maybe lost, maybe tossed as prayer, along the glistening tracks of tears.
I have shaped my sadness that once took the shape of anger. It once looked hardened, and now I've learned it is malleable.
I have harnessed my passion that once scattered like rage. It has me powering through in symbiotic directions.
I rerouted my doubt that once fueled my cynicism. I look gracefully on progress and the "no-rep", especially because I'm still breathing. This means simply that I haven't died yet. I am turning I can't into i'll get there.
What I have observed, through my late onset of adolescence, is accepted pity, self-deprecation, and toxic humility have been hard habits to undo. I look at my cultures similarly and recognize the same paradoxical qualities. I look at myself not as of a culture but as culture. I seek out the economy, injustice, balance, and the tangential effects that cause peoples to "be".
I don't have time to prove anymore. It feels a lot like my remaining life might be to play the instrument I have built myself to be. I feel like my life will be to contribute where as before it had been to contrive. I'm not resigning my ability to change or grow. I have a responsibility to make learning part of my contribution, my song, a melody.
I get to learn now and I feel different, I feel like an adult. I am rooting myself in G R A V I T A S.
Returning from a immersion with a team studying, observing, and even some being called to Curanderismo has me, once again, remembering to ask for balance. Where there is energy, I'll likely find light. Where there is light I'll likely find heat. Where there is heat I'll find movement. Curar!
