Mixed emotions on a voyage home…

I have had mixed emotions since my return to the States. I am happy to be home because I have anxiously missed my close friends and family (more specifically my brother-in-law, sister, papa, and mama). I cannot begin to accurately describe how excited I was to see my mother in the airport as I came home. It was like I was waiting in a candy store to grab that lollipop that every child jealously stares at through the window seal, hoping to have a delicious taste. Strangely enough, I miss Peru. The Peruvian family in Cusco of Waldo, Estella, and Marcello slowly became what felt like my family. Marcello had many difficulties in the pronunciation of my name. He could not say the typical “James” in its American, English form. He even had a little trouble pronunciating “James” with the “H,” spoken in Spanish instead of the “J” spoken in English. It would sound literally as if you were saying “Hi-May” in the English language. Marcello referred to me at “Chi-May.” I do not know why he called me Chi-May, but I knew what he meant. I miss his nickname for me as well as his little adventures looking to break everything in the house or seeking any sort of trouble his tiny hands could grab.

I also see how abundant my life is here in the States. This is by no means a bad thing. The culture shock does not come for me when I go to another country. The culture shock comes when I arrive back into my own country because I guess I have gotten use to life from wherever I am coming from to return home, even if where I am coming from is several different places involving many different cities in many different countries. I come home, and it is like everything here is so different. I do not mean different like it has changed so drastically since I left. What I mean is that perhaps my perspective has changed. I walk into a grocery store or a mall, and I am blown away by all the nice things we easily have at our disposal for purchase as Americans. Sometimes we have things so good we do not realize how good we have them.

As a continuation of this thought, a good example is one child (or really an adult in his late 20’s and possibly even in his early 30’s) that I met while working with street kids in Cusco. This child has forms of antisocialism, schizophrenia, temperaments that were and still are sometimes very aggressive, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and so on. Some of these behaviors are mild, but some are what psychiatrists may consider the extreme. I have bipolar disorder and only bipolar disorder. This illness has certainly presented its challenges in its manic manifestations, but I cannot imagine living thirty years with the struggles of more mental disabilities than I can count on one hand. I do not type this to point out as flaws in the characteristics of those who have disabilities but rather to show that my mental struggles and situations in life are very minor compared to what some people face every single day. My handful of responsibilities is minor, and I have been given more gifts in my personality that I even want to go through right now. The bottom line is to be thankful for what God has given you. I have learned to be appreciative because I have seen many lives of the disabled, and even though I may be classified with a legal disability by the Americans with Disabilities Act, I have it so good that my disabilities are very minor in comparison to many of those who I met on my journeys through South America.

Some of my sad thoughts come from the fact that many Americans just quite frankly seem ungrateful. We, including myself, often want more after we already have so much. This may be in the form of something as small as a new DVD or perhaps even bigger with a personal new car. In Copacabana, Bolivia (town near Lake Titicaca), I witnessed families, friends, and couples celebrating the fact that they had a new car. A personal car is so rare in La Paz and perhaps even Bolivia in general that people celebrate the blessing of having one. In our society, it is almost expected that you have a car, unless you live in a publicly mobile city like New York or San Francisco. People will say, “I am so thankful,” especially when Thanksgiving is around the corner, but do actions represent such a thought? In the same instance, we will complain because the turkey is not cooked well enough. We eat so much food at Thanksgiving that a South American family could probably live off such for three weeks or possibly more, and the bad thing is that half the food is usually thrown out because “it goes bad.”

Please realize all these realizations apply to my life just as much as they may other Americans; maybe that is the reason why I am struggling as such. How do I apply such actualized thankfulness in the form of an example? Less complaining is probably a start.

If you read this entry, just remember where you live, where you come from, and what you have to be thankful for. We, as Americans, live in one of the greatest nations on the planet, and yet if you watch the news, broadcasters have nothing positive to say, except all the things our politicians are doing wrong. Let’s think about what is going right. Many of us have food, shelter, and clothing. Even with just those simple things, you live better than most of the world’s population. We are blessed, and God certainly deserves recognition for all.