Chronicles from the South

I taught my first class in over a year earlier this week. Suddenly, after months away—comfortably sheltered between parentheses—I stood once again before 27 pairs of eyes, stressing the importance of proper pronunciation and the position of accent marks. “No one gets out of doing their homework, and everyone should do their best to participate,” I heard myself saying. In the span of an instant, I felt a world away from Uruguay.

However, what I hope to teach my students over the course of this semester (and all those yet to come) is to look through the cracks in this grand structure we call language—just one of the metaphorical dividing lines between us and them, here and there—to find what unites their lives with the world around them.

I will tell them, for example, that my time in South America has actually resembled my experience in the southern part of America. I will reiterate what they already know: My wanderings through the South have taught me that sometimes the simplest things in life are the finest, and that even if you don’t earn much, humility and respect always pay big. I’ll introduce them to something new: Life—like sweet tea and mate—is always better when taken slowly and with friends. Most importantly, though, I hope to convey what may be the best lesson of all: Even the most far-off places are intrinsically connected by a common journey we must all undertake—the pursuit of life.

So, the position of accent marks may never be relative, but our position in the world is, since the path we choose to create is always more significant than our final destination.

Thank you for joining me on this phase of my journey, and may the chronicles of your life lead you to the South.

New Old Life

I recently read Nando Parrado´s Miracle in the Andes, a first-person account of the 1972 plane crash that took the lives of 29 Uruguayan rugby players, and launched the remaining 16 into reluctant stardom. You might remember the 1993 film "Alive." It was fact, not fiction.

Anyway, for lack of a better term, I devoured the book, hanging on every word, every harrowing moment, every attempt to stay alive. Parrado´s perspective transported me directly to the crash site, where I tried to imagine my role had I been trapped in the Andes for 72 days.

It was a futile attempt; I will never know how I would´ve reacted in that exact situation. Be that as it may, aspects of Parrado´s story resonated with me. At the time of the crash, he considered himself a dreamer: a wanderer in constant, restless search of new challenges and adventures.

As he and his childhood friends clung precariously to life—merely existing from one breath to the next—Parrado mentions a revelation, one that ultimately saved his life. It went something like this: Love is the only force worth living for and the only real adventure. His account turned the “tragedy in the Andes,” as it often referred to here, into a miracle, proving that love—the kind we feel for our family, friends, lovers, and life—is the only thing powerful enough to move us over mountains.

I´d like to think I know what Parrado is talking about and that, in some small way, I´ve united my biggest adventures and challenges with the love I feel for others. The circumstances of my life may have led me far from the place I was born, but they have´t led me away from the people I love and who love me, since I seem to find both everywhere I go.

So, as 2008 transitioned seamlessly to 2009, I remembered it doesn´t take being trapped in the Andes to realize such an important lesson. It doesn´t take being far from home, and it certainly doesn´t take a new year. Each day gives us the opportunity to build a new life based on the old, in which we construct who we are and the path before us on one foundation alone: love and miracles.

My first sunrise of 2009.