Speaking Without Words

Over the past 4 years, I have traveled to Central American many times, each time with a particular purpose: to explore, understand, and support the resolution of the injustices that are present here in the world between the United States and Colombia.  Each journey dove deeper into the structural, cultural, and political causes of the hunger, violence, and injustice prevalent throughout this land of lakes and volcanoes. Each time I set foot in these places my agenda was "analyze", "ask questions", and "find answers", however in the past few weeks, it seems my agenda has included a more diverse schedule.

In some moments, as I step across the familiar cobblestone streets of Antigua, walking to the print shop or passing by Central Park on my way to buy some bread, as I sit at the bow of a boat skimming across the silky water of Lake Atitlán, feeling just a sprinkle of rain hit my skin, as I feel the warm sun on the back of my neck as I talk with a young Guatemalan with the soul much older than mine, or as I sit at dinner with friends discussing fears and personalities, I feel myself forget to analyze. I forget to connect all the social and political factors together into a map leading me directly to my place in society at that moment.

Instead, I feel the pressure of each stone through my shoes on the balls of my feet, the sharp and the dull, the angled and the flat, the rough and the smooth. I hear the music of flutes and drums in Central Park as a band plays for onlookers. I let the wind of the lake whip across my face, holding my attention with its gentle touch yet roaring sound.

I feel the droplets of rain touch my skin as small reminders that I am alive. I sit and do nothing, creating space to see the people around me as humans rather than sociological pawns. I hear the laughter of a friend as I feel the same sound escape from my own chest.

As we drive home from a National Hospital, the smell of the truck exhaust in front of us pinches my nose with its unnatural stench. The spiciness of jalapeño pupusas sits on my tongue for just a moment longer than usual, breaking from my usual hasty eating to experience the food. I walk lightly through ancient ruins, imagining the people who 500 years ago walked the same path.

I feel the soft touch of a friend's hand as we dance together, laughing and smiling as the only ones brave enough to let the music move us. I see the reflection of people in a puddle as they walk by, a portal into another world. I feel the bump and rattle of the camionetas we ride to class each Monday and Wednesday, noticing the detail and intricacy of the designs on each one.

In these moments I am pulled from my demanding mind and find peace in the sensory experiences of the world around me. There is no analysis, there is no larger contextual connection, there is only feeling, tasting, hearing, seeing, smell, and moving. The details of the world around me light up through my senses, reaching deep into my muscles, telling me each stone's texture through my toes, each droplet's weight through my skin, each human's emotion through my eyes, and each taste of life through my tongue. Without words, the world describes itself to me.


I am not sure why these experiences have been so prevalent lately. Maybe because my purpose on this trip is not really to analyze or process, maybe because the person who taught me the value of these experience has been on my mind quite frequently of late, maybe it is because I am not engulfed in searching for an answer because I have not asked a question... there could be many reasons. It really doesn't matter why.

Sometimes the only thing that matters is that I am here, in this complex and diverse world, filled with experiences, people, tastes, sounds, sensations, and emotions. I am one living organism speaking with the world through my life, a dance of soul and sense, a moment in time to be felt to its fullest extent.

Identity, Occupation, and Environment

In many ways, I think my generation in the United States has become obsessed with the idea of authenticity, identity, and the true self. I am not sure exactly why this preoccupation has emerged within my age group, and one could speculate reasons regarding many things, both negative and positive like narcissism, historical context, or even a reaction to a consumerist and wasteful culture. Whichever may be the cause, we have seen the emergence of identity seekers shape the environment and occupations of our society into a young generation that values local beers, "alternative" lifestyles, nuanced or sometimes new aged religious beliefs, and diversity. Our identities, our true selfs, emerge from the interaction between our agency and the environment around us, occupation. Our occupations become integral to the expression of our identity, acting as the means through which we create our persona in this world.

I am laying on a blanket in a park in Cincinnati with my shirt off, reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed with a friend playing Arcade Fire songs on her guitar next to me. These activities relate to and facilitate an identity for myself both in my mind and the minds of others, a university educated, urban living, male in the United States.

I sit in a coffee shop with another student discussing our shared experience in Nicaragua and the merits of fair trade products and the potential pitfalls of genetically modified organisms. An identity emerges through this engagement, a traveled, cultured, socially aware global citizen.

These occupations, the ways that we live our lives, create an identity that our generation believes is deeply rooted in the authenticity of the soul, the true human essence.

As I spent the past week and a half here in Guatemala, I have realized that there is both a lasting truth and deceitful lie intertwined with this true self concept. As I have walked through the streets of Antigua, spoke with locals, and simply sat in the park, I have found a forced identity shift because of the changes in what I am doing and environment in which I am doing it.

I sit modestly dressed, with a backpack sitting next to me, camera hidden within, taking notes on a bench in Central Park. In that moment, no matter what, my white skin, height, clothing, and my lack of a native routine will always connect me to my identity as a visitor, a foreigner. This identity is forced to the surface of every unclear interaction, unfamiliar exchange, or even passing glance. In the United States, I may have thought of myself as alternative or slightly outside the mainstream, yet here I am far from the most alternative gringo who walks barefoot in the street with Aladdin-like pants, a tie die tank top, dreadlocks, and a guitar slung around his back. I am foreign, white, and most usually expected to not speak Spanish and never expected to speak any of the 23 native languages.

Here in Guatemala, my environment has had a profound impact on what I do and how I do it which therefore has had a noticeable impact on my perception of my own identity. But is this such a bad thing, to be forced to reform and reassess my identity within this new context, new environment. Some in my generation might claim travesty that the Guatemalan context simplifies me to a white foreigner, most likely "helping" poor Guatemalans through a mission trip.  People my age might say I am being unfairly pigeonholed into an identity that isn't "truly" me.

Is it not? Is this white, middle class, man, taking notes and pictures here in Guatemala not who I "truly" am. Well, like I said, this is both a truth and a lie. As much as my generation might want it to be, I have come to realize, our identity is not like a stone sitting in a river, being moved or thrown about, chipped our smoothed on the surface but with an unchanging, unbending core. We are not the same in every environment with which we interact.

We are much more like a toy box, filled with many different identities, both small and large, some of which have drifted toward the bottom. The identities that lie on the surface, just as you open our lid, depend on what the person who you are engaging with most usually plays with and toys you make most easily found. Your environment through your occupations within it, often pulls to the surface the part of your identity that it most wants, sometimes taking just what is on top, and sometimes digging deep into the parts of ourselves with which we have never engaged. We are always changing, reorganizing, and reinventing the identities within our selfs to interact with the world. We might be able to maintain a static identity if we did not do anything, however to be human is to occupy our time, to do, to be, and to be alive. Our identity is something richer, deeper, and more fluid than a simple label or a single story.

So yes, I am a university educated, urban living, male as well as a somewhat traveled, generally socially aware person. However, part of my identity is also simply a white person from the United States who is visiting Guatemala for a short time. This is no more or less authentically part of who I am and becoming aware of that fact may inform and enrich how I go about engaging with this new context. Understanding what that newly emerging identity means for my place here in Guatemala challenges me to understand how I fit into this contextual puzzle, if I am, as Frank Kronenberg would say, "doing well with" the Guatemalan people.

Recognizing the many parts of my identity through the things that I do every day, being aware of them, and understanding their relationship to the world around me will help me to better understand how I can use the many toys in my toy box to support change toward justice in our world. Being aware the many facets of my being will better equip me to relate, engage, and be open to the people and experiences waiting for me in the world. Our generation has clung to the idea that we each have an single unchanging truth that runs in the core of our being, and that may be true in some ways, however our identity and the occupations associated with it are malleable, changing, things that allow us to disconnect and connect with our world.

We are part of the world around us, shaping and being shaped by it. We exist with our world, not in spite of it and our occupations help us discover what that existence looks like and means.