In my lifestyles, I have taken many journeys with out which I could now not have experienced critical truths. My father started us off early, taking us on many trips to assist us remember the fact that true information comes most effective from revel in. We took journeys every winter wreck to Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, and to Jamaica and Trinidad, my dad and mom’ native land for Christmas. Silly matters I keep in mind from those trips include the mango chili sauce at the pork in Maui, the names of the girls who gave out the towels by using the swimming pools in Selva Verde, Costa Rica, eating dinner at 10 p.M. In Spain. These had been all vacationer reviews that I, at the start, located spellbinding. My truths had been the truths of the visitor brochures: stunning inns, seashores, and cities. I did now not see the blindfolds. I did no longer recognize how being held hostage by way of the beauty of the floor—the seashores and cities—blinded me to the absence of Puerto Rican natives at the streets of San Juan; I did not apprehend how the prevalence and familiarity of English conspired to veil the splendor of the Spanish language under volumes of English translations.
I learned more about those truths in my sophomore yr of high college, once I was amongst a group of college students selected to visit Cuba. My grandmother was born in Cuba, but I had never concept to investigate my very own historical past. I have remained the naïve American who saw Castro as a few distant enemy of my u . S ., accepting this as reality due to the fact this regarded to be the popular expertise. I soon became intrigued, however, with this supposed plague to my freedom, my tradition, and everything excellent and respectable. I started out to assume, just what is communism besides? What’s so bad approximately Castro and Cuba—and I listen they've excellent espresso. I believed that what changed into lacking changed into a lack of knowledge between our cultures, and that reputation of our differences might come most effective with understanding.
My first impression of Cuba changed into the absence of commercialism. I noticed no massive golden arch engaging hungry Cubans with beef-laced fries; I did see billboards of Che Guevara and signposts exhorting team spirit and love. I realized, but, that lots of the individuality that I relished here is probably gone if the exchange blockades in Cuba have been ever lifted. The parallels and the irony were not misplaced on me. I became stepping out of an American political cave that shrouded the splendor of Cuba and moving into another, one constructed on patriotic socialism, one wherein truths have been simply as ideological as, but very different from, mine.
History, I identified, is in no way objective. The trips I have taken had been coloured by means of my previous studies and by using what my feelings were in the ones moments. Everyone holds a bit of the reality. Maybe facts don’t be counted. Perhaps my enjoy is my reality and the greater truths I listen from all of us else, the closer I will get to harmonization. Maybe there is no harmony, and I ought to undergo lifestyles difficult and being challenged, possibly finding views from which I can extract—but in no way name—truth. I ought to certainly locate ways to apprehend others, to are seeking for in them what's commonplace to us all and possibly at some point locate unity in our common human bond. This is what life has taught me so far, my sum of truths gleaned from experiencing many cultures. I don’t realize if those truths will keep, however I hope that my college enjoy can be like my journey to Cuba—hard some truths, strengthening others, and assisting me revel in new ones.
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Author : Aron Long |
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