Rules, Feelings, Fun part 2

Yesterday when I was out for a walk I heard someone call out my name. I looked up and saw a happy, smiling face. It was Carolina. The same Carolina that I had played basketball with and who I wrote about in my editorial on rules, feelings and fun.

She was excited to see me and it was nice to see her, too. Her smile... well what can I say? Some children just have a smile that ... well I really don't even know how to describe it.

It is bright, but it is not a light. Yet when you see it, it lightens your troubles, if you have any or adds to your pleasure of being alive if you are enjoying life already. I feel sad to think that this smile is going to lose its brilliance, its magic over the next few years. Carolina is 11 now and I am afraid the feelings that radiate through her smile are going to be slowly killed or poisoned or however you want to say it. I am not sure exactly what happens in the brain and body but I know it is all about chemicals and neurons and connections and such. The connections that lead to the beautiful smile she has now are going to be lost. I wish I  could somehow protect those connections and safeguard that smile. 

I wish I could freeze this moment in her life and keep her the way she is right now. I can understand a little more how parents feel when they see their smiling, energetic children turn cynical, sarcastic and lethargic.

Some people might believe this kind of change is a natural part of life, but I don't believe that. I believe the change is a result of the negative environment adults have created in so many parts of this world. By removing myself from the unhealthy environment I tried to live in for so many years I have been able to feel young again, and at 46 I see myself having fun, laughing and smiling in child-like ways. I feel younger now than I did when I was studying for exams in highschool and the universities. And younger than I did when I was dressing up in the costume of suits and ties and going into a building full of other people in suits and ties and needlessly expensive clothes. So if I can still laugh and smile then I don't believe it is a necessary part of life to lose our ability to smile like children. Still, not all children have the genetic makeup to smile like Carolina.

She is a very special person, but I doubt her parents can see this. Very few parents can see their children for who they are and who they can be, since they are too preoccupied with trying to turn them into something the parents and society wants them to be.

But at anyrate, Carolina, her older brother, her younger sister and her cousin and a neighbor went to play basketball again. This time, though, it was much different. Her brother took the game too seriously. He kept playing very aggressively. He kept taking the ball from both Carolina and her younger sister. He was the only one shooting on his team. He almost never passed the ball to anyone else on his team. I tried to make the game more fun but he almost never smiled and he never once laughed. I tried to set an example of helping the team that was behind, as I did the last time I played, but he didn't follow this example. At one point the score was 12 to 0. Then I started to feel a little competitive myself and made sure that we scored at least once. When we stopped playing I think the score was 16 to 2. Of course I could have scored as much as I wanted to but I wanted to keep trying to show that scoring was not that important.

I feel very sad now to think of what happened yesterday and what I saw. Her brother is just 14 years old. Already he has adopted society's values even over the feelings of his own sisters. He was literally taking the ball out of the hands of his 8 year old
sister. At one point she stopped playing. She just sat on the ground and looked away. I stopped the game to ask her why but she didn't want to talk about it. So I just said, "you don't want to play anymore?" and she said "no". So I accepted this and left her alone. Later, though, I told her that we needed her because we were so far behind. A  minute or two later she came back into the game. But she wasn't having nearly as much fun as she did the first time we all played.

I feel a little regret that I didn't stop the game to ask everyone how they were feeling, especially to ask Carolina and her little sister how they feel when their brother takes the ball from them or blocks a shot. I could have asked them what is really important -
exercise, fun, feelings or winning. At this point in his life the brother was not too worried about the rules. He didn't stop the game every time Carolina broke one of the rules, like when she would stop dribbling then start again. But I imagine this will come
in the future. It really hurts me to think of what will happen to Carolina living everyday in the same home as someone like this and in the society we have created.

Carolina ran to the house to get her English notebook, by the way, after we had played basketball. I have seen a lot of English workbooks since I have been in Ecuador but I have never seen one where the student had done as much work on her own as Carolina had. She had looked up all the words she didn't know and penciled them in. Even the words in the names of the chapter tiles.

Carolina reminds me of Ayu from Indonesia. She had one of those smiles. She had such self-confidence. Though she could only say a few words in English, she came up to me on the beach with a piece of paper and insisted that I sign my name. Later I found out her English teacher had given this as an assignment, to go up to tourists and try to talk to them and get their signature. I visited Ayu several times while I was in Indonesia and each time she was so happy to see me and so eager to practice English. It hurts me to think what will happen to her too. She lives in a place where they tell the females that, among other things, during their monthly periods they are too "dirty" to enter the buildings were all the religious propaganda and brainwashing takes place.

She will be subjected to the suffocating Indonesian culture for the rest of her life, or at least until she can get out of there. But the chances of that are not good. Her family has almost no money and it is harder and harder now for Indonesians to go anywhere, just as it is harder for people here to leave this tiny part of the world called the country of Ecuador. This is thanks to the politics and psychological sickness of the adults who control the money and the weapons in the world. When I think of adults and governments and religions I feel sick to my stomach. But when I see a face like Ayu's or Carolina...

I can't finish that sentence because I am starting to cry.

So I let myself cry and I think of going to get Carolina and Ayu and taking them to a place which doesn't exist.

Then I think of my friend Sasha, who has been cutting for years and who has tried to kill herself more than once. And I think of her mother, who I have gotten to know a little better now. I see how toxic she is and I understand. I understand why Sasha cuts and why she wanted to die. And I wonder what Sasha would be like now if someone had taken her away from the person who has legal power over her.  And I hope one day children and teenagers will have more freedom.

Financial freedom would be a good start. With all the money in the world being spent on things like ties, make up and gold jewelry I wonder if maybe we couldn't set up more funds to give people like Sasha and my other teenage friends like Sarah, and Anna in England and Anna in Australia, and my not-yet teen friends Ayu and Carolina to get away from their parents and get away from their religions and get away from their cultures before they lose the will to learn and the will to live.

And we also need to give them more legal freedom and stop having police forcibly take them back to places which are unhealthy for them when they try to leave. We need to give them more options so they can do something more with the gifts that nature has given them. The whole world will be more livable when we make these
changes. But sadly, right now it seems the people with guns and money are thinking in totally opposite directions.

People in the USA, for example, are making it harder for teenagers to have freedom, they are making international travel more difficult, they are making everyone more afraid of everything. When I tell people from other countries that in the USA, the so-called land of the free, that schools are not threatening teenagers with jail if they don't go into the buildings called schools, they find this hard to believe. But it is true. Visit the website of the West Bend, Wisconsin school district if you don't believe me.

So I am doing what I can here in this small city called Otavalo, in this small country called Ecuador. I am doing what I can to help keep the connections alive in the brains of people like the bright star called Carolina.

S. Hein
July 18, 2004
Otavalo, Ecuador