Descartes, the French philosopher, changed modern philosophy with a single question: Of what can I be certain? In the end, Descartes concluded that there were only two facts about which he could be certain. The first was embodied in his now famous statement, “I think therefore I am.” The second, that god exists. All of my life, I have had my own version of Descartes’
facts. The first is that all things die and one day so shall I. The second was the confidence that no matter how difficult, how miserable, how desperate the circumstances into which I had been born, I would have become the person I now am. If not the person I am now, then certainly, I would have been as successful as I am now.
One need only look at my life to see that this confidence is not misplaced. I nearly died at birth. I suffered severe abuse as a child, near blindness, anorexia… and here I am. Alive. Successful. I not only survived. I followed my dream and left the horrors of my childhood and the challenges of adulthood behind. I am tough, disciplined, focused, and when it comes to pursuing what I want, I am single-minded, passionate, and relentless.
Until Trujillo.
No, it wasn’t the poverty. I have seen poverty at least that bad before. I had been through rural Maine and eastern Kentucky. What I had not seen in person, I had seen in books, on TV…. Besides, the sense of hopelessness that seemed so much apart of my childhood never clouded my determination. It never stopped me from dreaming. When times were the hardest I had found the strength to stand in the face of adversity and survive. No, I didn’t just survive. I actually thrived.
But it was different in Trujillo.
Every day in Trujillo is the same as the one before and identical to the one that will follow it. Each day is as it has been for generations. People bathe in the river as they have since the sixteenth century. People wash their clothes in the river as they have since 1502. There is no sense of a world beyond. No sense that life can be more than it is. No sense of the possibilities the world beyond the narrow confines of Trujillo holds. No sense of tomorrow. No sense that there is a reason to want something more.
The waters of the Caribbean rose over the edge of the beach and washed over my feet. The sun was still low in the sky. Restless, I had left my hotel room. It had been a long nyght. A long, restless nyght that still burned against my desire to sleep. A part of me had died and I did not know what to make of what had happened to me. Like Koestler’s Rubashov, I no longer believed in my infallibility. I no longer believed that one way or another I would have become the person I am now. Never in all my life had I been so possessed by self doubt. Never.
The wheels of the plain struck the tarmac in Greensboro. As I always do, I chose to sleep during the aircraft’s descent. As the plain rose and then settled again, I remember wondering who I might have been……
Tags: beach, Honduras, Koestler, NyghtFalcon, poverty, Rubashov, sunset, Trujillo
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