I may not be Venezuelan, but as a Native American, I know exactly how max feels. I definitely feel a sense of responsibility to one day go back and try to help the native community and make a positive impact on the reservation. I didn't even grow up there. It's a sense of responsibility that comes from deep within me somewhere, and I don't even know exactly where. A native professor gave a keynote at a conference I helped arrange recently, and he brought up something I'll remember. Western civilization places a lot of emphasis on rights. The right to leave the rez. The right to leave Venezuela. But many native cultures have always placed more emphasis on responsibility. You can't just look out for yourself. At the same time, I want to live in a city. I want to work in the tech industry. I don't want to live on the reservation for the rest of my life. But I do want to go back and help. I think there's certainly a balance that can be made, there, max, and I think it's great that you want to go back and help your community. I think you're on a great path, and I'm sure you'll be able to find some semblance of balance between the life you want for yourself and the life you want to give to your community. I know I'll be working to try to achieve the same thing.
You know, Kuwi. I guess that responsiblity you describe borns out of a sense of what would be opposite of entitlement, gratefulness, perhaps. We feel fortunate that we live a good life and have a higher education, something not everyone in our respective cultures have achieved easily, especially in the past. We see them, the unfortunate ones and hope that perhaps, helping a little, using this priviledge of ours, can, like Prometheus brought the fire to the humans, share this advantage with others.
Then, and I know that you share this with me, there's the sense of inadequacy. You see, my skin is relatively fair and my childhood quite sheltered, so I have always felt a a bit of an outcast with those I consider my own people. We speak the same language, but we at the same time, don't. They see me as a snobbish when I make a reference they don't get and even more out of synch when I don't get a reference of theirs. I feel in a bit of a limbo.
In my case, it's worse, I like to write and I write science fiction and sometimes I write in English and it means I'm not useful to the community. I don't know a trade that can help others. My grandfather wanted to be an artist, his father told him no: You can be a doctor, a teacher or an engineer, that's it. Grandpa became an agricultural engineer and now that is old and his dream, the dream of all the agricultural engineers of Venezuela being that alimentary self-suficiency a failure, I wonder if he had prefered to be an artist.
I deeply appreciate you, Kuwi. I wish I was more like, to be honest. And if you find the balance, please tell me.
