There is a wonderful set of indigenous Guatemalan girls that live in the small mountain town of el Hato that cook and clean at the lodge I reside. They smile and giggle at everything that anyone does and they just seem happy for no other reason than life swarming around them. I heard recently about a documentary that creates a formula; once a certain level of basic needs are fulfilled, everyone has the same actual quantity of happiness. I found it to be a lovely thought because it says what we already know -- a mansion does not make us happier than a hut if the right person is inside of it and you are warm together by the fire.
I asked one of the girls today while she swept if she had ever been outside of Antigua and she said she had not, but only 20 minutes down the road to sell things at the market. She had not been the capital 45 minutes away by bus, and certainly not outside Guatemala. I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes, someday, when she has more money.
I thought about it then and again later and again tonight more and I wonder how someone even begins to conceptualize a world that is six square miles. I suppose the answer to that is that it is easy to conceptualize a world so small. You probably know all the details and the hidden paths and the best places to escape the noise and find some quiet, but what happens when someone describes an airplane that takes off from a runway and goes over a large ocean for hours and then lands on some set of land where they speak different languages? How does that enter your brain and make the slightest bit of sense.
This though isn't a new thought or an old one really. The world was bigger for people before Columbus's time and it was also just as small. But part of me wants to buy them all a two-way bus ticket on their day off and all of us go into the capital together. We won't leave the car really because it is dangerous as hell, but we will just look out the windows and watch the people and slowly make our way back to the hills around Antigua. I'm not sure what would happen. Probably nothing. Though I can bet there would be more smiles and laughs and then things would carry on like they always have.
I asked one of the girls today while she swept if she had ever been outside of Antigua and she said she had not, but only 20 minutes down the road to sell things at the market. She had not been the capital 45 minutes away by bus, and certainly not outside Guatemala. I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes, someday, when she has more money.
I thought about it then and again later and again tonight more and I wonder how someone even begins to conceptualize a world that is six square miles. I suppose the answer to that is that it is easy to conceptualize a world so small. You probably know all the details and the hidden paths and the best places to escape the noise and find some quiet, but what happens when someone describes an airplane that takes off from a runway and goes over a large ocean for hours and then lands on some set of land where they speak different languages? How does that enter your brain and make the slightest bit of sense.
This though isn't a new thought or an old one really. The world was bigger for people before Columbus's time and it was also just as small. But part of me wants to buy them all a two-way bus ticket on their day off and all of us go into the capital together. We won't leave the car really because it is dangerous as hell, but we will just look out the windows and watch the people and slowly make our way back to the hills around Antigua. I'm not sure what would happen. Probably nothing. Though I can bet there would be more smiles and laughs and then things would carry on like they always have.
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