The View From Here...

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
New Year’s Eve

Tomorrow the world will awaken to the year 2009. Today is the last day of the year 2008 and, like many people, I look back at the year that is closing. What have I done? What has happened in the world. What has been lost and what has been gained? How have I grown? What did I want from this year and how much of it did I take, how much did I leave on the table?

Last year at this time I was looking forward to an evening with friends, and with my new friend Jimmy Danko, with whom I had not yet fallen in love. I was planning to move out of the country and start a business. I was planning to learn a language really well and to learn about a new culture. I was planning to do all of these things alone. Today I sit on the terrace of an apartment I own with my love Jimmy Danko and we are planning an evening with friends. I am learning acceptance of a new culture. I am far from speaking Spanish really well, but I’m getting my message across. I have decided that owning a business in Buenos Aires is the last thing on Earth I want to do. I am far from alone.

The world did not yet know, on this day last year, that global financial collapse was imminent or that a black man with an arab sounding name would soon be president of the United States. In some ways we were more hopeful then, in other ways more cynical. So much has happened this year. So much has changed. We have all learned so much. We have lost much, and are not yet sure what has been gained. This is a moment for the world that requires trust, patience and hope. We can not even begin to understand the impact of all that has happened yet. The same is true for me.

Jimmy and I moved in to our new apartment this week. We watched the sunset the first night on the terrace and woke the next morning to the sun coming up over our bedroom. With a 250 degree view of the city from the tallest building in the area we are always bathed in natural light. Even at night the lights of the city give our space a warm glow. Our apartment is not finished. We don’t have a shower or a kitchen yet, concrete floors, only 3 lights that hang from wires in the ceiling. The space is covered with concrete dust and during the day with workmen, doing what they do. Though I struggle with the dust and disorganization I am comforted to be home at last. Jimmy and I left our home in San Diego at the beginning of May and have not since unpacked our suitcases or lived anywhere of our own. This space belongs to us and while I don’t believe in the concept of permanence, there is still part of me that longs for a place of my own from which to go out and greet the world.

It was from this vantage point that I finally found a perspective from which to build a working relationship with Buenos Aires. Other people say Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, metropolitan, elegant even. I do not find it so. What I do find is that as I look out over the city from my terrace in the sky at all the ugly concrete buildings and the smog my eye will land on a 100 year old building with a beautiful dome and spire, all colored glass and lead. I think to myself as I look at it that nowhere in the world do they build things like that any more. It is unique, not another on the planet is just the same. The man who built it is long since dead and yet it stands there between two ugly concrete block buildings looking as delicate and artistic as it did when it was built.

There are beautiful things about Buenos Aires and it is good to be able to see it. In some ways I envy the people who only see the dome and miss all the rest. It is not my way of seeing the world though. This is the magic of the city for me. It is a busy, crowded, hurried, ugly place of concrete and smog, filled with rude people. Still, every once in a while one of those people will smile kindly and offer their heart to me. Every once in a while I will look up from the decay and see something that refuses to give in to the ugliness. Every once in a while Buenos Aires will surprise me. San Diego is a beautiful, comfortable city, but it never surprised me.

Somehow the Universe has conspired to have us here for a while longer, no telling how long. Buenos Aires is not the place I want to live the rest of my life but I find I am not unhappy to be “stuck” here for a while. I am still working on that language thing. When I left the states I imagined that I would learn about another culture. Learning about a culture is something you do by reading and talking to people, by studying its history. Accepting a culture is something you do by living there. My Argentine friend Gabriel submitted, during a discussion about the differences, that people everywhere are the same. I concede that we are the same in many ways, but if we were the same in all ways no one would travel or go to live in another culture. I am here, as all the extranjeros are, because it is different here. Knowing that is one thing. Accepting it is something else altogether.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions because every day of my life I am growing and changing, and the world changes around me. Still, as I look ahead at the coming year I imagine there will be things I will reach for. I want to communicate meaningfully in Spanish. That will require studying Spanish, but it will also require that I understand that words are not the only tools for deep and meaningful communication. I want to find my way back to financial security and that is going to require doing some things differently in this changing climate. I want to continue to make a difference in the way people see things and understand the world. I want to grow as a Leader and as a woman, as a friend and as a human, in a changing world. As I sit here in the warm sun of a South American summer day I wish you all hope, peace and joy in the coming year, but mostly, I wish you growth...