Poverty & the open heart Chakra

After two years away from Guatemala and Lake Atitlán, it’s easy to dwell on the negatives – the disrepair, the corruption, the petty theft, all of it. But the most important intangible, something so easily lost in a metropolis like New York or Shanghai, is the openness and sincerity of the people who live here. This obvious truth came to me loud and clear – walking the streets and chatting with locals I’ve come to know, simple dinners with Sheni’s family, or hanging out with friends here. The people who choose to live here have consciously abandoned pretensions of wealth as happiness (or they’re just misfits!), and the people who were born here have never known any other way. As for the locals, they look at you when they talk, and they smile even when they’re overcharging you for their services.  As for the small group of transplants, the majority from other places in Guatemala and the Spanish-speaking world, they are boisterous, sincere, and they like to party. But within that partying there is the attempt at true conversation, connection, and meaning. Life here is far from perfect, but the lake brings home the perspective that we all sometimes lack, and reminds us that our petty desires are not larger than the needs of the planet that sustains us. Translating that perspective into political action and environmental conservation, however, is a political question which an extranjero can never truly answer.