So our stay in El Bramadero is coming to a close and in our time here there has been a lot of empty space. A lot of sitting around waiting, of chatting, thinking and stewing and, apart from the occasional blast of Latin music from the neighbours and the animal noises, there has been a lot of quiet in which to observe and reflect.
Living rurally feels very human. You are constantly surrounded by people, their animals and livelihoods and, more importantly, the slow plodding reality of life and the constant act of existing. People eat, they talk, sleep and become ill, they laugh, shout and work and life just keeps going on.
Here they do the same things with the same people everyday and they are content. A man is the same man tomorrow and he is content. Children are born and they grow to do just what their elders did, perhaps coming up with ideas to make chores easier in the process, and life steadily keeps going on.
Life in western urbania is preoccupied with highlights; with images, advertising, acters, ideals and potentials. All the life that fits in between these things is labelled mundane, boring, dull; nothing to write home about. Yet here I am surrounded by a life which is all middle, which somehow seems so much more real, and I am writing home about it.
Back home all I can see is snapshots; from the TV, the media and messages from others about what I should be aiming for. There the world seems facinated with making us only concerned with the highlights, and encouraging us to chase them despite the multitude of costs. With my ADHD brain I have never been able to link these highlights together into a properly continuous item nor to reconcile the sense in it. Issues with time are an inherent part of ADHD but I am also a byproduct of my culture and life experience. I have been confused and pressured for a long time wondering which path I am supposed to take, which highlights I am suposed to experience, but highlights never make the match. Living does.
If there is one thing I have learnt whilst here, during all of the sitting around inactive, it is the consistent, continuous nature of life and existence, and the total lack of importance of a person’s will in the world upon their life. Things surely do swing up and down occasionally, but they keep moving slowly, ever in the same direction. Nothing about existing is new or dramatic or difficult, it simply is and it simply continues. Forwards. Without rush nor pause, it just keeps going on.
Here, in a world without highlights, I can finally see the continuous line that links together everything I see and feel and hear into the consistent, permanent feeling thing that is life itself.
Written by ICS volunteer Hannah Hughes
