September 15th
Am I getting old or “ignorant”, skeptical; maybe I just have a good memory and I’m not able to see only the good things about Costa Rica for a day or a month; at the end of the day, what best summarizes is that I have lost patriotism, and soon they will call me a traitor or whatever, I really can’t pigeonhole myself that easily.
The thing is that despite spending years teaching me to love my country, singing the national anthem, going out to see the torch pass in front of my house and even creating a record of my lantern parades; celebrating the place where I was born, given that it was an event in which I really had nothing to do with, causes conflicts for me. And probably this year, since I don’t even have a boss who pays me for the holiday, I have even less desire to celebrate.
I vaguely remember that homelands are necessary for survival, I don’t remember why, but the thing is that people coming together under symbols like flags, birds, mountains, names, is important for societies to function and thanks to societies we are still alive.
And I also don’t deny that I didn’t feel a tug of nostalgia when I saw the torch almost at 6 pm this year (by pure chance, not because I made any effort), while in my childhood and adolescence I saw it at noon, passing through Naranjo, I thought it was silly to discover that there are places where they do the lantern parade during the day (as if doing it at night was a brilliant idea) and I called my mom to see where she had seen the passage of the torch and sung the national anthem.
All these things don’t make me overcome the fact that, yes, it’s cool to be Costa Rican, I like Costa Rica and I’m aware that my fortuitous birth could have been plagued by misfortunes due to an unfortunate geographical event, it doesn’t make me forget that due to a very accurate geographical event, I could have been much better off.
It doesn’t make me stick to the fact that my colors are white, blue and red, maybe it makes me think less and even exclude yellows, greens, blacks, light blues from my life… they are around me, that there is a lady who greets me with a humble smile that brightens my day, it doesn’t make me forget the culture of hurtful mockery that prevails in this country, that we laugh at everything, even at what has us eating shit, nor the idiots who are capable of throwing you into a pipe for getting on the bus first, which is not only for the place on the bus, but for the damn mania of “me first, then me, and if there’s room, me too”, because in everything we have to be first, in everything we have to “win”, because the best thing is to say “take this, suck it”.
It’s not funny for me to say “Pura Vida”, it also comes in the package that the truth is we are cowards, conformists, who do whatever we have to do to avoid unbearable bureaucratic procedures, further proof of how mediocre we are because we have not been able to change them, that I am also classified with the knives that are out there sharpening their teeth on half the world while behind their backs they are making life impossible for others, because in this country no one can improve themselves without someone else backstabbing them.
Today watching “El Regreso” by Hernán Jiménez brought me a feeling of belonging with more meaning, belonging to those I love and who, like in the movie, I sometimes want to strangle, to the backyard and coffee plantation of my house, to my mom’s chickens, to the leaks and pipes that don’t work, to the metal jars full of holes… and nobody can tell me that these feelings of belonging are better or worse than those who grew up among skyscrapers and cities that never stop, where they may not even know their neighbor or who grew up far away without electricity or cars and also had no neighbors; they are mine and they are what made me who I am. But precisely because I value my feelings, I want to value those of the whole world, I’m not going to fight to justify a homeland when everyone else’s seems better, in short, I would rather be from everywhere than have anyone take away what I’ve experienced and I’m not going to try to take away their experiences either.