Culture is a Current

Another early afternoon on the front porch. The mango-tree midday laziness is silent and beautiful. It’s as if we reached consensus on its observation and everyone is enjoying it in their own muted form.

I’m starting to get a hang of this Peace Corps thing. I teach 4 separate English courses and another on business. I run a book club, a chess club, a current events club and hold basketball practice 3 times a week. In the past year, I have helped build a full basketball court in my community, held a full-day youth leadership camp and assisted an aspiring entrepreneur enter a national business plan competition, which he won.

I also sleep in until 9 am half the week and nap nearly an hour on most afternoons. I’m writing this after waking-up from one. I have ample time to read deeply and practice many different forms of writing. I am also afforded enough free time to start learning Portuguese.

Paraguay affords me the best of both worlds. I manage a relaxed, ‘tranquil’ lifestyle while remaining productive and active in my community. I even play basketball for the local team and soccer with my Brazilian buddies on weeknights. Most weekends you can find me grilling with my friends, enjoying a beer and laughing in 3 languages.

I truly feel integrated into my community and am confident my impact will outlast my physical presence. This being said, I still manage to sleep well over 8 hours, attend school functions, fill notebooks full of words and read nearly a book a week. This all happened once I stopped fighting the culture.

My town of 15,000 — on the larger end of the spectrum for Paraguay — has not a single bar, cinema, arcade or any other form of modern entertainment/night-life. My life fits neatly within a not-so-large triangle with the points being my house, the high school (K-12) where I do most of my work and the community basketball court*.

I focus on what brings me happiness, where my efforts are best maximized and where I feel wanted. I cut all the other bull shit out.

Transitioning from the first world to the developing world is only difficult in managing the expectations of your free-time. I am an adventurous 20-something so adapting to the local diet and different living conditions has not phased me in the slightest. However, the absence of a gym to give structure to my week, a club to dance away the weekend and a television to watch the big game, have indeed been an adjustment.

For a long while I lamented my lack of access to extra-curricular stimulation. I’d burn through my limited internet package within the first 2 weeks of the month and plan frequent weekend get-aways to the larger Paraguayan cities. I alternated my time away from work between an 11” screen and crowded buses traveling long distances to the weekend destinations. This left me out of my community for extended periods and distracted me while I was actually inside it. I always got my work done and never blew off my responsibilities, but I dreaded my free-time and drove myself crazy trying to stay ‘productive’ away from work.

Then one day I said fuck it.

I didn’t have an engagement until 3 pm the next day so I woke up at 9 am. I felt great. I popped out of bed refreshed and blessed the birds, the sun and the green grass growing out in the front of my house. I tossed out my rigorous and scripted free-time to-do list and cracked a new book. I sat on my porch and stopped worrying. I began to relax.

Once I stopped trying so hard to be productive, I became productive. I finally understand what Morpheus was teaching Neo with the whole “stop trying to hit me and hit me” thing. I was more refreshed and brought a new energy and happiness to my work activities. I felt more fulfilled in my alone time as well. I slept more. I wrote more. I read more. I practice do-nothingness like a Zen monk (but with more coffee) and I do so without guilt.

I began to need what I had and want what I got. It took me a year to come to terms with the fact that my Silicon Valley, high-paced lifestyle of cross-fit, apple watches and Whole Foods had long had a Spanish captioned obituary. I am still very much American but I am living like a Paraguayan. I stop to enjoy life and the view the long, silent afternoons between bouts of productivity as blessings rather than curses. Free-time is now a blank slate rather than a martyr’s critique on opportunity lost.

Culture is like a fast moving current. You can swim across it if you really must but you can never swim against it. You’ll inevitably tire and drown. Its pressure and resolve is constant and unrelenting. There is no defeating it.

But if you can assure that there are no jagged rocks or waterfalls downstream, you can lay back, relax and enjoy the day unfold as you float in the center of nature and all her beauty.

* This triangle does have several tangents: the supermarket — one must eat; the local pizza parlor — special occasions only due to budgetary issues; the launder — I am philosophically opposed to washing by hand; the bank — the root of all evil. Save for these tangents, one can reliably find me inside this triangle.

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