Month: February 2025

Yesterday I went on a tour out of the Chilean port of Puerto Montt to go to several villages on Lake Llanquihue, the second largest lake in the country.  Its backdrop is Osorno, one of those perfect cone volcanos that make Chile so unique in our beautiful world. 

I’ll spare you all the little signs that this was not a day that would go exactly as planned, but suffice it to say that my travel companion Megan and I were laughing most of the way through the first stop in Frutillar about how just buying a take-out empanada became a project that took the first half hour of our one-hour stop, and that was not the first glitch. 

Then the fun really began when our bus broke down. We were stranded on a side street of one of those towns you would barely glance at passing through. We were told our new bus would be there in a half an hour, but anyone who’s travelled much knows that in many countries people are so unwilling to disappoint that they give pleasant assurances that have no foundation in fact. Since the nearest town big enough to have a bus available to send was an hour away, I knew this was one of these times.

About half of us piled off the bus and hung around for a few minutes while the rest stayed on board. Then after arranging a time, we should all be back, a group of us set off to explore and maybe, if we were lucky, find someplace to have a cup of coffee. Honestly, what ensued in the hour and change we spent together before the new bus arrived will probably go down as one of the highlights of this entire trip around South America. 

Objectively speaking, I suppose you could say we didn’t find much—not even a cup of coffee—but subjectively the time was filled with discoveries I loved about typical small-town life in Chile. We discovered that pretty much every shop leaves their “abierto” sign lit up all the time whether they are open or not. We found one shop after another so small our group of eight couldn’t fit in all at once. We saw one dog so bored he didn’t look up when we passed, and another who snarled and lunged at us against his fence in the spirit of the proverbial junkyard dog.  We found a little odds-and-ends store that had a pile of embroidered pillow covers for $2.50 apiece and a few of us bought some as souvenirs (from India, I suppose) of our great day. Someone found a bakery and bought a bag of eight pieces of bread for what seemed like pennies, and we all shared. Throughout, we were all laughing at how anyone who encountered us must have been perplexed as to why a group of gringos suddenly descended on them in their little corner of the world. 

When we got back to the bus we, of course, heard another half hour had been added on to our rescue time. We continued to hang out on the street, a few of us spending some time recasting Gilligan’s Island with the people on board the bus. They all agreed that obviously I was the professor. We even had a redhead to be Ginger. There was an air show going on at a nearby base, with flyovers we all agreed it was cool we hadn’t missed.

I got back on the bus at some point and felt blasted almost immediately with an energy that was radically different. Those who had sat on the stuffy bus all that time were in a state. Grim faces said it all. A few were demanding to go straight back and skip the rest of the tour. I am trying very hard not to judge people, so I suppose there were some who really did count on being back on time.  It was noon by then, and I know some people have medical issues around missed meals and dosages that must be taken, but still it was hard not to contrast the pleasure in the moment happening outside and available to anyone who wanted it. 

I am indeed rambling towards a point here.  It’s hard to stay positive in these bleak times, but it’s always a choice, whether facing a broken down bus or a breaking down country. I suppose the simplest takeaway is the old bromide that we can at least control our reactions in situations we can’t control, but to me the better, and more hopeful lesson was about how optimism and resilience win in the end.

Laughter matters. Kidding around is important. We need to treat these as precious gifts we give to ourselves and others.  The world is huge, but at any given moment we are only on a speck of it and it is up to us to make that speck a good one.

I started this blog in September 2008 to coincide with the publication of my first two books, The Four Seasons and Until Our Last Breath. It evolved fairly quickly from primarily promoting my work as an author, to sharing my experiences and ideas as a person. Now 440 posts later, I think of it mostly as a means to bring my thoughts into focus, and to share what I think might be of value to others as we all find our way through the complicated puzzle of our lives. 

I haven’t posted much for the last few months because I, like so many, have felt the bucket of cold water we call the news poured over my head several times a day. To say that the worsening onslaught since the inauguration makes it difficult to put together coherent thoughts about the meaning of life  is an understatement so huge it’s hard not to laugh, however bitterly. I  am so busy just trying to manage my thoughts and protect my spirit that I have little room for anything more. 

Those of you who have known me, or followed this blog for a few years, know that I sometimes look  back at my first marriage to a narcissist for insights about what is happening in the present. Since the rise of the current occupant of the White House, I have seen so many parallels between the way my ex-husband treated me and our children, and the way the current president treats everyone. 

To go deeply into this would take volumes and serve no purpose except to upset me, so I am going to stick with one point:  narcissists don’t see other people as real.   Malignant narcissists might enjoy causing pain and distress, but the garden variety like my ex simply don’t take into consideration the flesh-and-blood nature of other people. Our feelings are irrelevant, our needs trivial, our well being inconsequential.

It really is that simple, but with the person America elected to lead it, this plays out on an unimaginable scale. He slashes away at will, or permits others to do it, without the slightest awareness that people care about themselves. They care about their lives, their children, their livelihoods, their future. Healthier people find his and his cronies’ behaviour incomprehensible because how in the world could anyone be so clueless? Surely this must stop somewhere! Well, narcissists are that clueless, and it won’t. We are left now to predict future disasters by asking ourselves, “what would someone who doesn’t see other people as real do in this situation?”

 In the past few days, a handful of acolytes are attempting to destroy the capacity of the government to pay debts because people who rely on government entitlements and services aren’t real. Entire agencies are shut down and people are fired or furloughed because neither they nor the people they serve actually have lives. Today’s great idea is to move two million of the not-real out of Gaza so he can fashion it into a new Riviera for that special group of not-reals from whom he can extract money. What does it matter where the Gazans go? What does it matter what they think and want?

And what will it be tomorrow, and the next day?  Whose lives and human dignity will be inconsequential next?  He may be erratic and perhaps a bit mad, but our being unreal to him is one thing we can count on.