The Hole In The Road And The Trees

The Hole in the Road and the Trees

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Telling about Venezuela can be done in many ways. Tropical country with lush beaches washed by the Caribbean, Amazonian rain forests, green plains, Andean mountain ranges, breathtaking views. Or you can talk about her people. Easy-going, party lovers, jokers, inclined to look everything from the bright side of life. Sheer positivism. Venezuela has not only a very stable, pleasant climate and a lower incidence of earthquakes than surrounding countries; it possesses the biggest oil reserves on this planet and is a continuing source of breathtaking beauty queens. A country which is blessed with so many good things that other countries lack, should be enjoying the sunny side of life every single day.

Therefore it isn’t easy to combine these facts with actual reality. Let’s call it the other side of the coin. Misgovernment in all levels, a rampant level of corruption nationwide, abuse of power, a total disregard for human and animal life and the surrounding biosphere has put another face on this cheering Latin American country. After almost 9 years of living and working in Venezuela, I compare this country to a clown with a gun. Funny and scary at the same time. Venezuela can “boast” of being a country with one of the highest homicide rates these past years. Walking around in the cities after dark is more and more an endeavor for the brave and has a good chance of ending in robbery and murder.

Now. I won’t waste your time with facts, factoids and statistics you can look up anywhere. Nor with political themes. The topic today is, how does a country, which is living in a semi-state of war with enormous shortages, a collapsing economy and the highest inflation on this planet, cope with all this negativity flushing like a tsunami through doors and windows into your own life?

Many Venezuelans just can’t. Of those, many are leaving the country in search of happier surroundings. Many others who stay bound to their lack of courage to emigrate and start from scratch, or who just don’t have the means to travel, cannot combine the gruesome harsh facts of Venezuelan daily life with their cheerful way of looking at things. They either just look away, lock themselves up in their neighborhoods and residential compounds, and pretend that nothing bad is happening. They misread the advices of life coaches and mix up acceptance of daily life with either acceptance of the bad situation as good or even negation of it. It’s the ostrich walk that characterizes these persons. They won’t follow the news; they just pretend that it doesn’t exist. They are so concerned with keeping the “good vibes” that when reality finally knocks at their doors, they don’t know how to cope with it. The resulting reactions range from shock, disbelief and inertia to aggressiveness. And this I can witness now, at this very moment. People beating each other in supermarkets looking for scarce goods, I saw it yesterday in a supermarket in Caracas. It looks like a struggle for survival. It is, actually.

There are others who see the misfortune of Venezuela as a challenge. Like me. If you can make it here, you can make it everywhere. Like me. I’ve learned so many lessons of life sharing the good and the bad aspects of living in Venezuela with the people here that I’ve grown as a person. Of course, despite two failed kidnappings, I’ve not experienced really shocking things. Seeing shot people on the streets is something you get accustomed to, sorry to say. Those are not the really bad things. Bad things are being robbed on the street or in your own house, see someone you love being killed in front of your eyes, being kidnapped with a 50-50 certainty you could get killed, or experiencing that with someone you love…. In a certain way, you balance things. You search for equilibrium. And that is the keyword to true mental and emotional survival in a country like Venezuela.

Imagine yourself walking down a street. All of a sudden, you see a big deep pothole in the middle of the road. You won’t take your eyes off it, will you? It is a normal reaction. You try to walk around it, not to fall into it. All your fears of not falling into the pothole makes it impossible for you to enjoy the beautiful trees lining that road.

A true Venezuelan optimist will then say: see, you have only eyes for the bad things in life. That is why you attract the bad things, like that pot hole. Why don’t you enjoy the trees and the surroundings? Why do you only look at that ugly thing on the road? Some will even proceed saying that if you don’t pay attention at the pot hole, it will automatically cease to exist.

These jokers – because I have no other word for them – either don’t understand the true secret behind the Law of Attraction, or they just won’t tell it to you. The secret is equilibrium. Looking both at the pot hole and the trees, enjoying the beauty of life and being aware at the same time of the dangers of it, and knowing that in the end, the road leads to somewhere. A true optimist that doesn’t split up the world in positive and negative bubbles, and gets the true meaning of the Law of Attraction, will tell you to watch everything that surrounds you, and just push through walking down that road. It will take you somewhere, there are no roads to nowhere.

And that is my message for you for today. From Caracas, Venezuela, I wish you a safe journey and a great week.

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015