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Proyecto Visión 21

The idea of an unfinished life begins to bother me

As a reporter, I have the opportunity of interviewing people who did or accomplished something outstanding or deserving attention.

For example, I recently interviewed an anthropologist who solved the mystery of why indigenous Bolivian women are able to have normal children in high altitudes when women from other races are unable to do it.

I also interviewed a Brazilian researcher who developed new technologies for new sources of renewable energy. This technology, already in use in Latin America, is so good that is being exported to the United States and to Europe. This south to north direction reverses the usual direction of technology flow.

And this week I will interview an artist who is the seventh generation in her family creating religious art in the American Southwest, and the director of a public school north of Denver where most of the students are Spanish-speaking immigrants from low-income families. However, 100 percent of grade 12 students at that school graduated this year and all of them have been accepted at different universities and colleges.

It doesn’t bother me at all writing those stories. In fact, those are the stories I like to write, rather than those other more tragic stories, reflecting a less desirable aspect of humanity.

However, I have to confess that it bothers me more and more to discover that many of the people accomplishing all those wonderful things are younger than me and in some cases many years younger. In spite of that, they have accomplished things I couldn’t even attempt to accomplish.

For that reason, I am beginning to feel in my mind and in my heart the burden of realizing many of my dreams will never materialize and, in spite of my efforts, studies, and commitment, many of my “important projects” will be unfinished.

I am not complaining about what young people can accomplish. Quite the opposite, I congratulate them and I take their accomplishments as a challenge and invitation to rethink the priorities of my life and to find the true source of meaning for my life.

I think there are two main reasons why I am beginning to accept the idea of an unfinished life. First, one of the key ideas governing our post-modern, techno-scientific world is that none of those ideas from a time before the discovery and advancement of science and technology are relevant to our society, unless science validates those “old” ideas.

However, most of the philosophical and religious ideas guiding my life, including family and cultural traditions, are from a time before modern science was born. I live in constant conflict because what gives meaning to my life becoming meaningless in our society.

Second, we live at a time of constant change, a pivotal time in history, where a new model is developing for America and for the world, where old paradigms will become obsolete.

Is that also my destiny and the destiny of others like me, or will we find perhaps a way out of this complicated existential maze?

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