28.5

Copy and pasting two guest blogs I wrote for Youth Service America back in late 2011. Ideas still relevant, three years later, notwithstanding Inspired Gen's disappearance. (Life update forthcoming, perhaps?)

Editor’s Note: Natalie Castellanos is the co-founder of Inspired Generation, a nonprofit youth empowerment organization. Inspired Generation's mission is to empower young people by inspiring them to engage with themselves, their opportunities, their communities and their world. You should totally check out their website! www.inspiredgen.org/ And, if you're interested, you can read more of Natalie's life-musings, here: www.nataliekc.blogspot.com/.

Since the birth of our baby – iNspired Generation – my business partner, Christina, and I have known it is more than an organization; it is a movement. Our mission is to empower inspired young people to take action to improve themselves and improve the world.  And our vision is a movement of young people inspired to make the world a better place.

On the topic of movements, have you been paying attention to the Occupy Wall Street? Personally, I marvel at the pace with which the movement spread, almost overnight. Within days of the first protest the movement spread from its epicenter in Lower Manhattan to localities all over the United States and the world. Fuelled by feelings of discontent and a desire to do something, Occupiers the world over have demonstrated solidarity and a sense of resolve that merits admiration – regardless of whether their viewpoint elicits in you support or scorn.

As an aspiring movement-starter and co-founder of a nonprofit youth organization, I am particularly keen to observe the Occupy movement. It is being suggested that the Occupy movement is our generation's – Generation Y's – social movement.

Do you believe that it is?

Only time and history will tell.

And if Occupy is our generation's social movement, then I hope it is one of several social movements we generate. Because if it isn't obvious yet, kind reader, our world desperately needs more than a single movement spurred by dissatisfaction.

We are privileged with life at arguably the most remarkable and important place in human history. Billions of individuals all over the planet possess – literally at their fingertips – powerful tools for communication, connection and collaboration. Today's social movements don't – nor will they – look like yesterday's social movements. Generation Y’s social movements will not be like previous generations’ social movements.

iNspired Generation was born to be more than a nonprofit – we are a social movement, and we are not alone. Our contemporaries – nonprofits, businesses and social enterprises striving to inspire and empower Generation Y – too are modern movement-starters.

The challenge for us as Gen-Y movement-starters is simple, and important: how can we best coordinate and collaborate to continue improving our shared world? Because through our missions we change the world; and with our vision – iNspired Generation’s and our contemporaries’ create the future.

Are you an inspired young person, seeking opportunities to improve the world? Visitwww.inspiredgen.org. Are you one of iNspired Generation’s contemporaries seeking to collaborate and create solutions? Write natalie@inspiredgen.org.

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Editor’s Note: As students head back to school, YSA is highlighting education and service in our Back to School Education blog series. Read blog posts from students, educators, and service-learning experts about their experiences with education and service.

Natalie Castellanos is the co-founder of Inspired Generation, a nonprofit youth empowerment organization. Inspired Generation's mission is to empower young people by inspiring them to engage with themselves, their opportunities, their communities and their world. Please visit its website:www.inspiredgen.org/. 

I am a part of Generation Y… but I hope our generational successors remember us as "Generation Y Not?" True to the words of George Bernard Shaw we do not merely see—we dream.

Many, however, are quick to point out our tendency to over-dream and under-do. My generation is criticized for being lazy, selfish, over-indulgent and under-disciplined. In many ways, these stereotypes are true—I see them in myself, and I see them in my peers. But that’s okay. It would be inhuman for us to be flawless. We are, after all, human.  Ironically, therein lays my generation’s greatest characteristic: we are human, and we are acutely aware of our shared humanity.

I believe people are defined not by faults, but by strengths. As a generation, we are strong in our idealism, our altruism, and our open-mindedness. We are interested. We are passionate. We are adventurous. We are the most connected, educated and aware generation that has ever walked this planet. Ideas of dignity and equality were sown deeply into our roots and those fruits are only beginning to bloom.

I also believe, as humans, we are defined not by our success and accomplishments, but by the humility and grace with which we face failure and defeat. Our generation has known success, but we know far more defeat. This defeat is not ours alone, and not entirely of our making. All of humanity is currently being defeated and humbled: long-standing institutions are being eroded and the technology of our time is revealing far more about our world and ourselves than we are comfortable seeing. Appropriately, our generation is making the uncomfortable transition from adolescence into adulthood just as all of humanity is transitioning into a new, uncertain era. We are learning to grow and thrive during times of discomfort and uncertainty; we are learning—with humility and grace— to continue dreaming despite the darkness.

Now, we simply need help "doing."

Fortunately we live at a time when nonprofits and social enterprise devoted to empowering young people—ensuring young people are equipped to ‘do’—are flourishing. These organizations are sprouting up all over the United States and the world, nourished by the Internet and social media. They are leading the global dialogue relating to social change—identifying problems, and creating solutions. Organizations like Youth Service America (YSA) and countless others are using service to fortify Generation ‘Y Not’ and empowering us to “do" and make a difference.  

Generation ‘Y Not’ is just approaching the helm of humanity, as our generational trailblazers arrive at age 30. We are not balking at the great global challenges of today; we are carrying the weight of the world on our strong—albeit flawed—shoulders; carrying the world toward our dreams. In so doing, we will confront the challenges of our time and inspire a succession of generations who will not merely see and ask ‘why?’ They will dream, declare ‘why not?’—and they will do.

28

She threw herself onto the bench beside me.

'I made it, right?' Her voice hinted Northeast, raspy and deep.

'Yes.' I nodded my head, glancing up at the time display above the platform. 'Next train will be here in twenty minutes.' I smiled and looked down, a polite veil for intentional aloofness.

I tried to eye her imperceptibly, surveying her details. She had wild, loose hair and small eyes smudged with coal. Her thin lips were lined bright pink. Her nails, sharp and bright. In her right hand she clutched a Subway cookie bag and in her left a Diet Coke. Even in silence she was loud.

'Do I look like I live in a car?' she asked, unabashed, a challenge.

'I live in a car. Can you believe that? I'm homeless. I look good though, huh? I know I look good...' Her voice trailed away and her eyes wandered around the half-empty station.

'I just left my car in a parking lot on Northlake Boulevard. I stopped making payments on it, so I left it. Do you think that's alright? Will I be in trouble?'

I shrugged and smiled again. Her intensity melted my distance.

'I didn't know what else to do. I'm going down south to find a place to live. I know a guy who can rent me a room in a motel. Maybe I'll find a job. What do you think?'

I nodded with wide eyes. 'Sure, that's possible. Anything is.'

Her eyes made their way down to my belongings. 'That's a nice purse. You must be rich.'

I shook my head. 'Oh no.'

She dropped her eyes to the large suitcase by my feet. 'Where are you going?'

Funny, I thought, our circumstances aren't too far off.

The train arrived, screaming into the station, and I was relieved.

---

I dragged my suitcase into the closest car and she trailed me into a row. We sat shoulder to shoulder. 

A tough-looking guy with cocoa-colored skin sat across from me, our knees touching. I was thankful to be near someone else.  

She loudly continued the conversation, suddenly confessing that she thought often about suicide. Pride, for all her might, can quickly dissolve into despair. 

She admitted that she had no one. Tears broke through her tiny eyes, gleaming down her worn cheeks. I touched her arm, held her, told her she was special, told her that life was a gift. I meant it. Circumstances fleet and it was a beautiful day.

She turned and faced me, 'You aren't looking down at me... You don't judge me.' Her words were sincere and truthful. Could she really see that? So hard I strived for non-judgment - almost to my detriment - and here a belligerent, sad stranger offered me a precious affirmation. A profound gratitude tingled inside me.

Just then the train arrived at the Boca Raton stop. She sprang up without saying a word and wandered out of the car, into the bright winter day, never looking back. The tough guy got up too, brushing my knees as he stood. Our eyes met and he said, 'Good job.'

27

Reader-friend! I wish I could produce some great excuse for not writing all year but, alas, I have none - save the same lame excuse we all rely upon when we don't do what we love. 'I've been busy.'

Beyond the busy I've been sort of self-conscious about writing too - aware that what currently consumes me is nowhere near as fantastic as what kept me busy when I last wrote consistently. At least, that is what a glance at surface circumstances would suggest. I have learned that it's simple to find the exotic in the mundane, the sacred in the profane, the extraordinary in the ordinary (and vice versa). It's simply a matter of perspective - of what we choose to see.

Circumstantially I am still in Miami, as I was 6 months ago, except now I'm no longer a South Florida vagabond careening between Hialeah, Westchester, Coral Gables and Juno Beach. Now I have a home! And a bed, and a room of my own! Simple things can make such meaningful differences.

My words, today, are sparse, so I'll leave you with some shots I've captured this year - the surface of my community, Miami. I'll leave it up to you to choose what you see... mundane, profane, ordinary... or otherwise.

Twentysix

Are you there, Reader-friend? It's me, Natalie! Back in action and ready for a twothousandtwelve of greatness.

Miami managed to lure me back months ago, and I've spent the great part of these months acclimating anew to the city's sweeping currents. Swiftly, the city that turned her back to me after a mere 11-month absence has turned again and revealed bright bits of her heart hovering right beneath her surface. And this time I am seeing things I never knew were here -- piercing previously murky waters with newfound perspectives.

'What you see depends on where you stand.'

I pulled that quote from a piece on social justice lawyering a friend recently recommended. It resonates with me because I am so touched by the experience of finding unadulterated novelty in the profoundly familiar -- seeing things others cannot.

The quote also resonates with me because it connects to one of my designated themes for 2012: humility. I am a big believer in the power of words, and one I have (literally) hung around my life for several years is 'humility.'

I have found that as I traverse this life, trapezing from one experience to the next, the greatest lessons learned have been those with humbling effects. Through humility one learns to truly see: the beauty of places, the hope of circumstances, the dignity of people, the value of life.

And it is through these humbled eyes I hope to reveal what can be forgotten in the familiar -- contained in a community, a country, our people and our world.

Iskay chunka tawayuq

I was in Peru last July, lingering around an outdoor market, when an old man approached me. I could tell he was a local; his skin was sun-baked and wrinkled, like layered caramel, and his curious eyes were alive -- blazing with Incan pride.

He fixed his warm gaze on me and said, 'De donde eres?' Where are you from?

I was curious about his curiosity, so I replied in my potpourri of a Spanish accent -- Cuban-American peppered with Argentinian inflection -- 'De los Estados Unidos.' The United States.

His response was quick. 'Ahhhh... pero tus ojos... son Arabes.' Ahhhh... but your eyes... they are Arabic.

I shook my head. 'No. Mi familia es de Cuba.' No. My family is from Cuba.

'Y antes de Cuba?' And before Cuba?

A beam of Andean sunshine cut across the Cusqueño market and flickered inside his Incan eyes.

I paused for a moment, pensive, recalling the last time I asked my abuela the same question:

'Abuela, de donde viene nuestra familia?' Grandmother, where does our family come from?

'COO-BAH.' Cuba. Her resolute reply echoed through her Hialeah home.

'Pero abuela, mira el color de nuestro piel; no somos indigenas.' But Grandmother, look at the color of our skin; we are not indigenous.

'SOMOS CUBANOS.' WE ARE CUBAN. Her booming reaction told me the conversation was over. Carribbean culutral amnesia, I reasoned, and resolved not to bring it up again.

Back in Peru I peered at the old man and replied, with a hint of hesitation, 'Bueno, España... me parece.' Well, Spain... I suppose.

His eyes sparkled with triumph.

He took over the conversation, spilling generous details about his life. He spoke rapidly. He was a musician... He spent most evenings playing guitar at a cafe nearby...

My mind wandered away: Back to Abuela's kitchen in Hialeah, then to Abuela's Coo-bah -- a place I know through relayed memories, a place that now only exists in her mind.

Back in Cusco -- from the caverns of my mind, through my eyes veiled by wanderlust -- I noticed the gold sun receding behind the curved Andean peaks. The old man acknowledged his fading spotlight, pausing and peering around the market.

'Me tengo que ir.' I have to go. He extended a final, fiery glance and receded into the market.

Our encounter was fleeting -- mere minutes long -- yet our conversation stuck with me for hours beyond our swift adios.

Perhaps his insight was right, I mused. Perhaps my eyes are Arab. Perhaps my eyes traveled with the Moors -- across continents, across oceans, across centuries...

My eyes now keep the Moors alive...

The old man -- a perfect stranger -- had offered me a new perspective: A new perspective on my family, my ancestors... and a new perspective on myself. He had, almost literally, given me new eyes.

And I have found that throughout my life I am constantly being offered new perspectives -- new eyes -- through people and through places, and, most of all, through experience:

Last year, I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina -- Rotary District 4890. As a Rotary ambassadorial scholar, I was charged with continuing my legal studies at la Universidad de Buenos Aires, representing Rotary District 6930 and the United States at Rotary meetings and in daily interactions, and fulfilling Rotary's universal ideal of service above self by engaging in service projects in my host community.

The aggregate of this experience -- 11 months of studying and living as a foreigner in the novelty and familiarity of the city of porteños -- has given me new eyes to the effect that I no longer see the world as I once saw it. The difference is so pronounced, in fact, I find myself at present knowing a new world.

Nothing has changed, yet everything looks different.

We shall not cease from exploration / and the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time. (My closest reader-friends know my kinship with T.S. does not wane with time or distance.)

I returned to South Florida -- Rotary District 6930, the community that created me -- just over 3 months ago, and I tell you, reader-friend, I have never known the world as I now know it:

The South Florida sky as the sun rises and sets -- dynamic, smudged with pink, gold, blue, grey and purple; I have never known him to be so brilliant and vivid.

And the Atlantic Ocean at twilight -- like liquid cobalt glass; I never knew he was so beautiful.

And I have never known Palm Beach County -- where I grew up -- to be so... Pleasant.

And Miami. (Sigh.) She captured my heart when I was a child, and, like any first love, ours was reckless and innocent. She must intuitively sense that I found love in Buenos Aires, for I have never known her to be so... Unpleasant. Unwelcoming. Unfriendly.

And the future: I entered college immediately after high school, and law school immediately after college, and now I am entering the straits of life with a map of my making -- my conscience as my compass. I have never in my life known my future to be so... Uncertain.

And yet, curiously, my eyes -- for the first time in my life -- pierce the veil of uncertainty that teases me from the horizon. Instead of uncertainty in the future, I see infinite possibility. I gaze at the horizon of the future -- just as I often gaze at the Atlantic Ocean at sunrise, the colors of the brilliant South Florida sky smearing overhead -- and I see nothing but light.

I see light -- limitless possibility -- because -- reader-friend, can't you see! -- Rotary has given me new eyes.

Veintitres

'The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.'

(Little Gidding -- I can't quite get enough!)

I arrived alone in Buenos Aires in March, curious about the year of experience that lay ahead inviting me to approach and aprovechar.

Now, in December, I march away precisely as I came -- alone and curious about experiences to come.

My foreign friends turned porteña familia have trickled in and out of this experience. As las fiestas approach, those friends have been dropping away with increasing intensity. I have found that relationships created abroad accentuate time's fleeting temperament. Time has deep, sloping valleys and steep, quick ascents. Here in Buenos Aires I have cemented some of the most profound and dynamic relationships of my life; together, through friendship, we have been thrust to exalted heights.

I am one of the last lingering foreigners I know, savoring fleeting moments with my first and last friend -- perhaps my most absorbing relationship yet -- inhaling the fragrance, enshrining the feel. Buenos Aires was my first friend, and appropriately, she is my last. I will tiptoe out of this experience just as I entered it, barely making a ripple, filled with an eager curiosity for the future to come.

I have been inhaling Buenos Aires' perfume for 10 months and I am finally at the very top of my breath. No more can I take in -- I have reached capacity, saturated with the sweetly scented, life-sustaining oxygen of experience. On Friday morning (sí Dios quiere...) I will emerge into South Florida's crisp December air and I will exhale, breathing novelty into my familiar and almost-forgotten home.

In the meantime, I am still in Buenos Aires -- more or less alone -- pirouetting in the pause between inhale and exhale, peeking curiously and expectant at the novel set of future circumstances promising possibility. I have several times in my life found myself twirling in these pauses between breaths. I embrace and agradecer these peaceful bouts of time -- they allow me ample moments to reflect, refresh and renew.

As I reflect on my time in Buenos Aires I recognize that the pieces of experience I will carry on into Life are the lessons of Love. Curiously enough, it took a circumstantial move of thousands of kilometers, away from the thick quilt of love from family and friends enveloping me in USAmerica, to learn the true lesson of Love: how to give and receive it. I have loved to the point of despair and discomfort: a city, a country, a continent, a world; strangers, acquaintances, new friends, old friends -- all of whom are, at the end, family.

I will spare details -- for they are too many and would be impossible to share judiciously -- and emphasize: the lessons of Love acquired here have been sometimes uncomfortable and always illuminating. For, truly loving a person, a city, a country and a world -- despite discomfort and despair incited -- renders me consumed with hope. It is a hope contained within me, here and now, as I dance at the top of my breath. And, it is hope I will forever suspire -- acquired by loving in Buenos Aires.

Twenty two

Ten months in and 10 days remain -- presently I am facing aft, watching in my wake as Argentine experiences crystallize into memories. 'The end is where we start from.' Do you remember when I quoted TS Eliot, reader-friend, 10 months ago, upon my unexpected arrival in Buenos Aires? 'What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make and end is to make a beginning.'

And here I am at the end, making a beginning. But before I lurch into the promise of the future, I turn my back to possibility and offer merited reverence to the past and path that guided me here, to this point:

I've done quite a bit since I arrived in March: My inconsistently zealous effort towards outstanding Rotary ambassadorial scholar-ness, a lackluster and ironically perfect consummation of my academic career, maintaining iGen's forward propulsion at doggy-paddle pace, always accompanied by gluttonous and indiscriminate feasting on South American culture (art, music, food, nightlife, travels, people, et cetera et cetera into infinity).

Despite all this 'doing,' my most consistent and committed action of the past 10 months was actually the act of observation. On the streets, in the classroom, in social circles -- I was more observer than participant. Curiously, despite my extroversion, extreme circumstantial novelty relegates me to the perimeter to perceive before I proceed towards engagement.

Months of keen Argentine observation leave me astute and alert, devouring situational details, determined to detect patterns. And, with next-to-near-no-obligation these days, I find myself captivated, irresistibly fascinated, by a tricky situation presently unwrapping in my beloved Buenos Aires (and for the first time, thanks to acquired observational acumen, I am able to wrap my mind around the complexity of some of Buenos Aires' and Argentina's most pressing social challenges):

Last week as a consequence of judge ordered evictions in already abysmal villas in southwest Buenos Aires, hundreds of families -- mostly immigrants of indigenous descent from Perú, Bolivia and Paraguay -- began illegally occupying an ill-maintained public park. Incensed neighbors -- the legal residents of Villa Soldati -- of the coincidentally and aptly named Parque Indoamericano subsequently organized and confronted the squatters. The ensuing squabbles between residents and squatters -- with initially intermittent and now sustained police involvement -- have resulted in 4 innocent civilian deaths (lamentably including a baby) and a veritable quilombo of 'pobres contra pobres'.

Now, the rest of the city and country holds its breath, eagerly monitoring the situation, hoping for the safety of our neighbors -- all of them -- waiting for the city and national governments to agree upon a solution -- if one even exists at all.

While we collectively wait for inevitable developments and hopeful solutions, I, as an individual, pull pieces of past experience into the present to inform my observations. Like I mentioned, I find this situation terribly intriguing. You see, particularly my reader-friend-of-the-USA-caliber, there's some things you need to know about Argentina in order to glimpse full-scale what is at present unfolding: Argentina is an incredibly human-rights oriented society -- this as a consequence of the unimaginably devastating abuses committed during the military dictatorship of the late-1970s/early-1980s. Argentina has gone so far as to incorporate into its Constitution (the highest law of the land) all 12 major international human rights treaty. (Perspective: the USA has signed 3.)

In addition to being extraordinarily pro-human rights as a society and on the books, in the 1990s, Argentina pioneered an astonishingly liberal immigration policy -- going so far as to designate the right to migrate 'essential and inalienable to all persons and the Republic of Argentina shall guarantee it based on principles of equality and universality.'

Reader-friends! That. Is. Huge. Argentina, so far as I know, is the only country -- in a world preferring to build walls rather than bridges -- that recognizes a right to migrate. Huge, I tell you! Via a one-of-a-kind law, Argentina provides a fairly easy path to legal residence for immigrants, and offers free access to health care, education and social services.

It sounds too good to be true! And, of course, in practice, sadly, it is. The revolutionary immigration law has not been accompanied by effective and much-needed regulations (which would serve to 'clarify, reconcile, or expand provisions of the law; the lack of regulations impedes the full implementation of the law's human rights goals.' I am such a huge dork, I actually did some legal research for this post -- I'll spare you the proper Bluebook citations! Jaja! No more legal ogling -- promise!) Suffice it to say, the current situation sitting cumbersome in southwest Buenos Aires, is arguably related to this pioneering practice of liberal immigration policy...

Another interesting, probably over-simplified, observation: Argentine society seems to, more or less, have a consistent idea of the role of government -- to provide safety, services, solutions. (This is leaps and bounds more progressive than the USA, I believe, where we engage in an exhausting and ceaseless battle of big government v. small government v. liberal v. conservative v. blah v. blah, et cetera et cetera into infinity.) While tension in the southwest mounts, the rest of the city waits -- almost too patiently -- for the city and national governments to come up with a solution. And not only an isolated solution to this particular situation, but hopefully one that will address the fact that all over the city, slum-city villas are being built atop villas, ostensibly related to the influx of immigrants.

An ex-city leader elegantly opined: 'La migración no sólo es inevitable, sino que puede ser una bendición para lograr el desarrollo integral. Les abrimos falsamente los brazos si no somos capaces de acompañar nuestra apertura con políticas que orienten y ordenen esa inmigración.' ('Migration is not only inevitable, but can be a blessing to achieve integral development. We falsely open our arms if we are not capable of accompanying our openness with policies that orient and order that immigration.')

Yes. Precisely what he said.

And now I return to TS Eliot's elegant stylings: 'We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.' I began organizing my thoughts for this writing as the sun set last night, and now, writing these words, I sit overlooking Abasto's rooftops lighting up with the rising sun. I began at an end, and now, I end at a beginning -- at the bow of the present, observing the possibility and promise of a new day of Argentine experience (and then there were 9...).