Essay # 2 Living or Adapting?

We can say that we know how to adapt perfectly, but we do not know anything about how to live the life that we create for ourselves. I have been doing this since I got sense of being, but the saddest part is that I will be doing it for the rest of my life without any excuse. I was born in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s government. That meant to live in what my mom called “pleno periodo especial”, one of the hardest times in Cuba, when there was nothing to eat at all because of the crumbling of the Soviet Union, which was until that time the main and only source of food and commercial products in Cuba. I adapted myself to that kind of living like every other Cuban child did, of course because we did not get any other reference about other political system. Certainly, for me it was not too hard to adapt myself to that and try to live happy. My mom always gave me everything that I as a child raised in Cuba needed: nothing at all. That is one of the things for which I admire my mom the most. I grow up and then it was just time to go to school and adapt myself to every teacher and classmate’s personality. Some of them became great friends with me, others not, but at the end I will remember all of them. After that I started adapting myself to every new school and with it new teachers, new classes, new classmates, new principal and new challenges.
Years passed and of course my life did not stop, so I had to go to college, which is completely different in my country. It starts in 10th grade up to 12th, and we are required to live on campus. What is it like? That is something you can only understand if you have lived in Cuba. I went to “La Lenin”, one of the most prestigious schools there, where everything was supposed to be better. Contradictorily, it was not like I imagined. I was living there five days but I just could eat hot food made at home three days a week because I did not like the food that was in the cafeteria. I just ate crackers and canned food. I was practically on a diet. I did not go to the restrooms at all. I had to wake up at 6:30 am and be sleeping at 10:30 pm. I had to study a lot because there was a huge competition going on inside the school. Even a 99.9 was a bad grade because it meant I would have been like the number 100 in the “escalafón” (class rank), and maybe I wouldn’t get a good career or the one that I wanted. It was a communist school where you had to believe what they said and support them totally. I was forced to go to “marchas” that I did not agree with. The only good thing about those marchas for me was that I could see my mom, and I could get hot food. The weekend meant to me heaven on earth because I could eat normal food and sleep more. Even though the description above could be very similar to hell, it was not like that at all. There I found my best friend forever. I learned a lot and I worked a lot too. Everything looked bad at the beginning but at the end I adapted to it. And now after all when I put those things in a balance and I asked myself if I would live that experience again, I would say “yes” definitely without any regrets. In that school I learned life experiences that I can not learn anywhere else and it makes me mature a lot because there I had to live by myself.
Nevertheless, without any doubt the most difficult process of adaptation for me was two years ago when I came here and had to leave everything behind. I had to adapt myself to a new culture, a new form of government, a new language, new food, new classes, new friends, new schools, and new houses. By “new” I mean completely different. In Cuba I lived only with my mom and step-father since I was 12, and when I came here I had to live with three other people in their house where I was a host, a stranger. And I had to adapt myself to that as well.
It is so funny how humans spend their lives generally in the same way. Most of us spend our childhood living in little bubbles and dreaming about our future. There is always going to be someone to protect us (usually our parents), and we adapt to that idea without noticing it. When we lose or we are far away from those good or bad things that we are used to, we miss them so much. I watch this scene yesterday when my little cousin started crying and crying without stopping when his parents left him at my house for some minutes. I wonder he must felt like he was alone or maybe that he was not protected at all because he was not with those two people he is adapted to live with. A feeling of adapting is as deep and strong that can keep us alive. For instance that is what keeps many marriages together in today’s world. There is always a minor reason (money or children), but at the end the heaviest one is the fear to lose what we adapt ourselves to, “la costumbre”. Of course, this can preserve painful and unhealthy situation as long as people do not realize they are being victims of an adaptation process.
Next comes the teen age, and at that time is when we all revealed ourselves to everything and try to fight against every single established thing or system. But that’s okay too; we all need to do that. We all have to try to reach our dreams and then after we accomplish them, we have to keep up and find a higher goal. That is just a necessity for us to be alive. For that reason everyone can think that they are going to make a difference. Maybe yes, may be not. I think that we are destined to all those things. However, that’s me because I do believe in fate. The people who are religious will attribute that to some “God”. “Big Changes” and “Big differences” can only be possible to do because of those persons who adapt themselves with or without complain. I am one of those who like to complain a lot. However, at the end in my bedroom, moreover in my bed, where only I place my head I start to ask myself if that what I believe in and defend its correct, if it is true. The bad thing I can not give myself an answer. Instead I just fall asleep.
And then comes a new awakening and with it many others years. Without noticing we are in the middle of our 50’s and we start thinking so mature. We find a place inside our mind where all the memories of your dreams still unaccomplished live. However, we stop thinking about fighting against everything; we do not give up or kill ourselves. We just realize that life is too short and we are getting too old. Finally, we accept our destiny and try to adapt ourselves the best we can, so we do not get in trouble. That could be a good description of a regular life path. The only storyline most of us enact without almost any exception. Although some of us try to make this storyline look better at the end is going to be the same: One trying to adapt and accept oneself.
Two days ago I was talking about this with a friend of mine and when I started asking her what she though, she started to complain and told me I was crazy. Then I told her: “Yes, you can disagree with me and argue that you live because you have an almost perfect life.” At first, almost everybody would think and acts like my friend and that’s understandable too because of course nobody likes to talk about his personal life in public. We tend to recreate a story of our life and make others believe that we have the perfect life. I have tried to change the real world and confuse others with a beautiful shinny smile, but at the end of the day the reality is still the same and I can not lie to myself. Suddenly, my friends will change the main theme of the conversation and start talking about why I am thinking like that. They would say for example that I need to get a life or some of them would say that I am like that because of my professors. None of them were wrong. What is wrong is that they did that so I could stop questioning them. Perhaps, at the end although they did not recognize it at that time, they will realize that they are in the wheel of life and in order to survive they have to adapt to everything.
For that reason, I do not think we as human beings live our life. For me there is no life. We do not have life. That is a misconception! We do not live! First of all, because we cannot live if we do not know what that is. We just know how to get used to or adapt ourselves to whatever surrounds us. We adapt ourselves to our house, our family, our work, our friends, our food, and our environment in general. We are as flexible as a gum. And because of that we can get any form. If you take us and throw us in a different country we adapt ourselves to its language, its food, and its government. We are capable of that ability. So, I cannot say I do live because I do not. The animals may live, the plants, but I don’t. I can say that they freely live because when you separate them from the environment that they are used to, they just die. In others words they choose to not adapt themselves to that environment. For instance if you take a polar bear and place it in the middle of the Caribbean, for sure he is going to die as soon as leave his ice. That must be the correct reaction for all the living things. But we as humans try to survive no matter what, so we choose to adapt ourselves to everything rather than die. I am a human, and as a normal human I have been adapting myself to everything since I got sense of being. I know how to adapt myself to everything in order to survive, and I better do it like that. Although at the beginning of every change I may say “no, I do not like this, and I would change that.” At the end I always finish doing the same thing I just criticized. That’s it, like that is your and my life.