#35 The most human thing is to dream
“Imagine what we could do. Imagine the world that we could build.”
It’s 18:08 when I check Instagram — sandwiched between the news covering the tragedies unfolding in Gaza in real-time — there it is, a familiar face, a woman who ran for the presidential primaries in Venezuelan elections only this past Sunday. I check my family group chat on WhatsApp and join another one, at the behest of my aunt. She sends an invite link to a public WhatsApp group where we receive news and links to articles, something like a curated live feed led by the group chat admins. I reply to my mom’s message, back in Florida, she is heading to work at a Brazilian specialty deli. I miss my mom.
I was born within three years of the Chavez regime taking hold of Venezuelan politics and civic life. You could say I’ve been aware of the politics of my existence since I was a small child.
A life where my grandmother doesn’t have to rely on my father to cover an $8,000 hospital bill is unimaginable. A life where my sister doesn’t queue for gas for hours on end is unimaginable. A life where my mom remains in Venezuela, finds her way to a more prosperous future, is unimaginable. A life where I am not plagued by the inevitable follow-up question once I answer where I am from — it’s shit over there, isn’t it? — is unimaginable.
And yet —
From this land I came once, and I will return to again, from the sea and the mountains and the dunes and the immensity. These places are free of the noise, the human noise, the million little tragedies of leaving it, the dismemberment that forced immigration brings.
In this version of my life, I immigrate because of a multitude of reasons, and I do so thinking that there are better days ahead. Brighter horizons, bigger opportunities. I do so imagining a future where I am full of possibility, where independence is achievable. It is moments like these — the moments where all of us collectively hold our breath, in hopes for a better future — that make me feel the most alienated, that bring me the most grief. I don’t think of a parallel life often, a sign that I am happy with the life that I do have.
And yet —
From this land I came once, and I will return to again, and so many things will be different while they remain the same. I always find reasons to keep loving the place I am from, waking up little by little, finding all the dreams I had when I was a kid. Before all the politics got to me, before all the stories about millions of us leaving home in pursuit of a better future. It’s ironic, isn’t it, the pursuit of a better future. You leave everything that is real to you, everything that is tangible, for an idea of something better. You risk the life you have for a future that will be better, or imagined better, for all the options that you don’t have yet. It is so human to dream. It is so beautiful to imagine. You will give up so much just for the chance to keep dreaming. You will leave everything you know for the great unknown, simply trusting it to be better than you can imagine. Simply surrendering to the idea that it just might work.
Then I think, again: I miss my mom.
I remember when I first moved away at 18, excitedly scrolling through my student portal, looking at all the different course titles and lecture themes to choose from. The Future lay, infinitely, before me: the plane ride there, the new world to find, the infinite possibilities of becoming someone new, someone different. I took trams to university and eventually learned to ride a bike in the Land Of Bikes. I saved money for my first trips on long weekends and summer holidays. I trusted the future would unravel like a beautiful thing before me, even when I didn’t know its shape or its texture or its size, only believing in the feeling.
I suppose this is what hope is — I suppose this is what courage is. Trusting and believing and rising, always rising, imagining what is unimaginable, for it hasn’t yet happened. Trusting that it will be kind. That it will be beautiful.
Today I read the headlines about civilian-organized elections in a country that hasn’t seen a fair election in years. For the first time in my life, I imagine the unimaginable. I imagine what it would be like if we were free.