In the spring of 1968, near the end of my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Ecuador, I planned a month-long trip around South America with two friends.
In the spring of 1968, near the end of my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Ecuador, I planned a month-long trip around South America with two friends.
The Unbearable Sweetness of Being
Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of man.
Mikhail Naimy
In the spring of 1968, near the end of my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Ecuador, I planned a month-long trip around South America with two friends. At the last minute, however, I came down with a mild case of typhoid fever and was kept under medical observation for 4 weeks. By the time I recovered, my friends had returned from their trip. But I still had 30 days of vacation, a $300 loan from my mother, and a six-cities-in-thirty-days airline ticket. So I took a deep breath and set out alone on what turned out to be a journey of the heart.
Everywhere I traveled throughout Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, I found myself relying on the kindness of strangers — taxi drivers, fellow travelers, Peace Corps Volunteers and friends of friends — who offered to assist and entertain me. They linked in friendship like paper dolls: a PCV acquaintance in Peru led me to another in Chile, who introduced me to a Chilean friend. He, in turn, gave me an introduction to an Argentine couple, who invited me to dinner at their home and asked their friend to take me shopping and to dinner at the oldest and most exclusive restaurant in Buenos Aires. One Uruguayan woman paid my bus fare when the money exchange was closed and called me the next day to see if I needed any assistance in the city. A Brazilian woman arranged for me to meet her good friend at my next destination. And so I crossed the continent, clasping hand after hand extended to me. Teary-eyed, I recorded my magical encounters on cafe napkins and in my journal. My fear of being alone in strange places faded.
In Rio de Janeiro, however, I suffered a traumatic fall on the street and was taken to an emergency clinic for stitches on my forehead. Not seriously injured, but still in shock, I was given a ride back to my hotel, where I shook uncontrollably all night.
Early the next morning, a new PCV friend named Hank came searching for me after I didn’t show up for breakfast. She took one look at my bandages and blood-soaked hair and cleaned me up. She sent my clothes to the cleaners, tucked me into bed, summoned the Peace Corps physician, and gathered a group of PCV’s, who provided bedside entertainment until late that night.
The following morning — the day Bobby Kennedy was assassinated — Hank combed my hair into bangs over the bandages. I couldn’t wear my contact lenses, so she guided me to a department store where she picked out huge sunglasses to conceal the rest of my forehead. Along the way, Brazilians stopped us to offer us their condolences for Kennedy’s death. I was amazed and touched by their sincere gestures of compassion.
Before I departed for the airport, Hank bought me lunch at a flower market and presented me with a sweet bouquet of violets, "for remembrance," she murmured as we hugged goodbye. I wept all the way home.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me, but I attempted to describe this full-to-the-brim feeling as "communication." Until now, I had not been able to articulate the depth of my experience to anyone, not even to myself.
Since those days, my life has been increasingly blessed with generous, caring people. I realize that what I felt earlier and continue to feel is an opening of the heart, out of which pours a shimmering flood of unconditional love. This feeling is accompanied by a literal ache in our hearts and a fullness behind our eyes and throats. It is not sorrow, but the intense joy of being connected to something far greater than ourselves. It permits us to see beyond the barriers of the flesh into the universal heart. As author Connie Bowen puts it, we sense an exquisite "sweetness" in all people.
It is much easier to extend such love than it is to receive it. Sometimes we have to be highly vulnerable, as on occasions of birth and death, before we will submit ourselves to overt expressions of love. Perhaps only when others hover around us in support are we able to hear the invisible unfolding of wings. And know we are in the presence of the holy.
Now more than ever, we are being called to open our hearts and embrace one another. Tragic events and personal disappointments are creating opportunities for many of us to lean on our neighbor’s arm. Paradoxically, when we are willing to be vulnerable to the intelligence of the heart, we invite in a transcendent experience of power and unbearable joy.
Doctor Paul Pearsall writes that "the heart is an organ of connection and interrelationship." One of his heart-transplant recipients summed up this heart-to-heart feeling: "Now I know what the word ecstasy really is and I know what people mean when they say they can feel their heart bursting with joy. It’s like a flower seeking the sun and connecting with a sacred kind of energy that people, places, and things give off. I can feel it in my heart, and it often brings me to tears at the strangest moments. "
The wisdom of the heart reveals the truth of all beings: we are divine creations, deeply and delightfully linked in love.
©Ellen L. Montgomery 1998
