2012 has been a year filled with new experiences, new friends and lots of new fruits. Applying my last year's wishes, I would like to share with you one of the most valuable lessons I learnt in 2012. I'll never forget the moment: a friend of mine came over for a visit, so I was showing her around the historical centre. We decided to have a beer on the Plaza de San Francisco, which has one of the only outside terraces on which you can enjoy a drink or a bite in the open air.
As we were updating each other on our lives, I was telling her how I was enjoying myself on a personal level in my new habitat, yet felt rather unsatisfied with my professional environment. I had just come up to speed rambling, when my friend interrupted me to say: if there's one lesson I've come to learn over the years, it is that you cannot have it all. No matter how hard you try, there will always be something that is missing from the picture. So you better learn to live with the fact that you cannot have it all: appreciate all the good you have instead of focusing on what you do not have!
It took me a while to absorb the message and, most of all, to accept its ramifications. Not an easy feat, especially when society surrounds you with images of success, glamour and glitter, where the sky is the limit and life seems burdenless. As soon as I accepted my friend's advice, however, I cannot count the times that I saw, read or lived the proof of that valuable lesson. Be it a volcano that didn't let me ascend to her summit, women who still cannot match a high fly job with nurturing their families, or simply a clash of agendas, life abounds with examples that you simply cannot have it all, nor should you try to.
Appreciate all the good things around you, do not abandon ship at the first sight of stormy clouds. Just give the sun some time to break through. Of course, if you still feel you're on the wrong track, you can always change direction. Just don't give up too soon, keep patient and enjoy the good company while it lasts!
As for me, the sky has cleared: not long after my friend left, work has become a lot more interesting up to the point that I am more than happy to extend my stay here. And, besides professional reasons, there are still some mountains left to climb... But for now, I wish you all the best for the new year, and don't forget to smile!
Monday 24 December 2012
Sunday 23 December 2012
Sunday 2 December 2012
We are Q
Nope, this is not an obituary in memory of "Q" who passed away in the last James Bond movie. "We are Q" is the new slogan that the city of Quito has launched a few months ago, and now features many billboards, bus stops and several big public events. For some weird reason, it just occurred to me recently how this slogan contrasts with the well-known city-phrase of Amsterdam: I amsterdam. At first sight, it clearly epitomises the contrast between the 'traditional' individualism of modern, Western society, and the socially-oriented, inclusive society the Ecuadorian government is constructing with its vision of the Good Living.
Of course, this Good Living society is work in progress. As recent as 2008 the Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, embracing the foundations of a new society that is to include all cultures and nations, as well as grant rights to nature (the first and only constitution in the world to do so). This implies a whole new change in the lives of the Ecuadorians, contrasting firmly with decades of political chaos and social instability. Hence the need to accompany all these changes towards the good living with big campaigns nudging people into a different kind of behaviour. No more encouraging street children to beg by giving them money, no more hopping on and off buses wherever you feel like, no more speeding (or you risk a hefty fine and three days in jail).
In a similar vein, the municipality of Quito is accompanying its city revival projects with a campaign to promote ownership of the revamped Quito. As the billboards go, being "quiteño" equals humour, respect, public spaces, culture, courtesy and living together. After all, we all are Quito! Are we really? All of us? Benign though the rationale for this campaign may be, it can also have very far-reaching unintended consequences, ending up excluding the very people who are most in need of inclusion.
The goal of the "We are Q"-campaign is clearly to create a new collective imaginary, that unites all the citizens of the city and encourages them to embrace their renewed urban environment, treat it and its citizens with respect, and elevate their urban life to a new, more cultured level. After all, the municipality has been investing a lot to make this new life possible. However, this kind of campaign smells a lot like the "Asian values" debates, where a created vision of united and harmonious society is imposed onto an ethnically mixed constituency, aspiring to undo diversity for the benefit of social order. The people identifying themselves with Quito, will be the middle class and those segments of the lower class that have access to the new services offered by the city. They will make the new collective imaginary their own, moving up to a new level of urban experience facilitated by the city's mayor and his crew.
In fact, the auto-identification with this new life-style will strongly induce them not to pay attention to all that goes wrong and all those excluded from this new society, for whatever reason that may be. The same goes of course to the national societal project, which deliberately uses the we-tense on its billboards ("Avanzamos patria" - We are moving forward, motherland) over a general declaration of the country's progress. In so doing, it adds to the creation of a new collective imaginary that makes citizens associate the governmental efforts with a better, more harmonious and prosperous life. At the same time, it helps the government to justify the exclusion of groups and individuals that do not fit the new Ecuadorian dream and model society, be it for wanting to express critical opinions or for living atop of vast oil and mineral reserves. The majority, however, will not take notice of these political inconsistencies, enjoying the Good Living at the deliberately marginalised cost of those 'dissidents' and 'outcasts'. Ecuadorian public opinion, shaken not stirred.
With all the benefits of the new Quito, why would you loose your sense of humour when they rob you on the bus?
Of course, this Good Living society is work in progress. As recent as 2008 the Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, embracing the foundations of a new society that is to include all cultures and nations, as well as grant rights to nature (the first and only constitution in the world to do so). This implies a whole new change in the lives of the Ecuadorians, contrasting firmly with decades of political chaos and social instability. Hence the need to accompany all these changes towards the good living with big campaigns nudging people into a different kind of behaviour. No more encouraging street children to beg by giving them money, no more hopping on and off buses wherever you feel like, no more speeding (or you risk a hefty fine and three days in jail).
In a similar vein, the municipality of Quito is accompanying its city revival projects with a campaign to promote ownership of the revamped Quito. As the billboards go, being "quiteño" equals humour, respect, public spaces, culture, courtesy and living together. After all, we all are Quito! Are we really? All of us? Benign though the rationale for this campaign may be, it can also have very far-reaching unintended consequences, ending up excluding the very people who are most in need of inclusion.
The goal of the "We are Q"-campaign is clearly to create a new collective imaginary, that unites all the citizens of the city and encourages them to embrace their renewed urban environment, treat it and its citizens with respect, and elevate their urban life to a new, more cultured level. After all, the municipality has been investing a lot to make this new life possible. However, this kind of campaign smells a lot like the "Asian values" debates, where a created vision of united and harmonious society is imposed onto an ethnically mixed constituency, aspiring to undo diversity for the benefit of social order. The people identifying themselves with Quito, will be the middle class and those segments of the lower class that have access to the new services offered by the city. They will make the new collective imaginary their own, moving up to a new level of urban experience facilitated by the city's mayor and his crew.
In fact, the auto-identification with this new life-style will strongly induce them not to pay attention to all that goes wrong and all those excluded from this new society, for whatever reason that may be. The same goes of course to the national societal project, which deliberately uses the we-tense on its billboards ("Avanzamos patria" - We are moving forward, motherland) over a general declaration of the country's progress. In so doing, it adds to the creation of a new collective imaginary that makes citizens associate the governmental efforts with a better, more harmonious and prosperous life. At the same time, it helps the government to justify the exclusion of groups and individuals that do not fit the new Ecuadorian dream and model society, be it for wanting to express critical opinions or for living atop of vast oil and mineral reserves. The majority, however, will not take notice of these political inconsistencies, enjoying the Good Living at the deliberately marginalised cost of those 'dissidents' and 'outcasts'. Ecuadorian public opinion, shaken not stirred.
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