Full of Pain, there is Room only for Happiness

I have come to the end of my time here in the Dominican Republic, and I find I have much left still to consider. In one of our reflections sessions with our groups of volunteers, we are asked to define and discuss “Social Justice.” The result is a pantheon of values and opinions but never a concrete solution. Like “solving poverty” or deciding if “development is good”, there are no simple answers because the topics all rely on answering key parts of the human condition. It is a struggle as old as civilization. A struggle that many religions have tried to solve. That we have reached no solutions as humans speaks to how difficult they are to solve.

Here in this one small town in the mountains of the Dominican Republic, I have pondered many parts of these questions daily. I work with and around children who have very little in the way of material goods. I will return with vivid memories of handing small children single hot wheels and seeing their eyes light up and their imaginations take shape as they hustle off to play in the dusty, rocky road. A single jump rope galvanizes a group of preteen girls into action, leading to song and play, with a fervent declaration of “more” from kids less accustomed to having friends and thus not included in the group’s fun. A tube of bubbles elicits the same giggles here as anywhere. There is also much suffering. I have watched many a child without any friendship skills or power struggle as another, larger or older child takes away a ball or game. Here the Platonic explanation of how might does not make right is fully unsupported. If you have the larger share of size or friends, you get what you want. I cannot explain the regular iron taste I get in my mouth, and the tightening in the pit of my stomach as injustice unfolds and a child’s happiness is dashed. There are so many kids here without present parents that there often isn’t even anyone to comfort or succor those in need.

It is as if time and life have passed this village by. Girls getting pregnant at 14, several volunteers remarked a few weeks ago, is medieval. Yet it is the way here. When my English classes faltered and attendance shrank from dozens to a trickle, I was not surprised. I’d already noticed that I had but a small window of grace to teach in. My only viable students were the boys and girls who had yet to reach puberty and who were not athletic enough to play sports all afternoon. The one or two older ones who had already learned some English all had other responsibilities, one ran her family’s small store, another was constantly off to help his father and uncle with farming and husbandry. When I had so many students attending, I knew it wouldn’t last. They came in a crowd, as though a whole clan had left behind the Bachata and sitting in the shade to come see this Americano in action and see what was up. There were women ranging from 13-25 there, and a gaggle of four or five small children who belonged to those ladies. I never got more than a few minutes of attention from my students, as that is all they have to give in a culture where no one has ever expected them to concentrate on learning.

I felt this same lack of discipline whenever I helped the volleyball or baseball teams practice. The kids spend so much of their lives just surviving, there is no room for strength in other less important areas. It’s wonderful and thrilling to have them playing sports together. Truly when the alternative for these girls is sitting around and waiting to get pregnant, I know that whatever this volleyball team gives them is a blessing. As the boys run laps and stretch together more and more before their baseball scrimmage, I am constantly hopeful for how their team will develop over the months and years. However, it is hard to feel the progress and credit it as meaningful in its impact when it falls so short of the potential of people their age. I feel so commonly here a stifling density, a weight of poverty burdening the people that is so heavy that they dare not lift their head or give over their concentration to any other form of diversion lest the load crush them.

The few children who seem to have a possible path out, I wish the best, even though I can feel the draining of resources from an already meager existence. If the smartest children with a little more means to scrape by manage to escape from this town, then what hope do the people left over have. When the hope of change is gone, there is nothing left to do but join together into a tighter family. If everyone has nothing, at least they can have each other. This is the happiness of the Dominican Republic. I have been told here by several people with pride that it is the happiest nation on earth, and that when international surveys are taken, people here have more joy and a better sense of togetherness than other places. Under that pride is a sick, savage reality. Many children here are raised by their grandparents or not at all because one or more parents have died and the other is off making money in the capital and sending it home. So many of these children are completely illiterate and don’t know their own alphabet at 12, 13, or 14, and cannot think in more than one step. I have been overjoyed to lose to a few of them in Checkers or Connect 4, because those that can fathom the strategy and win have learned how to think. There are many kids here who are nine, ten, or eleven and already their chance has passed. Their peers all just say “he doesn’t know” when you try to talk to the child. When I’ve gotten a moment with these kids, they seem simply shy, and downtrodden. Likely suffering in silence because they have some difference or perhaps fall on some spectrum that goes unidentified here. Once fallen behind, they have fallen victim to the Pirates Code and are left behind. They tag along at the edges for now. I can only assume they eventually join the ranks of drunks and crazies that often stumble through town only to have insults thrown their way by the hordes of unattended children, with no recourse but to throw rocks as the peals of laughter and screams of fear echo for blocks.

I reflect here daily on some of the absurdities of American culture and individualism. People here are reasonable to be shocked by parts of American culture that require independence, as it is wholly foreign to them. I have come to a sort of balancing description of our differing cultures that I think sums things up fairly well: In the United States we are more independent and take more individual responsibility for things, but have less group responsibility for the people around us. In the Dominican Republic they have little individual responsibility but take care of groups like family and neighbors. On the flip side, our personal independence and ability contribute to an overall society that is more responsible and productive than the Dominicans. Here much of progress is stifled by what we would call corruption, but to them is far less insidious since it is simply people making short term decisions that help each other look out for their own smaller circles.

I do not mean to imply that our individualism and personal responsibility mantra is without fault - for there are many Americans left behind by our creed, and many more subjected to daily micro-aggressions as a result of ignored privilege from those perpetrating the micro-aggressions (or blatant bias or racism, but I have the privilege of always trying to give the benefit of the doubt). Many a Bernie supporter would tell you that our system needs to be dismantled. Most of those people also come from a position of privilege and would be well served by coming here to learn more about their own privilege and the true power and value of our supposedly malignant institutions. There is certainly room for improvement to our system. You need look no further than the Black Lives Matter movement to see the need for accountability and an end to racial violence amongst our honorable men and women in uniform. Likewise, for an apt comparison to the problems faced here in Derrumbadero, you need only look at the suffering of many lower and middle class Americans through the Rust Belt who voted for Donald Trump because they see in him a strongman who will try anything and speak up for their forgotten and missed lives and livelihoods. People here in Derrumbadero voted in their own corrupt mayor for another term last year because he distributed bags of rice and beans on election day. To put it in a way that seems to get through to many of our American volunteers here, planning for the future is a privilege, and people don’t have that privilege here. If you spoke, patiently and with deference, to Trump supporters who voted for him as a means of grabbing the bull by it’s balls, they might be able to figure out some of the longer term damage he is capable of, or connect the dots between his reductivism and reactionary Twitter use with the reasonable fear of putting him in charge of a nuclear arsenal. You also might find that many of those people couldn’t get to that logic. They’d stop somewhere along the line of “but he’s going to change things and that means I might have a chance again”.

Culture and change are messy affairs. Here in the Dominican Republic I have had several conversations with people who voice legitimate gripes about the current president (for example he said during his Independence Day speech in February that there are not poor people in the Dominican Republic). These same people also have voiced a desire to keep him in power, or at the very least gratitude that he is the president. In this country, there have been many terrible presidents, some dictators, and occupations by various countries (including the United States). Danillo, the current president, may enjoy a good photo op more than he enjoys the hard work of solving problems, and he may be disastrously out of touch with some of the problems in the southern part of the country, but what he lacks in strengths, he also lacks in vices. With luck and time, the next president may be better, and help lead this country forward. There are, after all, many trees being planted here to help forestall the erosion and damage like they have experienced in Haiti, and many roads have been built. Unlike the slogans ironically shackling every town’s entrance, poverty has not been eradicated in our generation. I have little hope of that here. But with a youth center, a new road, potentially running water again by year’s end, and the dedication of a few forward thinking families, this town can grow and prosper.

Ultimately I have gained here in Derrumbadero some lessons I hope to grow on for the rest of my life. I have another family. Flor, my host mother, is always taking in more. From what I can count, she has three adopted children who she simply started feeding and housing because she could. No matter what anyone has, they can always give. It reminds me of the Bible passage (Mark 12) where Jesus praises a woman who gives her only coin to the temple while chastising the rich men who gave only a small portion of their vast wealth. It is not what you have but what you give. I have learned how deep my education goes. I continue to learn how much I owe to my parents and their diligence in raising me to be a thinking, reading young man. If the children here were as lucky as I am in the parents I have, I am certain that the world would be at their fingertips. Every time I read a book to the smallest children here, I felt the weight of my parents’ and siblings commitment to reading that helped me learn so strongly to love books. I have learned here an expression for pain and happiness that I wish I’d known sooner, for it so aptly describes life’s waxing and waning emotions. It comes from the graphic novel Persepolis, and since I have not read it in years, sadly I am paraphrasing: A person only has so much room for pain. When they are filled, there is nothing left but to be happy.

Grandparents and a City on a Hill

I have been thinking a lot about my grandfather during my stay in the Dominican Republic. As a child, I remember my mother presenting several sides to her father. While much of it was good and spoke of how deeply our bonds of family connected us, some of what I remember came in the form of warnings. She would talk about how she had fled the restrictive Baptist culture into which she was born. Chafing from a young age against the precepts of predestination and the paternalistic approach to how you needed to be saved to be worthy of Christ’s warm embrace, she paid lip service to her parents’ faith only until she left home for college. The most educated person in her family, I remember hearing her talk about teaching her father how to read, and can still sense today how some of her drive for excellence was a desire to have more and be a more complete person than she saw in her father. I remember warnings in the car on the way to visits that if he said something narrow, overtly racist, or ignorant, I should try to respond with grace, and seek to enjoy the visit. I never remember feeling those same emotions of recoil that I felt coming from her. She also loved and took care of her father, giving him a place to stay and visiting him relentlessly in his final years. When we went to his funeral, I was afraid that I would feel little grief for a man I hardly knew, as much of what I did know seemed tainted by backwards beliefs and an antiquated world view. But at his funeral I also remember being struck by the true passion with which his pastor talked of his constant attendance at church. His dedication and years spent cleaning and maintaining the physical facility, and most of all, I was touched by the poems that my mother and his pastor read that they had found in his diaries. Simple in verse, they spoke of a love for his grandchildren, nature, and his church.

It came to me slowly that perhaps it had been unlucky that I hadn’t gotten much chance to get to know him. Among the few things I inherited from him were several thick flannel coats and his army handbook from basic training during the Second World War. I treasure those possessions. I also have always felt a deep willingness to forgive him for his faults. I do not know, but I feel it likely that many of his limitations were a reflection of the limitations he grew up with during the Great Depression. I can’t blame him for many of his misconceptions about the world and his readiness to blame others for the problems he had. I see many the same faults and limitations present in the rhetoric of the far right political movements in the United States today.

That brings me to why I keep thinking about my grandfather while I’ve been here in the Dominican Republic. The 108 year-old abuelo who lives with my host family is one strong reason. It is vitalizing to live alongside a man who has lived for so long and seen so much change in the world. More than that though, I think about my grandfather as I reflect on some of the limitations in the village here. The education system is crass and ineffectual. The poverty is deep and pervasive, every day people make decisions that will only perpetuate their poverty. But like how I didn’t blame my grandfather for his issues, I can’t help but think that this community is not at fault for their faults. I have learned here a lot about community and family, and how they use a wealth of social support and propensity for laughter to face daily hardship.

One thing that Barack Obama got so completely right about his meteoric rise to power and fame was also deeply involved in many of the reasons for the dominoes of Democratic politicians falling out of office after. He ran on a platform of Hope and Change. These two concepts are the lifeblood of communities all across the world. Here in Derrumbadero, they will once again have running water by year’s end, and the main street was paved last year for the first time. Each step forward is accompanied by a similar step backwards or sideways, but through it all the people rely on each other, their faith in God, and an underlying hope for the future. It is only when we let our conviction for change rest on unattainable goals instead of gritty realities that we lose the ability to connect our present circumstances with our potential for growth. Politicians in the United States have many powerful voices competing for their time and attention, and filling their coffers with dollars that dictate policy. In order to rise again as a party, Democrats need to counter Donald’s vision of Fear and Change by revitalizing their own of Hope and Change, and then work relentlessly at making small changes that show that hope. It is only when we look to the future as a place for us all to gain through concord and community that we can be the City on a Hill that makes up the core of the American Dream.

An American Dreaming of a Better Future

History has a way of being conveniently forgotten by most people. We tend to live our lives in pursuit of daily, hourly, or even up-to-the-minute gratification. This makes sense, as it’s hard to set a longer term goal and then reverse engineer things to see how one could ultimately reach that goal with hard work and sacrifice in the shorter term. It’s even harder for a community, ideology, or government to do this. Examples of this type of amnesia abound and are easy to find, but hard to remember again afterwards. As a nation, the United States has learned over and over again that people who come here for a better future will bring with them fresh ideas, a strong will, and definitive contributions. I’ve watched the movie “Gangs of New York” four or five times just to remind myself of this fact: When the Irish came to the US in droves around the turn of the 20th century, they were treated as less than, as trash, and as the scum of the earth because of their origin, poverty, and their religion.

My family learned a few years ago a little more about where my father’s “clan” came from. They were a border clan in Scotland that wasn’t really wanted there, moved to Ireland, weren’t wanted there, and ultimately came to the United States around a hundred years ago for a fresh start. Just last year my mother got her genealogy done, and since she was adopted at birth, the information was a revelation. Turns out she is half European Jew, and thus I am a quarter. I don’t know when her birth parents came to the United States, it could have been a long time ago, but given that she is a baby boomer, it seems likely at least one of her parents came here during or after World War II in search of safety and religious freedom.

I am unequivocally American. I know this to my bones. I know this from how I talk, aggressively asserting my opinion and aggressively asking others to share theirs. I know this from how I think, my belief in capitalism, and my willingness to argue with but ultimately accept the differences with another American who doesn’t believe in capitalism at all. And most of all I know this because of my ability to dream; my understanding that while Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine have in them the sins of ethnocentrism and genocide, they also include a grandiose vision for a nation unbounded where potential is only matched by performance. We are a country whose driving creed is an idea, not a religion or ethnicity.

People who want to come to the United States often share these same urges, dreams, and beliefs. Many people whose families have been here for generations upon generations have had their dreams trampled and feel crushed under the weight of immobility. This feeling is genuine, heartfelt, and tragic. People who voted for Donald Trump because they saw a possibility for change were exercising what they have left of an American Spirit. They were sadly misguided, in that their spirit led them to support a man who pridefully abuses women and exists as a mirror for the darker side of our society, the instant-gratification section of our collective psyche that wants things to be solved by aphorism instead of nuance. I think of Donald as not unlike the leader of the Natives in Gangs of New York. His passion and desire for power far outstrip his ability to reason, and his followers, in his own words, would follow him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

As a country we have the substance and character to overcome his challenge. We have the ability to reach for something better. To reach for a dream of a society that has nuance, that values our diversity and recognizes that when we ask each other for compassion, we receive it. Throughout my time here in the Dominican Republic, in a poor rural village, I have been quietly prideful of all of the great opportunities we have in the United States. Here the vicious cycle of poverty extends from the capital to the boonies. The people who have ferocity, ambition, and drive succeed. But even in their success they have so much less material opportunity than many people in the States who we consider unlucky. As has happened consistently whenever I have gotten the chance to travel, I am confronted by some of the unfair and evil choices the US has made in international policy and international trade. But more than that, I am confronted by our immense success and ability to create. As a nation we have a work ethic and drive that is genetic and trained. When we accept the strivers from all around the world, our diverse nation is stronger for it. I am reminded nearly every day here of how much power and meaning there is in our slogan: E Pluribus, Unum.

Platano Power

The Dominican Republic is united like no other event could unite them. It’s the international baseball tournament and they are hoping to win again after the undefeated 8-0 run to the championship in 2013. On my weekend trip to the capital, every TV set there and in the city of San Juan de la Maguana was tuned into the tournament. Baseball is the national sport (well, apart from dominoes) and everyone is following along looking forward to the moment of victory.

Backing up a bit, the baseball team here is the shining gem in the community. Last year Bridges (the company I am working for here) got a member of the community to donate a piece of flatish land to the youth center they were building. After making it much closer to flat, they installed a backstop as well as cement stands on both sides. Though far short of even the most rundown fields in suburban US, it is unequivocally the nicest field in the area. Between the field and the 40 donated gloves, catcher’s equipment, and real bases, the youth of Derrumbadero have the most luxurious baseball set up for miles. And they play like a team that has won divine favor.

I’ve been to four or five games so far, and Derrumbadero has won every single one. The first game I witnessed I only saw the last three innings (they play 7 innings here), where we went from losing 4-3 to winning 7-4. The second, we came from behind 3-0 in the first to blow out the other team 17-10 or so. The third, I played first base for the first four innings, as it was the younger kids and they wanted to show off their Americano (my first game of baseball ever!!!) We came from behind 5-0 to win it 7-6 with two runs in the final inning. Next came a sunny Sunday game that gave me terrible sunburn on my legs but was worth every second of pain. We got down 7-0 in the first two innings and then suddenly turned on the power. By the fourth, we were up 8-7, and after getting up 15-7, coasted to a 16-12 or so win.

There are around 50 or 60 kids in the town who play on the two teams. There is little here in the way of adult supervision, role modeling, or attempts to build life-long learners out of the children. However the two managers of the teams are somewhat remarkable in how they run things. At once fun and firm, these young men are only a few years older than most of the players, and the same age as some of them. At 22 or 23, they are both part time students at a university a hour or so away. They keep track of the lineup, hold onto the extra baseballs so they don’t all disappear, and most importantly enforce team spirit and make sure the boys are all building each other up instead of fighting. One of my favorite moments watching one of the managers, Xavier, was when he got dressed down by the only father who ever watches (presumably because he had a broken arm, as I haven't seen him since his cast came off two weeks ago) because he had let two of the boys tell another boy that he hadn’t run hard enough for first base. The father insisted that teams don’t treat each other that way and that it was Xavier’s job to make that happen. Xavier took this lashing with his head held high and then replied that the father was right, he’d made a mistake, and it wouldn’t happen again. And true to his word, the next time something like that happened at a game that weekend, Xavier called a pause in the game, got the whole team around him, and told them they were one group and one family, and if someone needed to be told something like that, he would be the one saying it.

After the Dominicans came from behind 5-0 to defeat the USA, I admit I was a little upset, since I like winning. But I was also excited, for another win on the world stage at baseball would be great for the DR! I hope Platano Power takes them all the way to another undefeated championship!

Brotherhood and Pain - A Call for Fellowship

I learned a lot through pain as a high school wrestler. That first week of practice each year was a revelation. We would start with warmups that were more intense than an entire soccer practice, drill basic techniques and more advanced counters for 45 minutes or so (never letting the heart rate fall), and then wrestle live until it was time for conditioning. That first week, it would be somewhere during the drilling that I would hit "The Wall" - my physical limit where my body said "I can't do this anymore!" and I would have to push through with mental toughness, visualization of success, and camaraderie from my mat brothers.

Each year I would turn in homework that week with a different handwriting than the rest of the year. My entire body would be so spent from exertion and musce fatigue that no matter how I sat, some portion would be holding me up and twitching from the effort.

Gradually my wall would get pushed farther and farther back. We would do less and less of the drilling and technique and more of the live wrestling. By a month into the season, we would be managing to wrestle live for more than an hour a practice. Together we would push our walls back and fight through sore muscles, head colds, parents who wanted to overfeed us, and all the other problems life can throw at you.

Each time you got your hand raised in wrestling, it brought a compelling feeling of success. Wrestling is a mano-a-mano sport where you are each the same size. Winning means you stand victorious when all you had to rely on was yourself. It is also a team sport.

People not on the team often made fun of us for wrestling. For being homos, for wearing spandex costumes, for caring so much, and for not eating whatever we wanted like the rest of the boys in high school. I had it easy (our team was state champs all four years I was in HS, so critics were kept mostly to snide whispered comments), but I can imagine how it must have felt to have those jokes amplified.

The only other team I have heard described the way I think of my wrestling team is football. With 90 players on the roster and 11 on the field engaging in carefully choreographed plays, you must place your well-being in the hands of your brothers every time the ball is snapped.

We build bonds as men together when we sacrifice, overcome hardship, and ultimately learn that we are stronger through fellowship and mutual reliance than we ever would be alone. We need more wrestling, more football, more fellowship, and more initiations into a common brotherhood.

I do not know what form this future fellowship should take for me, I only know that I am open to it.  I will readily embrace the chance to build strong bonds with men in my life and to mentor those younger than I in their journey towards manhood. I am reminded here of two interpretations of manhood that I have considered seminal that lack this sense of mutuality - and hope to find one that does: If by Rudyard Kipling, and It Takes a Man by Chris Young.

Millennials Giving Back

As a generation we have a pretty bad rep. Whether it's our parents, employers, or the news, we seem to have been labeled, judged, and receive regular shaming. While I acknowledge much of this judgement is accurate, I think it is much more a reflection on those who came before us than it is a reflection on us. It is our duty to use our circumspection and faults to give back more than we've received.

I didn't choose to get participation trophies at the YMCA as a kid; expecting a seven year-old to refuse a trophy at the end of a season is ridiculous. Those trophies came about as a result of parents demanding that their child was special and so deserved a trophy no matter what. As a child, I, like many people I've talked to, knew that those trophies weren't worth anything. I had two shelves for my trophies, one for the YMCA ones that didn't matter (and even those I had arraigned to put the one or two trophies from "good" teams at the front), and one for the trophies from other sports leagues. This second shelf was much smaller, and its contents far more precious.

Our parents and our parents' generations have let us down in many ways. Complaining about it won't get us anywhere. Pointing it out is a decent step towards realizing what actually is the problem, but is likely to lead to much more awkward visits home that include far less congeniality.

The solution is something that many millennials have already taken to doing - making sure that what we do for a living reflects the values we hold as a generation. While this can mean a hippie approach to living which is unfeasible (or undesirable) for many people, it can also be done in almost any workplace through conscientious adherence to a set of values.

It's a done deal for us millennials that people can be whatever gender they feel fits them most. It's a no-brainer that people should be able to love whomever they love, people are people and love is what saved Harry Potter after all. Millennials are so cynical about institutions and the establishment that it sometimes hurts us, but often it just gives us a highly refined bullshit meter that lets us ignore the partisan hackery coming equally from Fox/Brietbart/Drudge as it does from MSNBC/HuffPo.

Millennials may be ignorant about many facets of world history, husbandry, home ec, or the energy industry. We do, however, know that war kills people and shouldn't be a political tool used by political tools. We do know that large companies who pollute are failing to incorporate the externalities of their products, and that is wrong. We haven't realized yet the tremendous cost of our haphazard destruction of the environment and workers rights because of companies like H&M and Forever 21 - we have yet to learn how to buy and repair quality goods. We can identify the damage and insidiousness of monopoly powers throughout American industries, even if we refuse to label companies like Amazon as such. Our disdain for wealthy liars and the lying politics they employ is massive.

We have not yet come into our own and demanded that the diversity and equality embedded in our values become a permanent part of the American experience. We will soon. Millennials are getting older and our startups are getting bigger. We are getting promotions and starting families, and we won't make the same mistakes our parents did - we will make our own, new, and idiotic mistakes! We won't settle for a status quo that gives so much to so few while leaving so many without a chance to succeed.

The one silver lining about the incoming Donald J. Trump administration came from my father. He said "It would be a shame if whoever comes after him just goes back to doing everything the same way we used to." I agree. I am terrified of the things he will do and the damage that he will cause as our "precedent". But I hold out hope that as we millennials grow up further and take the reins of power from our elders, we will forge a more inclusive, rigorously honest, and caring country. One that looks after its citizens instead of locking them up. One that refuses to let insurance companies determine healthcare policy and demands that all children have a chance to learn a profession and if needed, go to college.

I do not know what I want to "do" with my life. The idyllic notion of joining a company and staying with it for life and pension isn't gone, but it does require sacrifices that many millennials are unwilling to make. If we want to live in a country that embodies our values, we need to be disciplined and over time demand that our governments, institutions, and workplaces reflect those values. The best way for us to give back and deserve the privilege we inherited as 21st century Americans is to demand through our jobs and social lives that our society leap forward to meet our challenges and take advantage of the technological paradise in which we live.

A Story of Growth

Sometimes it takes a life-changing event to realize something that was always in front of us.

Yesterday I listened to a man in his 40's tell a story to an elderly lady while eating lunch at a diner. In his mid 20's he had gone on a skiing trip with his then girlfriend and a few other friends. After a day of frustration helping out his timid girlfriend, he decided to go on one last run with a friend who was very talented at skiing.

After taking the lift to the top of the mountain (for the first time all day) and banking into a few sharp turns and steep downhills while following his friend, he decided to try to do one of the trick jumps his friend was doing. He mistimed and misaligned the jump and instead of landing the perfect back-flip he saw in his minds-eye, he went flying head-over-heels and ended up sliding off a 40ft drop.

Ribs cracked, lungs punctured, hips and pelvis broken, he recounted going in and out of consciousness as they tried to stuff a breathing tube down his throat on the helicopter. Without the ability to speak, he finally coughed sideways and saw the teeth that had been lodged in his throat fly out the helicopter window.

He woke up again once before his induced coma - long enough to recognize a doctor in the ER as the shortstop, Pedro, from his middle-school baseball team. Pedro didn't recognize him because of the gore, but saved his life with numerous surgeries.

After talking in detail about his reckless decision and the debilitating aftermath, the man concluded with a simple observation - "I had been so reckless with my life up to that point because I thought no one was watching and no one cared. It was only when I woke up after weeks in a coma to see my friends and family gathered around that I realized people had been there the whole time."

By our very nature, we to slip into solipsism. We feel isolated and scared to face our inner wildman. But the truth is, people are watching, they do care, and what we do every day can help and effect those around us for the better.