Watermelon lens

As I sat at the table after lunch today while my hermanitos finished their watermelon, I thought about how differently they treat me than my host parents do. I think this is universal, that around the world, kids have this amazing gift that allows them to treat others equally, without judgment or criticism. They don't yet wear the lenses that life makes for us, the ones that cause us to see the world like a soldier views a battlefield. My host parents are kind, and patient enough to have someone in their home who can barely understand what they´re saying. But I can´t help but wonder how they see me. As a stranger eating and sleeping in their home? as a part of the family? as a means of income? as a means of cultural experience? Beyond my place in their home, how do they view me as a member of society? I am a tourist at some level, but also a student. Am I more of a child, or am I considered an adult? As a young woman, what is my place in respect to my señor or any other man in Spain?

This was, and is, all very exhausting to think about, and as I watched the boys eat their sandilla, laughing and unable to sit still, I thought about how much easier it is to make a stand in this world, rather than trying to find your place. It seems that we´re all trying to figure out where we fit in, what our role is in life, how we should act as a man or a woman or a child or an elder or... it goes on forever. And forever, we could learn how to be correct. But say we´re thrown into a new country, where we barely speak the language and we live with people we don´t know and can´t understand because of that language barrier. What good did all that correctness lead to? We now have no idea who we are.

So I found myself faced with two options: (1) to observe and observe until I learn my role in Spanish society. This seemed frutile. Forever, I could try to learn how to be correct. Navigating through this path of understanding my place here, at every turn I saw myself hitting a wall, where one identity clashed with another. My desire to understand Spanish culture propels me to observe and learn the customs and act unlike an oblivious American imposing on valuable traditions. But without being myself, how can I expect to learn anything at all?

Option (2): crush my fear of being wrong. I never expected to be right, about how to speak, how to eat... but I find myself in this limbo that isn´t moving me forward.

I picked up my camara today, for the first time since I´ve been in Sevilla. I was uninspired or not in a rush or whatever the reason, it sat on my dresser. Today, my professor took us to the Cathedral of Seville, the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world. He told us about the bell tower, and how it was used for telling time, warning of danger, announcing the weather. He told us about the religious history and the fountains in which people cleansed themselves before ceremonies. I kept my ears open and my lens down, trying to retain what I could from a lecture in Spanish. But as the tour progressed, and we took breaks from discussion to look around, I crouched and angled my non-zoom lens to capture the beauty inside the high ceilings of the old building. After the tour with my professor, I climbed up the tower to see Sevilla from above, and with every click became more inspired by what I saw.

I brought one lens with me on this journey: a 50mm plastic lens that forces me to physically move to get a shot I desire, and often I can´t get far enough away to capture everything I want. But there is something magnificant about this restraint, as I am limited to the contents of a tiny frame. And with this restriction today, I realized that my own lens had become too big. Yes, I have learned much along this adventure, and yes I am proud and amazed by the perspective I´ve gained. But with too big of a lens, I was missing the little things. I was missing the beauty.

Kids have an amazing gift: to see the world through a very small lens. It is one that allows them to take what´s in front of them and just accept it. As I grow and take in this grand world and all the cultures and people within it, I hope to hold onto the child within me and never foget to appreciate a tiny frame of beauty.