Chakra Number Eight: Tales of Humour and Soul

In psychology, self-esteem (or what I’m calling self-love in these stories) is the opinion an individual has of him or herself that goes beyond what is rational and logical. Along the way, I have found this to be one of the most important things we can learn and have always wanted to write about it. However, I have never felt inclined to write a self-help book because what I do is tell stories.

Life has led me to live in a variety places and I ended up in the exact opposite of where I was born: from the southern pole of Chile to the northern pole of Canada.

It was in my new home, when I worked with immigrants who wanted to enter the workforce, that I began to realize how important it is to have a healthy sense of self-esteem. The first thing I would ask program participants was, Why do think you haven’t found work? The answer was invariably, Because I have no Canadian work experience and English is not my mother tongue.

It took a long time to help them discover that surviving an ocean crossing in a tiny boat or having lost friends, family and culture not only filled them with pain but also an unwavering sense of dedication and responsibility, a wealth of experience as or more important than speaking English fluently or having worked for years at a Canadian company. The real barrier, then, was that they did not believe in themselves.

Undoubtedly this lack of self-esteem occurs in all aspects of daily life, anywhere in the world: in our relationships at home, at school, at work and in our social circles. Stories of Self-Love and Highways portrays men, women and children who have learned or are learning to accept and value themselves for who they are, not what others or they themselves want them to be. There are no victims in these stories, only people who have chosen to grow, to leave narcissism behind and start down the road of conscious growth and evolution that goes beyond perpetuating our childhood traumas.

Excerpts from some of the short stories from this serie:

Chakra Number Eigth
After ten years of vegetarianism, in an act of rebellion against certain ideas I had considered interesting for some time I decided to show Paul that I had the ability to change, and the first thing that came to mind was to eat a whole chicken. Well, to be truthful, not a whole one, since Paul had taken it upon himself to appropriate a thigh and half a breast, while driving down the highway that crosses North Carolina, oblivious to my transition from vegetarian to carnivore.
On the other hand, my decision had not only been about impressing Paul, since my way of looking at spirituality was not by measuring it in pounds of meat consumed during a lifetime, although many of my friends insisted upon proving that they were pure, zero toxins in the body and poised to ascend to the astral plane because they had managed to resist the latest cheeseburger special.
It is not that I deny the importance of a good diet, in fact (although I am embarrassed to admit it) I feel naturally attracted to lettuce, but this habit of measuring the soul like a sausage had become quite tiresome.
…

Ana
With a punch the soldier threw Papa on the floor, face up with arms and legs spread to frisk him and ensure he was not carrying a gun. Then they forced him to get up and pushed and shoved him out into the street, where there was a truck waiting with the engine running, ready to take off.
Before they left, the man in the uniform that smelled of rancid grease said to my mother:
“Take a good look at him because it’s the last time you’re gonna see him.”
“Where are you taking him?” I asked.
“To Court,” answered my mother, with no further explanation.

Two weeks later we boarded a plane for Canada. The only thing I knew about that country was that it was far away and Canadians lived in little houses made of ice. I had also seen photographs of dogs pulling sleds, so in that sense I felt a bit better since I would be able to replace Sparky, whom we’d had to leave behind with the neighbour.
Ma knew less than I did about Canada because she had never gone to school and could not read. We arrived in January and from the plane everything looked white; I blinked my eyes searching out the green of the trees we had left behind, but they were nowhere to be seen.
When we arrived at the airport, Peter –a tall, really nice man, with blond hair– was waiting for us.
“How is travel?” he asked in broken Spanish.
I really liked Mr. Peter, because even though he did not speak Spanish very well, at least he could ask questions and explain to us that he was taking us to a building that housed political refugees from all countries with militia.

…

La Gorda

She wanted to count in kilos because in pounds it was more than double and her body was able to carry 140 kilos but her mind couldn’t stand 320 pounds.
Gorda was used to being fat; her mother was proud to tell that when she was born she weighed five and a half kilos and after a week of breastfeeding, she had to complement her daily food with eight bottles of milk that the baby desperately drank.
Of course Gorda had a name, but nobody ever used it, not even herself. Always during her childhood and then during her teenage years, she responded to the only name that had identified her from the moment of her birth. During her Baptism, the priest had asked, “What’s the name of this plump baby?” Her parent’s answer was registered and forgotten in her birth certificate.
…

When she came back during the summer holidays, weighing sixty kilos (she refused the idea of going down to fifty–five because there were some curves she wanted to maintain), nobody, not even her mother, recognized her. This was a weird feeling because Gorda knew that she was the same; she had the same dreams, the same ideals and the same in love feeling for José whom after all these months she would shortly meet again. Through e-mails she had learned that Lola had left him to run away with the math teacher, but Gorda had never mentioned the diet to José. She wanted to surprise him and then invite him to observe how she inserted her belly rings, symbol of their engagement. …