Today I want to welcome David Estes, author of the newest release The Earth Dwellers, back to the blog to share some of his writing with us!
Flashes of Humanity by David Estes
When I started seriously writing about
three years ago, I NEVER (like in a million-zillion years) thought
I’d be doing it full time at this point, with 14 published YA and
Children’s novels and more than 1.1 million words written. Never.
And I certainly wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that
my wife and I would be 15 months into a two year trip around the
world that would take us to six continents and more than a dozen
countries, all while continuing to write and publish my books to a
rapidly-growing worldwide ebook market. Seriously, I still slap
myself sometimes and thank the Kindle gods for their merciful ways.
But none of that is what I want to talk
about today. All of that is awesome and life-changing and a complete
and utter dream come true, but it’s not what matters the most. What
truly matters is what I take away from the experience, what I learn,
and how I grow as a human being. There will always be more words to
be written, more publishing deadlines to hit, and more promotions to
organize, but sometimes you have to stop, take a deep breath, and
just watch the world around you. Otherwise life might just whip by on
its Harley, wearing a black bandanna and a leather Angels jacket,
knock your hat off, and send curls of dust around you while it speeds
off into the distance.
What do you see if you stop and
observe? Do you see wars? The threat of nukes from cruel dictators?
Global warming and melting polar ice caps and overpopulation? Rapes
and murders and babies left in cars and financial fraud? It can be a
bleak and hopeless world sometimes, and I must admit, many of the
terrible events that dominant most of the news airtime most certainly
provides me with inspiration for my dystopian novels…
…HOWEVER…
…my novels also contain a LARGE
MEASURE OF HOPE in them, and that’s not me being an eternal
optimist or a glass-half-full kind of a guy. That’s me being real,
because hope is real and hope is evident in even the worst
situations. And the hope comes from real people. Good people. And
that, my friends, leads me to the single most important thing I’ve
learned from everything I’ve experienced in the last three years:
There are flashes of humanity all around us; we just have to look
for them.
Some are big flashes, like when there’s
a major catastrophe and people from all over the world come together
to pitch in, to roll up their sleeves, to donate their much-needed
money, TO HELP OTHER PEOPLE. That’s a BIG flash of humanity.
But most others are smaller, like when
you see someone on a packed-like-sardines bus give up their seat for
a pregnant lady or an elderly man with a cane. That’s a tiny flash
of humanity, barely a blip on the radar, but SO MEANINGFUL. And when
you pack those tiny flashes all together, they too become something
BIG, something WORTH WRITING ABOUT.
I’ve seen so many flashes in the last
three years that my glass half full is now overflowing, pouring over
the edges and pooling around its stem. Today I want to share just a
few of my favorite flashes of humanity:
1) FLASH! Christmas Eve, Merida,
Mexico. Adele and I were staying with a Spanish family, planning on
spending our Christmas Eve away from home eating cheap takeaway. But
no, our host insisted that we join her and her family for a proper
Christmas meal. She was the only one in the family that spoke English
(her young daughter was learning and her father didn’t), but I
swear to you, we laughed more that night than ever before, and most
of the time it was at a joke that her father made. Using gestures and
context as a guide, we were cracking up well before the translated
punch line. On that night, we were their family, too, having only met
them a few days earlier.
2) FLASH! Winter in Mexico, 80 degrees
Fahrenheit. For just a moment, try to forget about the drug cartels
and the gangs and all the other awful things you hear on the news
about Mexico. Yeah, that stuff happens and yes, it deserves attention
and concern. But that’s not Mexico. Not really. Mexico is families.
Ginormous families and extended families who CHOOSE to spend their
free time with each other, doing simple things like playing soccer in
a dusty field using goals with no nets or having a basic lunch of
beans and tortillas on the beach. Family is everything, and despite
living in conditions that many of us would consider on the border of
impoverished, the people ARE HAPPY. I learned a lot from the people
of Mexico.
3) FLASH! Springtime in St. Lucia. On a
touristy island that has constant cruise ships coming into port, some
of the locals want to take advantage, just like in many other tourist
destinations around the world. Everyone’s selling something, and if
you want to take a photo of a local doing something “cultural”,
you can expect them to ask for a small tip in return. Fair enough.
Such was our surprise when we were walking down a long hill one day,
only to happen upon a local man juggling a soccer ball using every
part of his body but his hands. He was smiling, laughing, having a
great time doing it, and he was very talented. “Take a photo!” he
exclaimed when he saw us out of the corner of his eye. We were wary
at first, because we’d been offered photo ops before, only to be
harassed for “donations” afterwards, but soon it became obvious
that this man wanted us to take his photo simply because he was proud
of what he was able to do with that soccer ball. Adele snapped
several photos, which we’ll cherish for years to come. And that man
just kept juggling that soccer ball, probably long after we’d
finished our trek down the hill.
4) FLASH! Moroccan desert storm!
Morocco is a magical place that feels like you’re stepping back in
time. From huge cities with cars, scooters and donkeys narrowly
passing each other on thin cobblestone medina streets, to beautiful
mountain villages, to seaside towns, to desert oases, Morocco has a
bit of everything. Staying in Merzouga, Morocco, we decided to
venture from our riad just outside of the village into town to have a
peek around. We took some photos of camels, bought a bus ticket, and
then had a long chat with a man in Arabic (Adele did the talking
since she knows the language), when billowing dark clouds rolled in
overhead, rumbling like they had a bad case of indigestion. We
thought we had time to make the fifteen minute walk back to our riad.
We were wrong. Caught in no-man’s-land (basically a cracked-earth
desert tundra), the dust began swirling around us, getting in our
eyes, covering our clothes, whipped into a frenzy by heavy winds.
Thunder crashed, lightning flashed. The rain came seconds later and
we started to run. We never had a chance. It was a torrential
downpour and the conditions were dangerous to say the least. A truck
passed us, stopped, and rolled down the window. The cab was full but
clearly they were willing to let us jump in the truck bed, but then
another car pulled up, one with a backseat. They motioned frantically
for us to get in, which we did. They were hotel workers, wearing
traditional garb, and we thought they were from our riad because
their uniforms looked identical. Turns out they worked in a different
riad and were cousins of the ones who owned our riad. They drove us
all the way home and refused to offer payment for the gesture.
5) FLASH! Lake Peipsi, Estonia
(Kallaste). We attended a wedding of two close friends, a Chinese
girl and an Estonian guy, who we’d met in Australia. Upon arrival,
the groom’s family invited us to their home. The groom’s father
was a fisherman and offered us smoked fish caught earlier that day.
BEST FISH EVER! For the whole four days, they invited us to
everything, treating us like part of their family, only having just
met us. It was enough that we were their son’s friends. Two
barbecues, lots of smoked fish, a rousing game of soccer with—I
swear to you—every single boy and guy in the town, ages six to
sixty. I couldn’t speak a word of Estonian or Russian, but it
didn’t matter. There were cheers, hugs, laughs, and bonds of
friendship that will last a lifetime.
6) FLASH! Organic farm, Maiori, Italy.
Some people don’t have much, and yet they give it all away anyway.
Such were our hosts in a beautiful little bed and breakfast with
stunning views of the Amalfi Coast. The 318 daily steps to our
temporary home were well worth it! And our hosts were so generous,
giving us fresh produce from their garden on a daily basis, as well
as “samples” of their traditional Italian dinners that were the
size of full meals. We laughed so hard at meal time, because the
stories they told were so funny and interesting. And they laughed at
us when we ran from their particularly unfriendly and brooding
rooster, because, of course, they’d done the same many times
before. (There’s even a video of our host running from their
rooster on YouTube!) When we left, Adele and the host hugged and
cried, and I might’ve teared up a little too.
I could go on for pages and pages about
the incredible people and experiences we’ve had on this trip.
There’s SO MUCH good in this world, even if it’s hard to see it
sometimes. If nothing else, my experiences over the last three years
have taught me to look for the spark of light in the darkness, to
find the ray of sunshine peeking through a cloud-shrouded sky, and to
never—not ever—pick a fight with a moody rooster.
David Estes
Thank you, David! I love hearing about all your travel adventures, and I hadn't heard all of these yet! You really should write a memoir just on your trip!
Other Young Adult Books by David Estes:
Children’s Books by David Estes:
