Crossing the River by Amy Ragsdale Page A

Big unzipped purse , or Wallet in back left pocket, partially exposed . . . It took months before I figured out that they were the same guys who, pointing two fingers to their eyes and then one to your parked car, would offer to watch it for a few coins. They helped each other out, letting a sleeping compatriot know, with a quick set of whistles, that their car’s owner was about to return.
    Some years ago, one of the things that made me realize I would choose Montana over other places to live was my growing understanding that I valued living in a place with little or no manmade sound. Penedo was not such a place. Manmade sound seemed to be prized—the louder, the better. By the end, I found I rather admired this insistent celebration of life, especially since, recalling Giovanni’s statistics, I knew life there could be hard. Brazil has the ninth-highest homicide rate in the world—and our peaceful town of Penedo turned out to be right in there with the best of them. Giovanni once said, shaking his head in resignation, “We just live in fear, fear, fear.”
    But he laughed as he said it.
    â€œAna Licia says Brazilians are the happiest people on earth,” Molly announced one night, quoting one of her classmates, as we lounged around our dinner table.
    â€œAre they?” I mused.
    Or are they “HwH,” “Happy with Help”? Was it that with a little beer—okay, a lot of beer—a little pot, or a little crack, the not-very-promising world looks a lot better? Of course, we have a lot of people on the HwH plan in the United States—drinking, usingantidepressants—and we still don’t claim to be the happiest people on earth. What’s the difference? I wondered what role ambition—the pursuit of achievement—and the resulting workaholism might play in keeping us in the States from being the happiest people on earth. Ambition and workaholism were two things I’d been dealing with a lot. I suspected they were at the root of my struggle to maintain balance and joy.
    In the United States, it feels to me as though our poor brains are addled, overwhelmed by the complexities of our world (as are the computers that are taking over for us, addled by the sheer volume they’re expected to handle). In the United States, we say the addling is caused by the pace, too much, too fast—stimulation, information, options. What’s driving the pace? In the States, we like to think we thrive on stimulation; we want options—who wouldn’t? But when is the pace too fast, and the options so many that they’re consuming us? Would we actually be happier with less? In northeastern Brazil, the pace definitely isn’t too fast, and there often aren’t a lot of options.
    It must be baffling to the vast Brazilian poor how the few rich can so readily steal the food right out of their mouths, over and over and over again, century after century. It’s not like the rich can’t see the effects of what they’re doing; it’s right in front of you—in the rows of tiny houses with no water on dirt streets, their roofs leaking and dengue fever flying through their unglazed windows. Those poor don’t have a lot of options. Their lives aren’t focused on achieving their potentials. But then, somehow, the inhabitants of those houses are still singing, still rocking their hips to the frevo music—until the young men get drunk and shoot each other.
    Sometimes my type-A American self has felt frustrated with people in other countries, usually the poor in developing countries who, understandably in their feelings of powerlessness, attribute their situations to fate. I’ve found myself harboring conservative-American pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps thoughts: Come on! Where’s your get-up-and-go? But when it comes to producing happiness , I find myself wondering which approach might be the more successful—the resignation to