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Who are the true hybrids of our time?

Thanks in part to new commercials about hybrid cars, “hybrid” has now become a word used almost on a daily basis and in many contexts. A hybrid car is a vehicle with two sources of energy: gasoline and electricity. Those cars are neither traditional vehicles (using only gasoline) nor totally electric cars. They are both at the same time. I think there is a lesson for us there.

As humans, we are also a kind of hybrids, but not as cars and certainly not as those centaurs of mythology, that were neither human nor horses (however, legend says they were extremely intelligent, but that’s another story.)

We, humans, are a unity of opposites. We are animals and gods, angels and demons at the same time. We offer ourselves in selfless sacrifice and then commit horrendous atrocities. In each of us, there is a liberator and a dictator. We have great potential and we waste our potential.

We live in the paradox of achieving amazing technological advances so we can save millions of lives, and then we use that same technology to kill millions of people. We carry with us a growing number of communication devices, but in many occasions we are still complete alone, even in the middle of a crowd.

We are a mix of rationality and irrationality, love and hate, creativity and boredom, courage and cowardice, sympathy for those in need and total indifference, superficial thoughts and deep thoughts, mater and spirit.

There are so many contradictions inside us that when we see our own reflection in the mass media we don’t even recognize ourselves. In fact, many times we don’t recognize our own image we are standing in front of the mirror at home.

And for those of us who are also immigrants, there are even more contradictions and paradoxes. We are no longer “there,” but we don’t feel totally at home “here.” We speak a language we had to learn we are still learning, and, unfortunately, we are already losing our mother tongue. Our past and our roots are “over there,” while our future is “here.”

We came “here” to work, but then, we had to work 12 or more hours a day to feed our families, they say we are neglecting our children. We represent the majority of the growth in churches “here,” but then they want us to adopt the methods of those churches that are losing people year after year.

Over “there” we are no longer understood, and “here” we are not fully accepted yet. We want to be “ourselves,” but we are becoming “them.” We are a mix of Europeans and Natives, and, in many cases, we are exiled in our own land. But that’s why we are who we are.

Our contradictions and paradoxes, our mixed cultural and racial heritage, is like an old church organ with two keyboards: we are able to produce anything from silence to sublime melodies. We are “hybrids,” and our message is getting louder and clearer.

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