Fin

The experience is over. I'm back in North Canton spending time with my parents and family for a few weeks before moving to Denver to start a new job.

The normally arduous flight back to Ohio from BA was shortened significantly via great conversations with college students coming back from Buenos Aires after a 4 month study abroad program. Together, we reflected, affirmed and validated each other, and breathed mutual sighs of relief to be leaving the big city. And we admitted that we would likely miss it.

In Atlanta, it was sad to see the Argentines peel off to their respective terminals to catch their connecting flights. My last interaction was with an older Argentine woman who looked confused on the terminal train in Atlanta. I asked her where she was going and explained to her where she needed to get off. And when I left the train before her I said, 'chau!' and she fittingly responded, 'bye bye!'.

So I've been thinking about the take away. The biggest lesson I've learned here. The different forms of thinking and ways of seeing I experienced throughout my life in Argentina. I went from in love with the city to overwhelmed by the city to culture shock to deep pessimmism and frustration to enjoying the city and country in the summer and finally to coming to an understanding of the city, learning the game, and ending with mixed feelings.

In short, what it comes down to is that for much of the trip I felt burned by the city and some of the people (one more than the rest). And so I'd become pessimistic and super critical of the place. It was as if Buenos Aires had been a best friend who stole my girlfriend but then wanted to be my friend again. And for most of the trip, I wasn't having it. I was wary of the city and people and biding my time to leave. But over time I came to understand the city better. While I couldn't accept many of the characteristics that led me to my initial cynical view, I at least understood.

I think I had become infected by a sort of existential every man for himself jaundiced view of the city. I call it the Porteno Mentality. I'd seen it time and time again, in about half of my friends and a significant number of people that I interacted with every day. In fact, most of the people I did business with or wanted to do business with were wary of me upon our initial meeting, as if even my desire to give them money to procure a service had some type of ulterior viveca criollo motive.

But after a while I realized that my negativity was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, even if someone responded to me in a genuine and honest way, my negativity and heightened wariness soured the interaction and made the result negative. For instance, when the mailman called up to my apartment to tell me that I was late on one of my bills, I immediately thought he was a crook trying to get me to open up my door so he could rob me. I told him rudely to leave, only to find out later that he was right. I was late on my bill and the fact that I waited longer to pay it meant that I had to take a 2 hour trip across town to pay the bill at a special location.

Once I made a number of these mistakes, I began to realize that half of my problems were my fault: my negativity, my lack of trust, my newfound Porteno Mentality.

So I tried to change. I tried hard to be positive until I had evidence to the contrary. And I also tried to overcompensate to try to undo others pessimissm by opening doors, giving bigger than normal tips, catching people on the bus and subway when they were jarred to the floor by sharp turns or jerky stops, and helping out whenever the opportunity presented itself. I also tried hard to do what I said I was going to do, be on time, return emails and calls, and do nice things for people without expecting anything in return or without ulterior motives. I found meaning in the work of undoing the Porteno Mentality, of trying to be selfless and responsible in the hopes of showing people that their cynicism and wariness, to the degree that it exists in BA, is unwarranted.

Now that it's all over and I'm back in a place where the Porteno Mentality doesn't exist, I find myself still negative, todavia Porteno. For example, I travelled up to a used car dealership to check out a car that had a clean carfax report and that I was told over the phone was in great shape. In reality, the car was a wreck. It had clearly been repaired after an accident, had a bolt sticking out of one of the tires, had been terribly repainted to hide the accident, had almost no oil in the engine, and was visibly dripping oil underneath. I didn't even have to turn the car on to know that it was junk. I felt burned again. Stupid for having trusted any used car salesman, despite the clean carfax report.

After the experience, my Porteno Mentality told me never to trust another used car salesman. That they were all dishonest and that I should completely exclude dealerships from my car searches. And then I remembered what I had learned. I realized that generalizing one bad experience to all used car salesmen would result in a much more difficult search. I told myself that while I might run across more dishonest car salesmen, there were bound to be a few honest ones with good cars to sell. I had to keep being cautiously optimistic in order to not pass up a potential opportunity. Because if I dismissed the veracity of all car salesmen, I'd be missing out on a great deal.

So the next reasonable deal I saw, I decided to check it out, despite the fact that it was yet another used car dealership. As it turned out, this vehicle was much better than the last. It had not been in an accident, but had some dings and dents and had been well used in general. However, it was mechanically sound and the salesman was genuinely forthcoming in telling me everything that was wrong with the vehicle. His honesty was refreshing and he proved my point when he agreed with me that the car was too well worn to trust at the price it was being sold at, or any price for that matter.

The take away then is that an attitude of cautious optimism yields better results than outright cynicism. There are dishonest people out there. But their opposites exist too. If you are negative about everyone, you will miss out on the good in life. Even when it happens to you, you won't recognize it. And it will happen to you less because you will sour potential opportunities. It's simply the way the world works.