Jim Ryan

Permanent Vacation

As the son of a mother and extended family that themselves have said non serviam to Cuba under Castro, I am struck by the many contexts that this term can take, and how time and place factor so heavily on its meaning.  Non serviam can be seen as a subtle play on a general disgruntled attitude toward our native society and as an adventurousness that is spurred on by the exotic idea of lands and peoples foreign to us.  I wish to contrast particularly the latter half of this attitude with the general context of political flight my family experienced when they fled Cuba in 1959.  

My grandparents, and countless others, fled for reasons political and social.  Though leaving a well established life in the pre-communist Cuban aristocracy involved much sacrifice, I’m sure that, in my grandfather’s eyes, that aspect of their lives would ultimately have been sacrificed under a Castro-led regime regardless of whether or not they had taken flight.  Indeed if there was to be any way for my family to retain its wealth it would have been to accept communism, which tacitly meant surrendering deeply held beliefs, particularly religious beliefs.  That can be clearly seen as the dividing line; if one is to lose one’s material wealth, it may be best to flee to a place where the opportunity to regain the material wealth on one’s own terms remains a possibility.  It is important to understand that in the case of my forebears, survival was not necessarily the motivation. My mother and grandparents made that abundantly clear in my childhood. The motivation was a rejection of communism and a desire for the free practice of their religion.  

In an age where the world was being separated by two monolithic powers that created and controlled new technology with the power to destroy all humanity, the urgency felt by those who defected from one side to the other must have been especially great.  Such an act was not as narcissistic as prior generations, the “Lost Generation” specifically. Moving to America, where they do not speak the native language and with precious little to build a life from, was a permanent stand and involved the rebuilding of more than just one or two individual lives.  

Assuredly this is a different sort of act in today’s context.  It is one thing to flee to the United States, and quite another to flee from the United States.  Today there seems to be more glamour to the idea of defecting, something that stems from a tiredness of the political system or a fermentation of the upstart idealized teenage angst that has become more and more fashionable.  More and more often I see my generation cultivating a fascination with life abroad along with general restlessness.

In many ways this seems to reflect the lost generation. While we are becoming more and more cognizant of the slow decay of our own political system and the unrest in other areas of the world, the perceived urgency of our ‘lost generation’ does not compare to that of our immigrant forebears.

Perhaps this longed for permanent vacation is of a different substance.  It seems we are not at all interested in defection; rare is the dire situation in our lives.  Yet, we are all inspired mightily by what we gain from the world and its offerings.  Perhaps we are more interested in using this intellectual material to fumigate that which we find restless in this new American century.  Certainly this is a tall order to fill, especially in an age where we shy away from grand scale and vision for fear of the intellectual ruin of broken promises and overblown claims (see neo-conservatism). 

The fearlessness of this globalized age has created a fast paced marketplace of ideas that in many ways has cultivated our fascination with the alien.  This fascination needs to be further cultivated and implemented into our society, and only if we are unsuccessful will we really know what non serviam means.  If we are successful, then almost certainly what we speak of in defection will come more accurately to signify the fanciful idea of permanent vacation.