Feeling, Relating, Existing

(Excuse my english)

Im chilean. We are expected to live through at least four mayor earthquakes in our life. We share stories of past earthquakes among us. I can tell you where my grandfather was in his first earthquake in Valparaiso in the early 1900s.

We call earthquake to big events that caused destruction and death, the others are called "earth trembles" no matterd how big they are. I think is a way to handle things, if we call earthquake every tremble we could have difficults coping.

As chilean economy grew stronger during the last 25 years, our society relays more and more in consuming and less in traditional bonds of the comunity. We are sort of more consumers and less citizens.

I noticed that this last time people was shattered to the core by a feeling of "non sense" but, at the same time, people tend to stuck together searching for comfort in the comunity, the same that used to be devalued before the earthquake. One of the most common comments by then were things like: "Nothing else mattered excepted my family/friends/neighbors safety".

After 2 years we still talked a lot about it. Topics as "Where were you then?" "What did you do?", talking about fears and feelings asossiated to the earthquake are very common between us.