When Self-Improvement Becomes Self-Aggression

Photo by Alex Greenberg on Unsplash

In 1999, I lived in Southern Guatemala, just outside of Guatemala City. My companion and I were responsible for moving other young members of our group — there to teach and serve local communities — from place to place. We had a giant blue van with a steel “battling ram” on the front. The van seated fifteen, and on top of it was a bulky steel luggage rack with folding sides, meant to haul gear when the inside was full of people.

We lived in one of the few houses in the area that had a garage, but the rack had to be folded down in order for the van to fit through the door. It was a ritual we repeated daily — fold down the rack, drive in carefully.

One night after a really long day of driving all over the city, we got home exhausted. I pulled into the garage, probably too fast, on autopilot. The moment I heard the grinding screech of metal tearing into concrete, I knew we had forgotten. The luggage rack, still raised, had hit the low concrete lip of the garage door. I stopped. Then I backed the van out and listened to the same screech in reverse.

The front of the luggage rack was completely destroyed—broken hinges and mangled metal. More impressively, however, the long steel sides had held up fabulously and had carved two perfectly straight one-inch-wide gouges through the garage ceiling. We stared at the damage for…