Page 12 - Priorities #71
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A Conspiring Universe
Pronoia: the belief that the universe is conspiring on your behalf. The opposite of paranoia.
Cby Kathy Gonzalez
ristina Rosario Peréz finds it hard to believe that things have worked out so wonderfully, like the universe has dropped this opportunity in her lap. “It was a miracle,” she said about being offered to complete her senior year of high school at the Priory. “How can life put something I’ve always wanted right in front of my face?”
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the Caribbean, as well as Cristy’s home of Puerto Rico. “The wind sounded like someone screaming,” she said. She and her family hunkered down indoors during the worst hours of the storm. When they emerged, she was surprised to see the mountains and bare trees, like they’d been “skinned,” she said. People in the community gathered that evening to clean, to support, to talk. “Everyone came together,” Cristy said, but they would have a very long future of privation to endure.
However, Cristy describes herself as “a girl who always had change in her life,” so she adjusted to the lack of electricity, the military food, washing in the river. Back at school in October, Cristy resumed her demanding schedule attending her classes but had few opportunities for other activities as so many services remained unavailable, from transportation to Internet to electricity to her beloved swimming pool. Little did she know that the universe was sending a new opportunity her way.
That opportunity arrived in the form of Damian Cohen, Priory history teacher. Cohen had taken a semester sabbatical to volunteer helping refugees and to visit other educational settings. He worked alongside locals and aid organizations after the hurricane. But he arrived at the Colegio San Antonio
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