On 18th March 2043 in Las Mercedes, a small town high up in the Peruvian Andes mountains, at more than 3000m above sea level, I came into the world. My mother, Iris, walked more than 100km through these mountains looking for shelter and a place to give birth. That night, my mother came to town and found it deserted, no one had lived there for many years. Las Mercedes, which in its best times had 100 inhabitants, was one of the many towns scattered in the Peruvian mountain range in which almost all its inhabitants had emigrated to the coast or to Lima in search of a better life.
She was exhausted and on the verge of fainting. She had resigned herself to her own fate when suddenly some 900m below in the distance she could glimpse a stone house with a light on inside.
Drawing on her last bouts of strength, she descended the mountain and approached the house where she found an elderly couple. They happened to be shepherds who had decided to stay in the village to take care of the few animals that still remained. As luck would have it, my mother found them and they took her in and looked after her when she gave birth to me.
That night I opened my eyes to the world.
The first thing my mother did was show me the stars, planets and constellations under the starry sky over the mountains. She put me against her chest as if she did not want to let me go and hugged me very tightly. I can still feel her heat and smell as if she were still by my side right now. She told me about her past, about my grandmother, Vanessa, whom she had never met, she also told me about Jaime, about the life she had led, about my father whom I never met either and the reasons why she left him. She instilled within me the same hunger for knowledge and curiosity about the Universe and the meaning of life. But she also transferred her emptiness to me, that emptiness that she sought to fill by escaping to the mountains in search of the answers to the questions that haunted her since childhood.
Who are we? Why do we exist? What is beyond this Universe?
In her delirium to find the answers, she had joined a group of people living in isolation in the Peruvian mountains who called themselves Runa. They had resumed the lifestyle of the ancient Peruvians, working the land, collectively and in harmony with nature. They were men and women who had voluntarily decided to move away from the modern world and raise their children with different mentality, to avoid causing more harm to the planet and to seek a natural balance between man and pachamama.
In this group, my mother met the man who became my father. They shared a passionate relationship. They truly loved each other dearly and were very committed to Runa‘s cause, that was until my mother found out about my arrival and suddenly her priorities changed again.
A new void settled within her.
My arrival called into question her own existence. Who are we? Why do we exist? What is beyond this Universe? What is the point of looking for answers to those questions if in a few months you would have to take care of a new human being? Was she willing to sacrifice her search to take care of me? Was she destined to not find those answers to ensure the survival of the species? Were human beings destined to never have time to devote to the search for these answers? Having a family, a job, connecting to the world, was the same as losing your individuality and getting stuck into a routine like everyone else. Our society seems to be designed to not let us be free and ask big questions. Runa was a group of human beings who sought harmony between man and pachamama. That kept her busy for a while, but deep down they were not interested in finding the answers to these questions either.
My father was more interested in the pachamama rituals and sustainable agriculture than in knowing if life had any meaning or if the Universe had a plan for us all. Thus, that renewed emptiness grew more and more inside her. Until all of a sudden, the void turned into fear. After all, the modern world had its advantages and it seemed the best option for her fear regarding my survival. She was not willing to lose me during birth as was the case with other members of the group who had accepted these misfortunes, in order to maintain a lifestyle away from modernity.
In this way, my mother’s pregnancy filled her with many doubts regarding her own existence, her purpose in life and how to approach motherhood. Until one day, she left everything once again and having only few days left before my birth, decided to leave my father in order to go on a two-day walk to the nearest town with a medical centre. On the way, she got lost and ended up arriving in Las Mercedes.
My mother was an adventurous woman and that had a significant influence on me. That curiosity to explore, discover and investigate, shaped my personality and that is why I chose archaeology as my profession years later. I continued the search that she had abandoned in order to take care of me. Her mission became my mission. She never knew, but I was able to get the answers to the questions that haunted her whole life. Nor did she know or ever imagined that her only son would reveal himself millions of years later as the creator of the cosmos and the holder of these answers and of absolute knowledge about the Universe.
In the end, she made a decision that impacted the course of human history:
She stopped being Iris to become my mother.