Buen provecho!
One week ago today I arrived in Ecuador, with two suitcases and my old extra-large leather purse, having left my house in the hands of a realtor and my children at their respective universities. It’s quite an extreme change, from my remote little house in the woods of Atlantic Canada to this tiny apartment with a view of city rooftops—red tile and sheet metal—and the Andes beyond. But it was definitely time. Susan’s Moving Castle has landed on the equator.
I don’t know anyone here yet. Truth be told, 2025 has been a year of numerous losses for me and at times I’ve felt dangerously disconnected from healthy human relationships. So it brought a genuine smile of surprise and pleasure to my face, as I sat in a little restaurant (eating a bowl of simple, colorful, nourishing, delicious encebollado) to hear a gentleman passing by tell me: “Buen provecho.” I had almost forgotten this wonderful custom. Like my encebollado, it’s simple, comforting, and nourishing: when you finish your meal and leave a restaurant, you can say this phrase to those still dining—it means something like “enjoy your meal,” or “bon appétit.”
Why is this so touching? Perhaps because it’s a gift of kindness between strangers. It has seemed to me that every year, while social media and business networking platforms continue to expand their reach into every moment and corner of people’s lives, sincere, spontaneous, face-to-face communications have faltered. As an indication of how pervasive it is, the very word “friend” has been co-opted by vast for-profit social media corporations. Few encounters are free of economic or social appraisal or some degree of maneuvering. How did we let this happen? I’m not the only one expressing concern about it.
I’m truly grateful for the technology that allows me to work online, research, share my thoughts, and more easily stay in touch with distant friends. But in North America I’ve seldom experienced the unguarded, easy friendliness from total strangers that I have in other parts of the world. I’m from a major American city, and have lived in several others in the US and Canada, as well as more out-of-the-way places like my most recent dwelling. When I remember the warmest, easiest acquaintances, the ones that still make me smile many years later, they were almost always with people from other lands. A Kurdish waiter in my favorite mediterranean restaurant. A Taiwanese teacher at my children’s Mandarin immersion school. A Colombian co-worker. And countless others.
Maybe the reason this practice of well-wishing a stranger in passing is subtly astonishing to me is that the concept of “stranger” is overdeveloped in our rather fearful culture. A fearfulness that I suspect has multiple roots. One of them might be the competitive nature of our society, from grade school to business to entertainment. Even, on an unspoken and often subconscious level, at parties, yoga classes, church events, and PTA meetings. Most of us live with a constant low-grade sense of scarcity which keeps us on the defensive, just as most of us live with constant low-grade inflammation. (“Low-grade” doesn’t mean “not dangerous.”) I would even say the insecurity I’m describing is tantamount to chronic emotional inflammation. It’s a widely recognized phenomenon that North Americans increasingly feel isolated, lonely, vulnerable, and unsafe. Anger and aggression follow, or depression, or anxiety, or physical disease.
Paradoxically, our choices often make our isolation and vulnerability even more real. It’s one reason I chose to come to a place like this. I know how isolation contributes to ill health of every sort. I’ve seen how my own natural openness and love of communication have been undermined by deep emotional injuries.
No society is perfect, and I don’t mean to be judgemental here. But let your imagination go to work with this. Yesterday was Saturday, and when I walked to a nearby plaza with the intention of simply sitting on a bench and enjoying my surroundings, I found that hundreds of other people had the same idea. There were young couples on dates, hanging out in the park, buying ice cream or flowers. There were mothers chatting while their children played around (not with electronics, but in the healthy, spontaneous, organic play which is mostly about moving the whole body because it feels good). There were people of all ages strolling, friends and family members of all ages arm-in-arm. There were indigenous people from the countryside in their gorgeous colorful clothing alongside the well-heeled and elegant, teens in groups, park security guards, vendors, tradespeople, tourists. There were people of all ages sitting around, and though many of us arrived alone, I distinctly felt I was sitting with my neighbors, even when we didn’t speak.
This scene was ever fresh with a constant, leisurely flow of people in and out of the plaza. I didn’t see a single person being a stranger. Not even me.
