How can Puerto Ricans find their own being, our own reality, that thing that sustains us and remains above the multiple appearances? We are going to try to do that with the help of Heidegger. Remember what we already said, that although the being comes before the historic experience of the world, the being is revealed in conventional history. If we now turn our view toward our history, we see that there is a common effort among Puerto Ricans, a collective destiny. Heidegger used this expression, "collective destiny," to label this historic labor of the community, the people, the public. This destiny is not the combination of individual destinies. No, Heidegger says the "collective destiny" is the shared struggle that daily forges this destiny existentially and dialectically, in constant conflict with our selves, with nature and with the elements. It is a process of transformation and change in which we have been making and continue making our historic events, our own way of life. In other words: our culture, which is our work every day in all its multiplicity and its unity.

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