La Aurora and her hat

In Memoriam: To the aunt.

Day 1: The quarantine myth

It's been many years since I started sharing my ideas, but I hope this time to dust off my computer and my ability to dream to weave my feelings. Quarantine or Lent come from the same Latin root forty; one seeks physical separation, the other seeks interior work to transform our weaknesses, to get closer to God in ourselves. I wonder if in the midst of quarantine we can't all make a commitment to see each other naked in our confinement and, instead of running from ourselves by gorging ourselves on distractions, noise and tirades, cultivate the silence that scares us so much. We will be able to decide if we want to draw the outline of our limitations in charcoal, or if in watercolor we dare to transgress everything and add the color that comes to mind. I find it a unique opportunity to reflect, to return to our gifts, to thank, to forgive, to seek a return to the cave.

In the bosom of our homes we can take the position of men chained behind a wall, and only in the distance see the shadows projected by objects, or be that man who manages to free himself from his chains and begins to ascend in the cavern walking towards that blinding fire. As a consequence of a decision, he leaves the cave and looks directly at the objects, of which he only saw the shadows of him. The beauty of everything in everything was revealed, it was known, it was known. Then this man tries to return to the cave to free the other prisoners, and many prefer to stay.

We suggest you read: Call for the “Pandemic Diaries” project, from the National University of Colombia in alliance with El Espectador

May we not be those prisoners who decided to stay in chains when we had the chance to be free. Our freedom is not blinded by walls and adobes. May we have the audacity of those who free themselves and walk towards the light, even in the midst of darkness and terrifying projections. Our path is to get out of the prison of the images we have built of ourselves and allow ourselves to compose a new melody in which our being flourishes and is fully ecstatic. There is no quarantine without Lent. There is no Lent without freedom. Quarantine is a myth. Let's rewrite it.

Day 2: Escape Attempt

While the prisoners of this country rioted in the prisons and moments of anguish for them and their families were lived, screams were heard and tears were seen, tears of a mother who had not heard from her son for 15 days, tears that They demand forgiveness of a mistake. Fired rage rose up against those who exercise power. Those "deprived" of freedom were enraged and in a concerted way inflamed their right, at the cost of deaths, suffering, to renounce the time of freedom. It all seems paradoxical: while they shouted their pain, an entire country — which lived, with all proportions kept, in confinement for the first time in its history — watched it in their homes. Yes, today we are experiencing the social isolation that they experience, without bars or guards. Don't we all deserve a chance at redress? Isn't it time to think about those beings who, being guilty or not, deserve compassion? Do we deserve it? Could it be that there is dignity in that confinement? And in ours? What can we do or learn to make our quarantine not a desperate cry but an opportunity to reinvent ourselves? Although in the Modelo prison they debated between life and death, here in an apartment in Medellín, I reflected on putting myself in the other's shoes. While the national anthem and that of Antioquia rose in the air, and the people with pans applauded, I thought that we still have in our hands the option to lighten the load of our friends and enemies, with a call, with a thought, with a WhatsApp, with a transfer, with an affirmation or with a silence. May it not be the fury of a few that distracts the purpose of many, let us be loving and compassionate. The love conquers all.

Day 3: First line of defense

After declaring the prison emergency and the National Government issued a regulatory decree on mandatory preventive isolation, there have been scuffles between the so-called territorial entities and the national government over the use of the pension resources of said entities, and the destiny that they would make of themselves.

On the other hand, in the press conference in which the decree was publicized, it was reiterated to public opinion over and over again that overcoming this contingency will be achieved if society unites, if it settles its differences, and that it is in our hands to link them for the prevention, containment and mitigation of the effects of this virus in our population.

It is contradictory to see then the mayoress launching at the ready against the President of the Republic on Twitter, when a couple of days ago, in a joint press conference, she praised the coordination with the National Government. Or talk about a minimum distance of two meters and see all the ministers sitting at the press conference less than a meter away. How hard is it to be consistent? Someone once told me that coherence was to say what you did and to do what you said, or even more so that it was what you said or said whatever. Beyond this tongue twister, my being and my doing must be combined in such a way that it is and ceases to be, in each action, with attention and full awareness. In a frank fight against the ego, the "corona virus" that corrodes our spirit. This is the time for us to reflect on whether we are consistent with our purpose, with ourselves, with our deepest desires, with our dreams. If we are an instrument that is tuned and majestically interprets the divine score, or if, on the contrary, we are automatons trapped by the distraction of the world and by the army, which, as the first line of defense, distances us from beauty and confines us in the castle of the “Corona Virus”. For the sample, a button: yesterday I set a goal in line with my purpose and I was distracted by watching Netflix. Let it not happen to you. The job is permanent. Let's tear down that first line of defense and be consistent at all times. That will give us inner peace!

Day 4: Beef Non Verba

When I was a girl, my grandfather, with his remedy in hand, which was a whiskey on the rocks whose dosage was exact, would sit me down to take a test: whether or not I knew Latin locutions. My grandfather loved that a grandson or granddaughter walked through those paths that he gladly walked in his early years. I remember that one afternoon he told me: “res non verba”, and I answered: “deeds, not words”; and then he told me “alea jacta est”, and I took the floor from him almost to push him and answer him: “the die is cast”. At that time I couldn't understand that the meanings of both phrases were opposite, I just thought: Yes, I did it! And at the same time I observed my grandfather's satisfied face... I knew that I had made him happy! If we assume that "the coin is already spinning in the air", as Jorge Drexler's song says, and that there is nothing to do and everything is written, then where is our will, our free will? And how are we supposed to change? Will we make it by looking at the empty streets from our windows? We must act in balance, responding to that certainty that breaks the wind like an arrow and reaches the target. Action and stillness, words and silence. Aren't they complementary ingredients? Yesterday I saw on television, and as always, the antagonistic protagonists of this cartoon, on the one hand, the streets crowded with people who are more afraid of hunger than of the lethal virus, lining up waiting for a false subsidy or market, and on On the other hand, the story of an Italian priest who gave his respirator to a younger man. The first ones decided to change their reality by asking; the second giving his life. The first ones show us how the die is cast for them and they feel without a horizon, trapped in a system riddled with inequality; the second —even living in the same world— decided to die to give life. Do we want to leave our lives to fate or, on the contrary, do we want to sow a seed in the heart of another with our example, a seed of hope, a seed of life? Want is power!

Day 5: The art of time

I wish we understood, once and for all, that a life is worth everything. I am outraged to see all sorts of measures by governments and presidents that take advantage of these moments to ensure the favorability of public opinion. In Brazil and Mexico, the presidents are certain that they will defeat the virus and that the crisis will not exist for them. In Mexico, for example, they affirm that it will last until October, and that they will have everything under control. I have been giving it a head and we should import one of those fortune tellers to help our "duke" to end the endless lines in the Soacha Transmilenio or to distribute sustenance to people who live from day to day. What do you think? On the other hand, Trump affirms that the cure cannot be worse than the disease, and today the United States is one of the countries with the highest number of infected people. There are already more than 50,000 sick people! The man worried about his Gallup polls has allowed the invisible virus to gallop and conquer his territory. This mysterious crowned knight has attacked the untouchables who have waited their whole lives for a crown, such as Charles of England. Let Donald turn pale, don't mistake him for Donald Duck! We all make mistakes; I only hope that these gentlemen, who hold the responsibility of directing the strings of a country, do not delay in correcting them. We are so stubborn, proud, and fearful that we get stuck in the mud of our mistakes, and our compass falls into it. Our subsequent actions are foolish: in our anguish, we lose our bearings and the dominoes simply fall one after the other. It happened to me just yesterday in my long-awaited cello class: Claudia, the teacher, told me when studying Bach's Minuet 3 that I had to play 16 bars without stopping, even making mistakes, and without losing concentration: "music is a art in time, time does not stop”. We tried many times and I couldn't finish it, and he told me: “convince yourself that you are capable”, and magically, after an hour of battling with my own mind that sabotaged my effort, we did it. Life is like music: time doesn't stop. To err is human, as is not to get stuck in that quagmire by acknowledging our mistakes. If you throw in the towel, you would miss the world of hearing what your being has to say. Even in adversity, you will be able to continue your interpretation and feel the value of every second lived, of the music that is to you and that emanates from you. Let's not run away or get down, we are all capable of tearing down the walls that make us believe that there is nothing new under the sun. What are you going to dare today?

Day 6: Ctrl + Alt + Delete

For a few days now, I have been watching videos on social media and interviewing infected people on television. Many begin by saying that they did not intend to remain anonymous, but that the common welfare prevailed over the "what will they say" of society. All of them—without exception—feel guilty and immeasurably afraid. A death warrant signed by an invisible enemy. Some —because they had to, others because they didn't care— found themselves confined and marked this time, not with a yellow star, as the Jews were once persecuted, but with an invisible crown. The Plague of Constantinople in the time of Justinian devastated 40% of its population; the Black Death undermined the population of the Iberian Peninsula by 65%; Smallpox decimated the population of the New World by 30%, HIV, and flu in all its colors and flavors. Pandemics are part of the history of humanity, just as death is the inseparable companion of life. How can I determine when day stops being day to become night, and when night stops being night to become day? Is the circumference not continuous? Death —as some friends terminally ill with cancer said— is the “unique and unrepeatable moment to be reborn and transform into eternity”. Let us not fear death; let us fear not to live, not to love, not to serve, not to be the best we can be; We are afraid of having pending subjects. A diagnosis transforms a person's life. For better or worse? It is in the hands of the person. For me it was a great gift, a reminder of transience and eternity, of purpose, of what really matters, and not the trifles we deal with. There are illnesses and the sick, there are living people who do not want to live, there are dead people who would like to have done things differently. Behind each diagnosis there is a person giving new meaning to their existence. The feeling is like when the computer crashes and you have to reset it: the screen goes black or white, then it starts loading a new image and a new operating system. Let's not judge, or put labels on people, whether or not they have a disease, because it doesn't make them villains or make them sick. In each of us is the potential to change everything. The best way to summarize it is with a phrase that was on the wall of an army barracks on the way out of Barranquilla towards Puerto Colombia, which said: "THERE ARE NO IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, THERE ARE INCAPABLE MEN". Let's celebrate life! . Happy Birthday daddy!

Day 7: Silent prayer

This world is experiencing things that were unimaginable. 25% of the world population is at home, with India being the country with the highest number of people in quarantine (1.3 billion). China and the United States, the arch-enemies, recognize that only together can they overcome the lethality of the situation. On this side of the world, Trump is demanding that General Motors use its laid-off plants to produce ventilators. Isn't this intervention similar to what Xi Jinping would do in China? And to top it off, the United States offers 15 million dollars for the head of Maduro, when he had already been in power for 7 years, heir to the post of Chávez, who in turn lasted 15 years as dictator. Did it take the United States 22 years to cut its economic dependence on Venezuelan oil? To finish the tour, in Colombia, the Coronavirus miraculously caused the collapsed health system to receive resources; and that, for the first time, Petro did not contradict Duque, but supported him. Plop! Everything moves, changes and turns in unexpected directions. The same thing happens in the life of each one of us. Mahatma Gandhi said: "If you want to change the world, change yourself", and he did so during his life, to such an extent that he personified his message. Not only did she knit her dhoti, but she also withstood all the onslaughts of the status quo. A heart like Gandhi's should inspire us in times like these to weave our unequivocal message of love and compassion. Let's be the change, and thus we will ignite the most powerful catalytic fire that exists: the example. Let's learn from Gandhi, who urged us that his greatest weapon was his silent prayer. Let's pray.

Day 8: Oasis

BEING ONE

Let nothing invade me from outside,

Let only me listen inside.

I God

of my chest.

(I all: west and dawn;

love, friendship, life and dream.

I just

universe.)

Come in, don't think about my life,

Leave me deep and lean.

I one

in my center.

Juan Ramon Jimenez

I wonder if my center will be a universe with a firmament, suns, stars, unfathomable seas, flowers of sublime beauty. I wonder if there will be seasons in it, if in the spring what has survived the winter cold flourishes, if summer plays at making that world welcoming, and then the painter sits down with his brush to tint the treetops with ochres. . I wonder if my center will have mountains and moors, if snow covers its slopes elegantly, if there will be Mount Everest or if there will be a Dead Sea.

I don't know if in my center there are hummingbirds that, by feinting, cheer up the most taciturn beetle. I wonder if the aroma of coffee or orange blossom or mint incense homes. I wonder if my center will have the privilege of listening to the ecstasy of music, the song of the mockingbird courting its partner, or the rhythmic dance of the trees being caressed by the wind, its conductor. I wonder if my center will be watered and calmed by the rain. If stillness invades you after receiving food. I wonder if the fire with its crackling builds and transforms that universe. I wonder if there will be death and life; I wonder if there is up or down, if there are cardinal points. I wonder if there will be a girl who seeks eternity, who seeks to grow aware of the perfect order of that center and its divine fabric, of the immeasurable beauty of its landscapes, its rhythms, its silences. I wonder if the smile that accompanies the memories takes that woman by the hand, to sow, to give birth, to cultivate, to navigate to the center of her center.

Day 12: Crucible

Everything that happened in 4 days! Our friends Trump and Bolsonaro were scared to see the extent of their arrogance and now they are running terrified. Each one seeks to hide in his conscience; How many lives could have been preserved with a little humility. The cases in Spain, contrary to what was thought, continue to rise. In Italy there is a breather. Russia broke its silence. The displays of heroism continue: this time, a 90-year-old woman gave up her ventilator for a younger person to live on. These displays of love leave me stunned! There is nowhere to bury the dead and there is no way to care for the living. An acquaintance who lives in Spain said that she had lost 7 friends in recent weeks. Can you imagine losing your 7 best friends in one fell swoop? Devastating! The chess game of world geopolitics is at its zenith. In our country, we are already in the mitigation phase and we continue to see heartbreaking images of people, who live on daily pay, evicted from their overcrowded rooms... López counterpointing with the government, saying that the government of the Venezuelans take charge and that she takes care of the Colombians. Does the Venezuelan passport make them less human? Meanwhile, outside the walls of our houses there are people who are giving up the battle. The confinement of the quarantine leads us, inside our homes —and within ourselves— to be waging another battle. Some of us live this mandatory social distancing as the government says, alone in our homes, and if we are considered vulnerable, we cannot even glimpse the ledge. Others of us have the challenge of sharing with husbands or wives, grandparents, uncles or “special” people, single mothers, orphans, the sick, etc. The reality of each one of us is different: for some, the challenge is coexistence and tolerance; for others, the challenge is to understand that loneliness is not being alone. For many, economic pressures add a spicy ingredient to this cocktail, increasing anxiety and the recurring message that you have to start over. Patience becomes the daily bread. We are all creating new routines. We are all taking on new responsibilities. The days begin to put pressure on our body and especially our mind. And it is time that we remember people who were deprived of their liberty for years and never lost consciousness. Mandela, having spent 27 years in prison, without any contact with his family, with his humanity, as he said, managed to transform "the prison into a crucible where he burned the dross." His suffering identified a people, and his forgiveness exemplified that the battle can cease, even without weapons. Mandela fought segregation, united the irreconcilable. Let's use these moments to burn the dregs, that rancor, revenge, judgment and violence come out of our homes with brooms. May our hearts turn fear into strength. Let's water our plants at home and invoke life to gestate, and that its inexplicable beauty fill everything. May our mind go on vacation and not sabotage our mandate. We are never alone. Time is a great gift that life gives us. Let's not waste it. And let us never forget what Machado says: "Today is always still, all life is now." Aha and then!

Day 14: The Word

“I am the Great Word”, declares the pharaoh in the Pyramid Texts. Pharaoh, God on earth in Ancient Egypt, was convinced that he could give life to everything where his intention and thought was directed. The word was magical, it was creative. The Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Mayas, tells us beautifully that in the beginning there were only gods in a latent state on an immobile sea, and there were words and they decided to create the world, so that the human being could exist. In this process, they failed twice, and on the third time they decided to create us from corn dough mixed with the blood of the gods. In this way, men were one with the gods. The blood of men is the soul, and at the same time, the soul of the gods. It is obvious to go back to the words of Genesis: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." All of this seems like rhetoric unrelated to us, mortal beings, living confined in the midst of a pandemic that threatens the entire world in the 21st century. We are human beings, flesh and blood, and we suffer from our earthly nature. We are also beings that in our bodies house the spirit of God. Our thoughts stop the words, and the words realities. The word even today has creative power. His magic still lingers. What am I thinking in the middle of this confinement? Am I saying I'm bored when I'm really enjoying it, or am I complaining about countless restrictions when I have so much to be thankful for? Will my words be creative or destructive? Let's write scripts of our realities based on gratitude and awareness of the potential eternity of our spirit, as opposed to the impregnable transience of our material body. Let us not forget that the Word was God and that the blood of the gods was mixed with the corn dough, so that we might live as men in search of being gods. Strive to write a poem whose central theme is love: loving the one who does no harm, loving our lives, and loving our most challenging circumstances. All of them allow us to create opportunities if we sing like the mystic chorus did at the end of Mahler's eighth symphony:

“All things are transitory

they're just parables

here's the lack

will turn wasteful

here the indescribable

it will look accomplished;

the eternal feminine

will take us to heaven.”

It might interest you: Pandemic texts

Day 17: Catapult

This quarantine has decanted what was obvious to many, but that the rampant system, and its degradation, has perpetuated. I think that Colombia, with all the logistical problems and innumerable complexities, has put its chest into the effects of Covid. I think we have been orthodox in the midst of these circumstances. At this time, when humanity faces the daily death of thousands of people, we wonder who the real leaders are: those who misinform with the arrogance of displaying the information, those who apologize for the measures taken, those who decide have daily addresses, or those who recognize the path to come and resort to faith and union to move forward. For me, a leader is that human being who overcomes his weaknesses and weaknesses, and who daily with his acts of love inspires us to aspire. It will not be one that boasts of university degrees, nor will it be a tycoon with an emporium. They are just around the corner: it could be a homeless person who, still starving, gives a bite to another, it can be a prostitute, it can be the one who has offended you. Being a leader does not mean being infallible; quite the opposite, it means being aware of how fallible you are and learning from the scrapes of falls. A leader does not need to sit down with his staff and court. They are beings with names, but in search of anonymity. They renounce being visible, but in that invisibility they embody the goodness of serving. It can be a call from a leader who makes you dream, who makes you get up early and work for something that seemed impossible at first sight. How about we become catapults? What can we launch into the universe? A word, a verse, an illustration, a flavor, a sound at dawn, a wave of silences at sunset? Could it be that by tearing down the walls of the enemy of another human being, we help him free that castle of innumerable dwellings, how Saint Teresa of Jesus describes them to us? Could it be that the glow of that central dwelling invites us to throw ourselves into the cistern of our interior, and seek calm in the midst of the sweetness of its waters? Now that the world is plagued with the media, let's use it to get out of the hubbub around us, to direct our catapult towards the heart of those who need it most. Let us be silent leaders and remember that "we will be known by our works" (Matthew 7).

Day 20: Botafumeiro

Camino de Santiago how you color every moment of my life! It is beautiful to realize that what is most difficult for us is treasured in a privileged place in our hearts. The steepest pilgrimages become indelible: the pains, the challenges that we experience, the images of ourselves that we destroy; the beings that broke their silence to instruct us, the determination with which we face each step; the tears, the decisions, the admiration for that someone who urges us not to throw in the towel, perceiving the smell of achievement made incense or perhaps made to be. In short, those pilgrimages that each one makes in their personal search, in search of their dreams, or perhaps those pilgrimages that life gives us no choice but to assume, accompany us on every path we decide to undertake. There will be some who will climb the Dolomites by bicycle, others will do an Iron Man, others will play the Cello. Actually, what we do in itself does not matter. It is what we make of ourselves in the midst of the experience. How those goals, which at first sound unthinkable, begin to materialize since we think they can be achieved. That is the true starting point of any path. Blisters, calluses, falls, frustrations invite us to overcome obstacles, some physical and others mental. The great feats are built of innumerable steps, and the most constant step is that of transgressing the limits. The ego and its illusion invite us, sooner rather than later, to think that we have reached our maximum level of incapacity. The illusion that I can't do an extension with my left hand when playing Cello is only in my head, and if I underline it and put it in bold, it takes hold and makes me believe that I won't make it, that I'd better dedicate myself to listening Spotify. If, on the contrary, I breathe and trust and, above all, I push myself to think differently, surely one day I will feel what it is to play Bach's Jesus Joy of Man, and my tears will flow with happiness. Perseverance and discipline attack inertia. They make us stop to train or practice, even when we don't feel like it. The power of thought translates into steps. For me, the image of my arrival in Santiago, and the thought of what it would feel like to complete that nonsense, kept my engine running. However, for me, each stage and its celebration was an arrival in Santiago. He approached me and motivated me. Despite being locked in our homes, we are free to take steps on the paths that we decide to complete. It is never too late to take the first step, since the path is the process and what each step beyond the goal implies. Perhaps we decide to be audacious and in the middle of the process the road forks, without arrows or signs. Trust is our mandate. It does not matter if we take the game to the right or to the left. We will come to fulfill our dreams if it is written that way. We will learn. I dreamed of the Botafumeiro in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and I cried when I saw it. Today I dream of one day playing the Cello and my calluses are already growing. What do you dream of? Imagine what it would feel like to make it happen. Have you thought about it yet? You already took the first step! Let's get to work, there's no time to lose. Feel the aroma of the Botafumeiro, and one day you will cry with happiness, and I with you!

Day 23: Amalgamation

Rain has the wonderful effect of leaving the environment eerily still. After thunder and lightning, or a refreshing drizzle, his hand colors nature with vivid tones, in contrast to the grays that shaded the prelude to the show. During the expression of the clouds, the animals take shelter from the downpour. They hope that the concert made water will stop as soon as possible. The thirsty plants, for their part, sing hymns of thanks that join the concert of the clouds. Their songs brighten and flood the furrows. His happiness, the sustenance of his life, is provided without being expected. And the happiness of that little plant that grows in the garden becomes happiness for the worm that seeks the room for its great birth with wings. The life of that little plant is also the life of the bee that, attracted by its smell, brings life made of pollen to its hive. And believe it or not, the life of that little plant, of that butterfly, of that hive, is life for our lives. Because, just as the rain gave them life, so they beat and give themselves for our well-being. We might think that we are an amalgamation, just like all the beings in this universe. We are a little rain, a little plant, a little butterfly, a little honey, a little bee. Each of them contributes to our life; And us, how do we contribute to their stocks? We are a node within a network of millions of nodes. We are insignificant, but at the same time protagonists of this play, where each character induces a dialogue with another, who in turn ignores how those words transform him. We are cause and effect. In the perfect and harmonious conformation of the universe, we are so small from the perspective of a star and we are giants for the industrious ant. The geometry of our interactions blurs with the perceptions of our proud minds. For whom am I giving myself as the rain does for the plant, or the plant for the worm? Where am I directing my energies, to build or to destroy? Could it be that the illusion clouds my view of my relationship with other people or other beings existing on this planet? Could it be that I believe I am a God when I do not understand the succession of events or relationships in my life? In the midst of the consternation that we are experiencing, seeing beings suffering from illness, hunger, loneliness, fatigue or anguish, I ask myself: how do I offer myself so that another being, who accompanies us in this fleeting passage on earth, have how to silence those imperative needs of human nature? How can I direct my actions, so that the effect of these calms the blind alley in which the other finds himself? Let's be rain for those plants that today, in the midst of the drought, don't feel any hope! Let's share the happiness of a livelihood without being expected, of a life that is lived to give life.

Day 27: Mirage

As societies, we respond to standards of behavior and self-imposed demands derived from historical conditions, the economic and political system in which we live, the religion we were born into, or simply the canon of beliefs on which we build our day to day. Recent news shows us how the results of the measures adopted by different countries are beginning to characterize them. The United States is a mess, while Germany is already reopening its economy to a “new normal”, Italy and Spain continue to debate who should live, playing Saint Peter, while South Korea or Japan fly by instruments. This is not the story of winners or losers. What makes these countries different? Will it be the obedience of its population or the opportunity of public health measures? Is it the age composition of the population? Could it be that the virus liked the blue-eyed monkeys better or the Italian genes? Actually, now is not the time to put on embarrassing childish tantrum shows, as Trump did by defunding the World Health Organization. It is the moment to leave the nationalisms and prides; the virus is not Hitler, it has no preference. At the same time that the system's neglect of fairness is becoming apparent, I took a moment to watch a series called “Unorthodox” on Netflix. There are four chapters that show the life of a Hasidic Jewish woman who seeks to find her identity, and at the same time free herself from the yoke of being a mother of many and subject to her husband and his customs. He escapes his life in New York and leaves everything behind to go to Berlin, the place that bears the historical weight of his delirium. There he endlessly searches for an opportunity to express himself. There is a scene that is moving for me, and it is the one in which she sings for an audition in a conservatory: she sings in Yiddish, she sings despite the fact that singing is prohibited for Hasidic women, she sings and sheds her black clothes and veils , she sings clinging to her origin, she sings with an irrepressible force, she sings to be music, she sings to be and stop being. Personally, it struck me because I think that at this time we should all have the audacity that this girl had, who broke with her past to find an alternative way of living, no longer being what she was, but building on what she lived to narrate a new chapter of the comic. Going back to the Latin locutions: “homo homini lupus”, man is a wolf to man. How do we stop being those wolves with ourselves and instead become the gardener of that unknown garden for the other? Let's shake off so much unnecessary load that we carry on our backs and walk on the beach looking at the unfathomable sea. Let us listen to its cadence, let us exalt its journey, my journey, its beauty, my beauty.

“I vindicate the mirage

of trying to be yourself,

that trip to nowhere

which consists of certainty

to find in your gaze

the beauty.”

Luis Eduardo Aute

Day 30: And who can help me?

The excess of easy chair makes the quarantine start to take its toll on me. Pilates and rumba alternate with long cycles of reading or on the computer. Suddenly, from one moment to the next, my knee began to hurt. Lola, the knee I decided to name after the trauma a few years ago, it didn't hurt! It was the other! It just can't be! Cold and heat. And who can help me? Well, in the middle of the quarantine: the Chapulín Colorado. Nothing to do. The only thing that can improve me, I thought, is to stretch and be aware of my postures to see where the pain originates. Well, I was stunned when, in this exercise, I realized that my inappropriate postures when sitting had caused me pain in the lower back that radiated to the knee. Plop! And who can help me? Well, in the middle of the quarantine: the Chapulín Colorado. Nothing to do. Well, ladies and gentlemen, after trying to communicate with Chapulín, through the lines that he has published for customer service, I had to settle for the fact that it would be impossible to communicate with him, since, in these times, the telephone lines are maintained collapsed. And who can help me? Movement is the key, I remembered. Not political or social movements. Not the movements of the waters, nor the movements of the celestial vault. It is the movement of my bodies. You went crazy, you will tell me. Why am I talking about bodies? Yes, I believe that we have many bodies and that we have to take care of them. My mental body unites with my physical body, my physical body affects my mental body, my mind is an instrument of my spirit, and my spirit is the incense that perfumes my body and my mind. There has to be a momentum for a change from one state to another to take place. On this day I pondered and came to the conclusion that we must be responsible, in any circumstance, for giving food to each body. If the food for my mind is a Sudoku or a history class, I shouldn't interrupt it. If my body is yelling at me: move!, well, you better do it, because if it doesn't throw you into a fit, like it did to me. If your spirit rises with sacred music or in a meditation or in a prayer or simply watching the sea, then let's not stop looking for a moment a day to look out on the balcony, or put on the music that elevates us so much. Don't you think that, instead of gorging ourselves with news and unnecessary information, it is better that we seek every day to take care of our mind, our body and above all our spirit? The movement is our ally. In our confinement, let's challenge the limits of the four walls and move more than before, because our soul is always inviting us to walk, our mind to imagine and our body to navigate. The power is in realizing that we can autonomously, lovingly and compassionately assume all our actions towards what we aspire to. Movement begins with stillness!

Day 33: Home delivery

If you had a galactic domiciliary that brought you something from the world outside of your homes, what would it be? They have only one thing! Note: forget about the size, everything is allowed. I will give you one or another example to better illustrate the question. I would bring a hug from a friend, the smell of wet grass, the laughter of a child; I would bring my whole family, the landscape of heaven's portal, the saltiness of the sea, the sublime sound of Bach in St. Martins of the Fields; I would bring the dawn or an encounter or perhaps amazement, and gratitude for the magnificence of all that ensemble. cheer up! The sun, the stars, the snow, giraffes, lions, snakes... words, shop windows, diving suits? The pain, the anger, the forgiveness? Someone told me a long time ago that remembering means bringing back the heart. Our hard drive has an unlimited storage capacity, many remote or recent moments are stored on it. We can label them however we want, they reside there, and a part of us was woven with that past present. I often talk about my other life, because we live a succession of lives in our existence. Remembering makes you live. I bet that when you thought about what you would order at home, you felt that what you would bring generates in you. I went to Heaven's Gate and St. Martins of the Fields. I saw myself in both cases sitting, absorbed. What did you feel? Let's remember, to release the ties of the past. Let's remember, to paraglide when we are terrified of heights. Let's remember, to feel what that loved one who is no longer here would have told you. Let's remember, to fight for a meaningful path. Let us remember, to understand our smallness and our greatness. Let's remember, to cloy us with every second. Let's remember, why we are learning our lessons. Let us remember, to surrender each part of us to the other and to their suffering. Have we done anything to calm someone's hunger in the middle of this quarantine? In this exercise of going through the heart again and again, we will break the limitations of time and space and walk strengthened in humility. Remembering gives us the key to merge the present with our imagination. I am going to make a confession to you... I would not bring anything from outside... I would remember that all of this is inside me, I would remember that I have a unique opportunity to remove the perendengues that I have left over and wear the tunic of acceptance, of the tireless search to get closer to myself, for moving away from myself, for surrendering to the will of the one who, not being me, is me. I would remember loving me, loving you, loving him, loving her. . Home is free!

Day 38: Guess?

How the experience of this confinement has been changing! I see less and less news. It bores me to see the refries and fillers that the Colombian newscasts choose. I am concerned that our energies as a population are not being directed towards the people with the greatest needs: to save lives, to calm hunger, to calm the anguish that derives from uncertainty. I also cheat on you: as I had already told you, I can't stand the negligence of the presidents of the “most powerful” nations. You'll know who I'm talking about! Even Barbra Streisand wrote a song for him saying "don't lie to me"! I find it incredible that, in the 21st century, a leader would make irresponsible public statements, telling his group of scientists to test the ingestion of disinfectants on humans. Answer: More than 100 people in the United States did it! And there does not stop the thing. Then comes a tirade of accusations to defend and deny. It's a circus all around. In Colombia we continue in the same! Our circus does not resemble the Circus of the Sun, but rather the Circus of the Gasca Brothers! On a personal level, I have to tell you that I stopped thinking about the date of my parole. The feeling that the sentence has no date made me make decisions about how I will approach my stay within the walls. I understand why in the movies the prisoners are always inside the cells doing squats and planks. This is how I walk, like a prisoner, trying to move my skeleton and keep my mind active. My cat is crazy... he can't do his usual naps anymore. These days of confinement, I have started to think that perhaps all of us are bad predictors of the future. We believe we have clarity in the duration and intensity of what is to come. We believe we have the magic wand to know how the future will make us more or less happy. Furthermore, I believe that our expectations regarding future negative events are more exaggerated than reality itself. Perhaps my recent experience leads me to think so. A diagnosis of a chronic disease would seem to be the key to perpetual unhappiness, because for many it is a death sentence. For me it has not been; after the initial tsunami, that diagnosis has come with bread under his arm. So, am I more unhappy today than I thought I would be in the face of a possible diagnosis of such significance? The answer is no. I believe that we all adapt to new realities without realizing it, and without realizing the capacity we have to carry out that adaptation. We have a network of people who support us, with a call, with a hug, with a prayer. Nature and its invitation to be reborn; the water and its praise for flowing and cleaning; the sun and its loving caress; the fire and its strength to transmute; and our mind and its ability to think and imagine. What design perfection! Every day the stories that surround us are sadder and sadder. Let's not spend our time anticipating what will be tomorrow. If I will have a job or not, if I will have money or not, if I will be fat or not, if my life will be boring because I will not be able to go to the bar, to the gym, to the stadium or to the concert. If I can't go to the farm or to mass. We cannot allow to give free rein to what happens yes. Our happiness does not depend on whether we have money or not, if we get good grades, if we have a stunning body, if we find the better half. Wherein lies your happiness? It makes me happy to thank God every day for my life, to do a kind act without the other expecting it, to make people laugh... It makes me happy to relate the simplest act in life to what I aspire to. It makes me happy to discover the love of God in the midst of adversity. Open the window of your heart and search incessantly for that which gives meaning to your life. Set a goal each day to do something on that list and watch the future fade and the present shine. We are divine, not fortune tellers.

Day 42: Seeds

I wish we would sing for joy like the rooster does at dawn, or like the little birds preparing for their study session: they are ready to soar into new airs of knowledge and experience. The sun works tirelessly to warm us up and to show us that the shadow, its opposite, exists. The clouds sculpt their shapes to defy the most incredulous. And we still don't savor them, we don't appreciate their feints, or their heat, or their verse, or their color. We do not appreciate its usefulness. Yesterday I went out to the balcony of my house and I felt the sun warm my arms, I felt how I needed to appreciate its caress. At that encounter, my arms bristled and I sighed. I also leaned out of one of the windows of the house and breathed deeply, feeling the freshness of the air, its aroma, its freedom meeting mine. How that air dressed in free will danced around the orange blossom and jasmine at night to adorn itself and give me the gala of their meeting for an instant. In the middle of the quarantine, all my attention has been directed to the plants that I have in the house. It has been the process of learning to know them: knowing how much water they want, if they like the place or not, if they require pruning. Every day I get up to see them, to see how their magic is transformed into new flowers, into new shoots. It is witnessing the continuous creative power of what surrounds us, it is an explosion of tenderness unfolding before our eyes. A tangerine seed is today a tiny leaf supported by a thin stem that rises up sucking in the light that gives it life. Our interior wanders looking for calm, looking for a place where we are full, without images, where that transforming power that all beings of nature have—we have—is manifested. This week, when I saw that little plant being born and imagining the transition inside it to stop being a seed and explode into life that gestates life, I thought how much effort is involved, how many adverse situations that seed encountered: the earth could not have had adequate nutritional content or moisture. She struggled, in silence, underground where no one saw her, plunged into her darkness, she aspired to emerge without being noticed. So much greatness covered with so much humility. What seed settles inside you and is giving that transit until you can open the door? Is that seed already history, and today is it a plant that rejoices with each new day and exposes its sweetness to the delight of the hummingbird or the bee? In this confinement, are you taking care of her? Are you talking to them? Can you imagine it bearing fruit? Today I call for us to stop for a second inside our homes, inside our hearts, so that we reverence the life that inhabits us, its mystery, its wisdom, its transience. The imperceptible dance is always taking place. We can decide to kneel in gratitude for their tenacity and courage, or we can blind our eyes or anesthetize our senses, to move away from touching the cadence of love, from its embrace, from its unmistakable fullness. We will venerate those great feats that do not bring titles or money, but rather bring us closer to our origin, to our destiny, to our ability to be and to stop being seeds. Let's fight like that tangerine seed, plunged into darkness, to emerge into the light, without being noticed.

Day 44: A review

We've all heard the new term coined by this pandemic: the “new normal.” Humanity without memory! We were taught at school that Heraclitus said that no one can bathe in the same river twice, since the second time we bathe its waters will be different. For Heraclitus, change was the only real thing: nobody and nothing escapes from it, everything is and is not; what exists is our becoming. To continue dusting off school memories, Parmenides affirmed that the movement did not exist because it was not rational. His disciple Zeno tried at all costs to prove rationally, not free from contradictions, that movement was an impossibility. Gentlemen, in the 21st century we continue in the existential debates of antiquity. I don't know if you believe that Heraclitus carried off Parmenides, or if you believe, on the contrary, that Zeno's proofs shattered Heraclitus. Can there be a new normal when, if we look through Heraclitus's magnifying glass, everything is constantly changing? How should I understand the word "normality" as inertia, as an unconscious becoming? San Isidoro de Sevilla (s. VI) masterfully invites us to think about the difference between walking and walking. The saint defines walking as moving on foot, and he defines walking as that walk that leads to a place. Who walks doesn't get anywhere; who walks still walking arrives at that longed for place. I believe that in the pilgrimage of life we ​​forget the place where our walk is directed, and therefore we believe that normality is a meaningless evolution. These latest events make us see that we are in a labyrinth with no way out. I think we cannot forget that once in the labyrinth, depending on its construction, we will reach the center by one or more paths. The point is to take the first step, make the decision to enter it and then let yourself go along the way, always remembering that place. As arrogant that we are, we pretend to have the absolute truth. How false! The starting point, the access roads and the center, its final point, are part of the same labyrinth. Know yourself. If not, why do you think this inscription adorns the Temple of Apollo at Delphi? We cannot think of a new or old normal. Movement does not depend only on us human beings. We have to recognize the perfect geometry of time, of facts, of the existence of a Supreme Being. Let's not waste time looking for a rational explanation for all the facts, nor do we become victims of fate. Let's make this pilgrimage a walk, not a walk. The signs of the path are beyond our control, the awareness of how we decide to take the next step can transform the entire meaning of our movement. Let's not stand still. Let's enjoy the waters we dive into, and let's squeeze learning and knowledge every second we live. Cheer up!

Day 48: Pac Man

We already heard the news in Colombia, of the extension of the quarantine for everyone, except people who work in specific sectors of the economy. The exceptions are 15 million people. Let me digress from someone who in another life was an economist. In a country of almost 49.3 million inhabitants (figures published by DANE as of March 2020), 80.6% of the population is of working age, that is, 39.7 million people, of that number about 59.2% is considered the population economically active (EAP). This means that the EAP is around 23.5 million people and represents 47.7% of the total population. If we talk about the fact that 15 million people are exempt from work, this figure represents, with a good eye, 64% of the EAP and 38% of people of working age. In a scenario where experts say that the virus is here to stay, are we really thinking of people or are we rather betting on the economic sustainability of the system? I am outraged to see that the leaders only seek in a palliative way to direct donations to the most vulnerable families. With which I do not disagree, "because I was hungry and you did not give me to eat." However, this pandemic has shown that the foundations on which the economic system has been built are flimsy, and they completely forgot that those of us who live in it are human beings of flesh and blood. Money, and its entire system, dehumanizes and distorts the decisions of leaders and companies. Yesterday, coincidentally, they called me from the insurer where I registered a claim for my life insurance for serious illness to tell me that I did not meet one of the conditions, which in simple terms was that I needed to be crippled, and the doctor who performed the analysis told me that I should not worry, that it is a temporary decision, that when I have the required level of disability, I should return to collect the compensation. Oh really! How is it possible that we say to our interlocutor: “get sick, when you are already disabled, come back and we will give you the money”. We forgot the basics! The government, seeking to "reactivate" the economy, gives the virus cannon fodder. The insurers, seeking to maximize their resources, sell you something and then in the annexes they plague you with conditions so as not to pay you, and then they tell you "disable yourself and we'll talk later." The eye of the observer changes everything. Have any of you heard a symphony played by a live orchestra? For the spectator it is an opportunity to feel the divinity clothed in sounds. Have any of you imagined what musicians feel sitting on stage, have you imagined the pressure they feel because they can't be wrong? Will they peek into the sublime or will they only be instruments of their instruments, will they be prisoners of the system where in order to survive I must excel at all costs? Even the most sacred activities, such as the arts, are clouded by the lust for power. I am worried about the deaths that are to come, it hurts me that we forget that this temporary step in this world has a fundamental objective, which is diametrically distant from the objectives of making money and pleasing our senses. We live like prisoners in handcuffs and shackles, and our jailer is good money, as the song says. I reiterate that we make a stop in this quarantine and be aware that, despite living in this unfocused system, it is in our hands, or rather in our minds, the ability to discern and choose if I want to be the musician who has that mystical experience when performing a piece, or if I decide to give myself up to become a pac man in search of power, money and fame. Let us be instruments of our spirit, and in every action we do in this world, let us execute the work not only with technical mastery, but let us open our hearts so that we may be a bridge of love. May that music that comes out of our hands be food and an invitation not to forget, that the "essential is invisible to the eye".

Day 54: The hubbub

While some can go for a walk at 5:00 a.m., others get up to earn their daily bread. This is not my case. I don't know how you have experienced this supposed reactivation, but near my house the noise has increased thanks to the construction of a building one block from the apartment. The noises of sirens, the screams of the workers are heard at midnight; It's a frenzied racket. During the day it is another story, literally: the number of people selling avocados and other vegetables has increased, with which I have no problem. But it caught my attention the day before yesterday: three Venezuelans with microphones, saying that their landlord had taken away their papers because they had not been able to pay the rent, therefore they could not work. They shouted to give them lentils or rice for their children, that they had no other alternative. I have to tell you that I thought several things that were not very papist. The first is that the microphone is worth more than a pound of rice or lentils. Could it be that the new extortion is the manipulation of our compassion? The second is that I questioned the criteria for selecting the blocks where they expose their tragedy, it seems to me that they are intentional and premeditated acts. The third, it seems to me that under pain of supposed humiliation they manipulate you to make you feel sorry. The fourth is shut them up! I thought. I remembered the Venezuelan band that goes through the streets of Barranquilla, with the same songs, looking for a ticket. The same tuneless singsong day after day! Changing the subject, I will tell you that the reactivation has had the effect of the presence of other types of noise in the region: yesterday I heard a man yelling a string of vulgarities at someone in his home; one assumes that she is his wife, from the context. From the balconies all leaning out, terrified at such a rude and at the same time so outrageous spectacle. Seriously, punches? For me, from my balcony, without having gone out into the street in more than two months, it is very evident how we stop respecting others, yelling vulgarities at them, interrupting their peace of mind with wounded cries of pity disguised as blackmail, or when building a building on the night when other people sleep, regardless of their rest. Some might think that vulnerable populations are giving us the "Cabin Syndrome", that is, that we are very afraid to go out after having been at home, safe and sound. I am not a psychologist to say so. But the truth is that I do feel apprehensive about going out when just last week I went down to the goal to get the drug and found two people without masks. I could not believe it. We are so selfish! How easily we forget our golden rule. Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. The earliest version of this rule is in an Egyptian text called the Story of the Eloquent Peasant, an Ancient Egyptian literary work dated 1970-1640 B.C. From then on, all philosophical and religious traditions have placed it as a fundamental rule of our behavior. For Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and for Christianity. There is a beautiful Islamic hadith that says: “none of you will complete his faith until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself”. It is not they themselves who have disputed for centuries with the Jews for control of the holy mountain in Jerusalem. "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor", isn't that the rule of the Jews? We live having these moral principles removed from our daily lives. We forget them, we bury them, we accommodate them to suit our worldly interests. The leaders of the different religions repeat it over and over again, and to us it seems like an old and ill-fated tale. We live so submerged in our worlds that we forget the other, within this equation. A word, a thought, an action can change our lives, and we can change it for others. We cannot wait for the other to change. It is only in our hands, to take the baton, that each action we do has love as its beginning. Loving is a decision without distinction. Let's all take care of ourselves!

Day 58: High tide

Flowers dress the world in majestic colors and silently open their arms to the incandescent sun. Penguins, on the other hand, stop flapping their flippers and hug each other as close as possible to withstand the harshness of the arctic, longing for the change of seasons. The thirsty cedars of the Himalayas await the monsoons that arrive with summer without end. I wonder: is it only their bodies that are endowed with such a level of resistance, or is it that within themselves inhabits a mind that helps them resist the onslaught associated with the cycles that give life to nature, that give us life? In ancient times the Hellenes used their Olympics as a means to exalt the human body. The athlete spent a rigorous education in the gym to one day wear the wild olive wreath. Plato and Aristotle, in disagreement with their predecessors who argued "gymnastics for the body and music for the soul", lead us to think that physical education is a pivotal element to achieve and preserve the health and beauty of the body (and also of the "soul", to use Platonic terminology). The soul for Plato has three manifestations: the concupiscible soul, the irascible soul and the rational soul. The first is the human soul closest to the body and its desires and senses; the second is that which is linked to will, courage and strength; and finally, the rational soul is the divine and immortal principle. You are not going to believe me, but all the previous spiel is because I got into setting up a bike simulator at home; I released it on Thursday. As I was rolling, I remembered that physical exercise brings us closer to our body because it tames your desire to rest, strengthens your will to endure at all costs, and makes you imagine what it would feel like to finish such an effort. We visualize ourselves achieving it and so, from one moment to the next, we see the black and white checkered flag, which we call the finish line. I was throwing in the towel, I was on the canvas, but that force that burns within us is what allows us to reach San Remo, San Moritz or San Francisco. The body as a means to strengthen itself, but also as an instrument to get closer to the other power that lies unexplored by us. We do not value our ability to emerge from the ashes and the fact that this divine and immortal principle is us. Without wanting to, as Chavo del Ocho would say, I understood that all beings of nature resist extraordinary and unimaginable circumstances. Their "mind" invites them to adapt and overcome internal or external physical barriers. We the same. In our false conception that we are bodies or mind, we deprive physical activities of their sacredness. Riding a bike, walking, sweeping, mopping, washing dishes, we have done so much in this quarantine. We educate our intellectual mind to add, to read, to infer, but we do not educate our will, and we ignore that we come with the instrument that will allow us to sculpt it. We believe we are superior to the flower, the penguin or the cedar. When in reality we have to revere their tests. No matter what season we are in in our lives, let us educate ourselves every day, not only to cultivate the health of our physical bodies, but also to cultivate our will, our mind, so that we can use them as swords to combat our weaknesses. Perhaps we will manage, attracted by our divinity, to rise like the tide: at high tide.

Day 62: Antidote

“Whoever doesn't already know

He'll learn it fast

Life doesn't stop

Does not wait, does not warn

So many plans, so many plans

Foam turned

You for example

So timely and so inopportune...”

Jorge Drexler

Never before in our lives have we been so aware of death: how the fatality rate has behaved, how the previous one differs from the mortality rate. The newspapers gravitate towards showing us death as cold statistical data or as a story worthy of Corín Tellado or Shakespeare. And there are those exalted by the newspapers as heroes, because they have defeated death. They are heroes because they kicked out the grim reaper and were able to smile and see the sun again. The media bombard us alluding to the supposed protagonists of this story: the winners and the losers. For them, we are victims of an invisible murderer.

The decision that governments have taken to “prevent deaths” is to distance us all, especially the elderly. The reason is simple: their statistical analysis indicates that people over the age of 70 are more likely to be killed by an exterminator. What role do our older adults have in our society? Why do we seek maximum longevity and at the same time consider old age as a disease? Or is it that we are looking for maximum longevity without deterioration?

The allegory used by the ancient Egyptians to allude to a “sage” was “tongue gray”, which indicates that erudition was directly proportional to the time lived and the passing of the years. Gray hair brought recognition. For this ancient culture, longevity made sense because it was the heart of knowledge and wisdom. In a biography found in the Middle Kingdom, in Edfu, which narrates the life of the priest Tjeni, we are told the following: "I am a man worthy of trust for my brothers and sisters, old at heart, but one who knows no weakness." ”. They aspired to a senescence without decrepitude.

Our materialistic society removed the investiture of experience and knowledge from the mature human being, to clothe him with incapacity for not being as productive as a young man. How much damage we do to ourselves as a society, because they are the ones who should use their knowledge at the service of the youngest. On the contrary, old age is a burden, because we see it as an economic problem. Nursing homes are full of grandparents without families, without money, without any activity; they only wait for the day when they lose the battle overwhelmed by the weight that they are. All of us in our families have older adults; listening to their stories, although repetitive, helps us to punish someone else's head. Why don't we listen to them?

No one can say that age is an indicator that we are alive the next minute. Is old age, gentlemen, given by the number of years we live, or rather is it given by our commitment to ourselves? It is old, although young, the one who stops cultivating his own being, the one who stops working hard to know himself, the one who does not want to learn because he is arrogant, the one who does not listen to the words and designs that are shown to us every day. to try again (as Carlos Castañeda says, by successive approximations), the one who does not take care of his physical body, the one who does not enhance his mental capacity, the one who does not cultivate the immortality of his spirit. It's old who gives up giving love, hoping only to receive. It is old who throws in the towel. He is the one who chooses not to be reborn despite the deaths we live in our existence.

The newspapers forget that death, by simple opposition, gives all meaning to our fleeting existence. His presence is the antidote to old age on this plane, and is the key to wisdom. Death relativizes everything and full of meaning to live this life. The search is to defeat death with the immortality of our spirit. Death is not the enemy to fight, it is our unconsciousness.

In the context of this epidemic, let's forget age groups, let's not forget death and the responsibility that comes with every life. Let's seek to be forever young. Let's get up happy every day, despite our age, to go to school, to learn, to make an effort, to win the exam, to go to university.

Day 68: YES to No

Recently, I listened to a five-minute audio of the youngest survivor of the Uruguayan rugby team who was on the plane to Chile that crashed in the Andes (“Alive”). These were the men who lived 70 days in the Andes. They find out on a radio that they had, which later takes their hand, that they had stopped the search for the survivors. One of them, Nicolich, communicates the good news to the others and leads them to think that now they do not depend on third parties, but that their lives depend on them. They decided to work as a team and made decisions to survive, such as eating the flesh of their dead comrades. Everything was adversity: in addition to being forgotten, according to them, an avalanche hit them where eight other companions died; after searching and finding the tail of the plane, they were unable to get the radio to work. Everything was restless. And Carlos says in the audio: "We... thanks to the attitude, we were able to say Yes to No."

Other cases that say yes to no, despite their difficulties, are people who undergo some type of transplant. I am fortunate to know two people who have passed the test, thanks not only to their medical expertise but also to the way they approached the test. Today they paint, enjoy the sea, spend hours in a jacuzzi, adopt dogs, grow flowers, laugh at life and even get married! I say all this because all the local newspapers —yesterday morning, for example— talked about the transplant of the 5-month-old daughter of the mayor of Medellín, whose donor was her own mother because they couldn't find another donor. I was thinking about what must be going through that man's mind: his daughter was going to undergo a 16-hour surgery, and his wife, in an act of immeasurable love, would also go into surgery, risking her life to save that of his little girl. Everything was at stake. What was this man to resort to in a waiting room?

In the afternoon I would face my class, where my dendrites are shattered, my cello class, or as my mom would say: “michelada”. The teacher asked me to play from memory two themes that I have been working on with her, Bach's Minuet 3 and the beginning of Pachebel's Canon in D… and I started to tell her like crazy no, how could she think of it; I told her no and she said yes, I no and she yes, and then she hit me saying: "it's that you know it by heart but you don't trust it, nor do you think you know it."

After class I had no choice but to go to the dictionary and look at the etymology of the word trust, and it means “to have total faith or loyalty”, since it comes from the Latin, con-junto and fides-fe. Who should we trust? What should we trust? What should we trust? What do we achieve if we trust? What can we do to abandon mistrust?

I don't think the Uruguayans have survived their adventure without counting on the other. I don't think that a person on an operating table facing a transplant, terrified by uncertainty, will be able to get his strength, if it weren't for putting himself in the hands of his caregivers (doctors, nurses and, above all, God). Nor do I believe that a person takes full advantage of their talents, and can express themselves openly, if it weren't for the fact that they must trust themselves and not let the crazy woman in the house sabotage their daily effort. How can one recover or rise from adversity if they do not believe with certainty that they are going to make it, that they are going to make it? Don't look at me weird, van is in the plural... because nothing we embark on in life is a solitary exercise, there is always another, even if we don't know that other, even if that other is myself.

In my musings last night, I thought that trust has two aspects: an active and a passive. The asset is the one that invites me to do and give my best every second, flowing without letting myself be cornered by thoughts of defeat or inability. The passive, on the other hand, is the one that leads you to deliver the result. It is linked to the asset, in the sense that the result is associated with the materialized intention; however, the quality, quantity or temporality of the result you ultimately deliver. In the end, everything will be as it should be.

If we want to say Yes to No, if we want to change our life, if we want to abandon the captivity of the enemy, let us work lovingly hand in hand with the other, with ourselves, and build a thought that overcomes obstacles, that breaks moorings, that serves to the other, that reminds us that we are part of a team, that emphasizes that individualism is an act of arrogance, that makes us surrender to the gratitude of the unexpected.

“Start by doing what is necessary,

then do what you can,

and suddenly you're accomplishing the impossible.”

FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Day 70: Immigrants

Imagine that in the calendar of festivities there is one for Multiple Sclerosis. I came to find out this week. A whole display of conferences to report on advances in diagnosis, treatment, prevention and quality of life for sclerotic patients. The truth was that I was bombarded with videos, articles and almost congratulations from the pharmacological center where they put me on the drug. The scientific world is working to find out about it, and they say that it is the biggest cause of disability for young people in the world. More than traffic or cerebrovascular accidents.

I've been thinking about disability this week. And life, which is full of gifts, has given me examples where disability is relegated to the grandeur of virtue. Coincidentally, two blind musicians. The first, the Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsuji; the other, an Argentine guitarist, Nahuel Pennisi. A prodigious pianist and composer, Tsuji has performed with the world's leading orchestras. For him, playing the most technically complicated pieces is easy, because the piano is an extension of his body. Learn all works by ear. He doesn't know what the black or white of the keys looks like, but he knows them. You will not have seen Carnegie Hall, or its conductor, but you will recognize their breath or the warmth of their presence or the energy of the applause. On the other hand, Pennisi, self-taught, from a street musician became coveted by Latin American pop artists. Nominated for a Latin Grammy, Pennisi adapted the way he holds the guitar to be able to make chords. In the presentation they give him at the Latin Grammy ceremony, they say the following: "Guitarist and singer, blind, endowed with an absolute musical ear, charting the future of folklore with a unique sensitivity." So being blind is not being sighted? What do this pair of young people have in common? Disability or virtuosity?

Personally, I am eclipsed by the ability to express, to express oneself, to approach the sweetness of the sublime, that these “disabled” have. If we see their physical appearance, we can judge them as rare. But can you imagine how close a blind man must be to seeing himself? How free will your imagination be to describe a sunrise? Can you imagine how a blind man would conceive the sky, the northern lights or a shower of stars? The physical limitation of some aspect is a challenge to transform that restriction into a river of being, which flows into the calm and pristine sea of ​​divinity. Art is to return a movement, message, action, in silence. The way is the adaptation, the authenticity made song, eighth notes and semiquavers.

Why are we so afraid of disability? Could it be that we are afraid of being unable to adapt? Disability confused with disability. Happiness is not measured by how many limbs we can move or how many senses we can use. If this were true, we should throw away the mystics of all times, who have invited us to distance ourselves from our senses to reach that station where we will live forever.

I feel that the notes flooded with magnificence wander among us without listening to them. The swallows in their dance chase them. Let's leave the comfort of routines, let's embrace the effort. We have the miracle of life, its senses and movements. I ask that we go through "immigration" to have our passports stamped upon entering this new state, where we give all of ourselves, where we dig with a pick and shovel into the depths of our souls, to meet our spirit eager to command the migration.

If the disabled person dreams of it, they will be able to overcome the incalculable. We are handicapped when we stop trying, when we try to hold the illusory thread of the immutable, when we are so paralyzed by fear that we let life go by, from a non-existent wheelchair, built by ourselves, by our minds. We believe we are invalids. It is disabled who does not give, it is disabled who does not receive. He is disabled who does not love.

Let's be like Tsuji and Pennisi, who left behind their disability, and invite us with their performances to feel, to “immigrate” to that place where we can listen, like swallows, to the notes that flow from that spring of eternity .

Here are a couple of links in case you want to listen to them (I hope you enjoy it as much as I do):

Tsuji: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqoV4ZW7xTA

Pennisi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsJn63604S0&list=RDIsJn63604S0&index=1

Day 77: Opticus

I love swimming. Frequently when I dive and I have spent a while concentrating on breathing and strokes —left, right—, feeling how the water slides over my body, suddenly, the glasses fog up, everything gets cloudy, I don't see anything and that's it. it becomes very uncomfortable to move on. If I don't want to stop, I do what they taught me in my two diving courses, which is to raise the goggles a little and let the water in, so the water itself eliminates the opacity. For those who are less aquatic, or live in hot places, you will know what happens if you have glasses when you get out of an air-conditioned car. One is blind, actually. And there is no choice but to take them off, take a handkerchief and clean them, put them on and resume the march.

I have discovered in the midst of this quarantine, that sometimes the glasses with which we see the reality we are living fog up. We grope our way, everything loses its brilliance and clarity, we stop enjoying what we do and fill ourselves with long arguments that support our restlessness; we stop trusting We are presented with the dichotomy of whether we urgently need a technical stop at the optometrist to correct our myopia and astigmatism, or whether we rather take the handkerchief out of our pocket and clean our glasses.

In these days I began to despair for not having a job. The glasses fogged up. I saw myself in the middle of a dead end, because working full time is a clear impossibility, for a person who must be disabled every fortnight, because he is on drugs. What could I do? Let's add to the film that I am also a vulnerable population, which is why the confinement is longer; and to top it off, everything turned upside down, innumerable companies hanging their guayos. With my glasses steamed up, I dedicated myself to watching a series on Netflix called Resurrection, about the life of Ertrugul, the forerunner of the Ottoman Empire. In it, they beautifully show us the teachings of the Koran and permanently emphasize the meaning of walking on the path defined by God, and they repeated in English "every cloud has its silver lining" which in Spanish would be "there is no evil that for good does not come” (which I think is a bad translation). They also repeated that the night is darkest just before dawn, and that there is no spring without winter.

But, as the days go by, things decide, the messages arrive, and we definitely made the decision to take out the handkerchief. We realize that the glow was there but that we were focusing our attention on the temporary mist. We also realize that the universe beats and has its rhythm. Don't we? Everything in life is a test and a great gift. My glasses had fogged up, because I had forgotten my priorities. He was looking for a way out abroad, when the answer was the way he saw the situation. Becoming aware is a magic wand, it mobilizes unexpected things. And then you look back and realize that it was all a game of perspective. And if he puts himself in relationship with the other, he realizes that it is a trifle. To sample a button; In the middle of the story, I find out that a friend's father was declared missing. I was stunned. As another friend would say, the biggest problem is one's own. And how big was my so-called problem, next to my friend's anguish of not knowing the whereabouts of her missing father?

I share my experience with you, with the intention that we punish someone else's head. Perhaps when we have a challenge, we will stop and think, if the change has fogged up the glasses, or if it is my observer who is a bit lazy and opts for the most comfortable way out of being a victim. We have many tools at hand to make this examination of conscience, and instead of thinking that we are going to drown in the middle of the dive because water got into our mask, let's use the learned recipe. Silence is our great ally. There we have the stock of answers, even for questions that we have not yet asked or will never ask.

If we think differently, the result will be different. Someone I appreciate told me a while ago: "falling down to get up is not falling." Let's be thankful for the changes of season, be thankful for the cycles, be thankful for everything that comes in this life, be thankful that we have glasses, be thankful that they fog up, be thankful that we learn to clean them, be thankful for the sharpness and the light, be thankful for the night and the darkness, be thankful for the miracle of being alive, let us be grateful for the infinite possibility of unwinding and conquering that indomitable empire without borders, called our inner peace.

Day 84: Of caves and enclosures

They imagine a man in the Stone Age communicating through the use of monosyllables, taking refuge in caves and, in their depths, uniting with others to express himself with natural dyes, making drawings of the bison-man on the walls, where creative potential was embodied in every iota of sculpted or colored stone. The animal as a deity. Since prehistoric times, man has become the protagonist of a reality that transcends his universe and validates his existence. Some determinists would think that this unknowable, but intuitable plane came with writing, but it was not. What's more, we have believed for many years that man stopped roaming, that he left behind his years as hunters and gatherers and settled in places to domesticate animals and to grow their food. I tell you that this argument is completely fallacious. There is ample evidence that humans first experimented with agriculture at places of religious experience or "temples." Man sought to control and manipulate nature to take advantage of it. Man makes a cognitive transition to think that we can be the gods of nature. The divine conceived from the human, as the human. In describing God, man describes himself in divine terms. There is a fascinating book by Reza Aslan, the same author of The Zealot, called God, a human history, where he takes us by the hand from prehistory to the consolidation of the main monotheistic religions, showing us that anthropocentric vision of the vital principle.

Uncertainty has been a constant for all the beings that inhabit this planet, from those first hunters wandering tirelessly until they found food. Likewise for a species of bird in Borneo, which builds elaborate structures with sticks and twigs throughout its life, seeking to court the long-awaited female. The fruit trees wait, hopelessly battling outdoors, for the El Niño Phenomenon to end and the first rains to come to cover their foliage with colours, aromas and flavors. A young man, today, waits to find out if he is worthy of the scholarship to finance his studies, and if he is not so advantageous, he just waits if they are going to admit him to the alma mater. The beauty queen, who was on the news yesterday, is debating what her life will be like after her foot amputation.

Life is full of those questions, which I don't think are unknowns. We believe ourselves to be gods, like our ancestors, and we proudly believe that we have the answer. We create scenarios in our minds, based on wishful thinking or improbable assumptions, and like film writers we define what should and should not be part of the plot. When the possible scenarios are very dissimilar and the possible paths are perpendicular, we stop seeing life as a spiral and plunge into chaos, anticipating how we will have to live in the face of such variability or if we will be able to climb the slope of the predetermined path. We forget, in our smallness, that there is an omniscient narrator: who knows everything, who explains everything, who can identify with the author, who allows jumps in time and space and who provides credibility. Why do we pretend to act like this without being omniscient? We believe ourselves to be gods, we believe that God is like us.

Mystics have sought a glimpse of the unspeakable, the untouchable, the unimaginable, the timeless, the immaterial. They constantly searched for transcendence, starting from the acceptance of their precarious nature, of the path. They incessantly sought transcendence, giving new meaning to each moment of life as those perfect conditions, no matter how painful they were, to sharpen their will, refine their dedication and majestically interpret their instrument of love.

Let's abandon our profession of screenwriters, of omniscient narrators, of ignoramuses. Let us seek the kingdom of God and everything will be given to us in addition. Let's not worry about tomorrow, let's dispel the chill of fear and uncertainty, with the flame of living love that ignites and frees the space to be occupied.

Day 93: Syncope

My last week has had no other name than: syncopation. Thanks to my cello teacher, I have had a monumental hand of Carmen de Bolívar..."Land of pleasures, light and joy... of beautiful women... Carmen, my land!" For those who are not from the coast, it is my favorite joint. Lucho Bermúdez sang it with Matilde Díaz. It takes me back to my childhood, to the golf tournament awards, when early on I had to go to the parties of the "greats" to wait for my drink. I sat on some stairs, in the Main Hall of the Country Club of Barranquilla, which allowed me to see the "great ones" from above, and see how they glided, how they followed the rhythm that the Martelo Brothers set, how those couples amalgamated. and each one of them was and ceased to be upon hearing the melody. It was wonderful to see when the first bars sounded: the dance floor became an anthill, the common factor, the expression.

Despite my childhood memories, and the fact that my heart has always beat at that rate, I had no idea that the teacher was bringing such an important gift. Syncopation, she explained to me, "is a phenomenon that consists of a prolongation of a rhythmic figure or a harmonic from a weak beat to a strong beat." The truth was I was looking at a spark. How so that a prolongation of a weak beat to a strong beat. Pos manito, in the cello the two notes are articulated in the same arcade and the duration of the notes are added. I guess they are just as lost as I was. But so that you don't wear yourself out with these technicalities, I'm going to summarize them... Carmen de Bolívar is full of syncopations. And they are the ones that, among other things, give it its exquisiteness.

The beautiful thing about syncopation is that this slur is surprising. The syncopation fills with strength the expected weakness; it seasons the music, turns it into a delicacy; removes the vertices of a square to bring up the compass and draw a path without containment lines.

What do you think if we apply the concept of syncopation to our lives and the reality we live in? The moments of weakness are those where fear spreads, where calm is an intangible, where we question ourselves to the last name, where we feel alone and meaningless. What if in the score of our lives we link that moment to one clothed in strength. By uniting those times, we transform that cold clay into a figure or shape that inhabits us. The possibility of changing the rhythm and the melody is in our hands if we decide to compose our music. Many times we abandon the journey for fear of what they will say or for the trials that become a life sentence. Our loved ones remind us of the wealth of tools that we carry in our backpacks, they make us see clearly that there is always something from the past that taught us and that allowed us to overcome a tribulation. They urge us to rummage through the shelves and do our best to enjoy a new syntax, to add spice and mischief to what for many can be a stifling existence. The present as the focus of our attention and our being as a sound instrument.

“One for all and all for one”, in the best style of the musketeers. Let us open our hand to receive the one who gives us love, let us open our hand to the one who hurts us, let us open our hand to our past, let us open our hand to the search for eternity, let us open our hand to uncertainty, let us open our hand to the imagination Let us open our hand to our weakness as a pillar of perseverance and our transformation.

Let's get life drunk with syncopation. Let's break the moulds. Let's change the rhythms. Let's grow in the art of time. Let us learn, as Robert Schumann said, to express the most delicate nuances of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the mysteries of harmony.

Here is the link for you to take a walk through Carmen de Bolívar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMLursVQsws

Day 105: The water is wet

Richard Phillips is an African-American who was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he did not commit. The main witness in his case was the one currently responsible for the events. After fighting for 46 years in jail, with no chance of getting out on bail, the murderer changes his testimony and exonerates him of all responsibility. The state of Michigan paid him $1.5 million in damages, which equals $91 per day. Is that worth a day of life?

The other poignant story of wrongful sentencing is that of the so-called “Central Park 5.” The story of 5 young African-Americans who were sentenced for the murder of a Caucasian woman who was running in the vicinity of Central Park in New York. The youths were forced to plead guilty even without any supporting evidence. One of them was in an isolation cell for 13 years.

Richard painted watercolors for 46 years so his heart wouldn't harden, when he came out he emphasized the challenge of adapting to freedom. He didn't have anyone, he didn't know how to buy in a supermarket and he had even forgotten how to drive. In the case of the "Central Park 5", they were boys between the ages of 14 and 16; one wanted to be a trumpet player, the other a baseball player, the others didn't even know what life they dreamed of. After 12 years the state of New York makes them a payment of 40 million dollars. And in an interview that Oprah Winfrey gives them, you can see the bittersweet taste that it still has for them today. The system made them grow, changed them and, in the words of one of them, “broke them”.

These stories invite us to reflect on the notion of justice, compensation, but above all how we can scale the steepest slopes. These stories are inspiring, because these beings, despite the injustice, love. Richard Phillips, in his interview, reminds us that life is not about avoiding problems, but how in the middle of the storm we can dance in the rain and, above all, I say, enjoy that dance.

Today the news bombards us with the resurgence of the bubonic plague, with a new swine virus, with Covid mutations, with social disobedience and the increase in deaths and infections from Covid in Colombia and in the world. On the other hand, those over 70 protecting the government. Leaders failing the people. Unemployment with historical records of more than 20%, in Colombia. Over-indebtedness of families, urged by a system so that they buy even without having. In short, if we look at it that way, there is nothing to make a broth with.

Let's dance Hollywood style: in the rain; Let's enjoy the droplets touching our body, acknowledging "that the water is wet", that it refreshes us. Let's play and feel deep joy of being alive. Let's learn from these stories that justice is not in our hands. We are terrible at delivering justice. And if the verdict is against us, let's live the path one day at a time. And even if it is not, and we feel overwhelmed and restless, let us be aware of the timeless universe that lives in us. Let's become rain to quench each other's thirst, and let's remember again and again that success is measured by the way we face trials and not by the trials themselves. Let's be positive and in this moment of life let's be grateful that we have the doors open to flood the world of our being, vast, eternal, serene and free.

Day 109: Let's get the job done

In Colombia we have two reasons to celebrate. The first, due to the discovery of the fossils of a Pterosaur, a flying dinosaur that lived in Santander more than 125,000 years ago. The second is that, according to the prestigious magazine Nature, pre-Columbian aborigines were in charge of colonizing Easter Island and Polynesia. They managed to do additional to a genetic search, findings of some remains of food that would come from our continent, such as sweet potatoes. It is scathing to suggest that we celebrate in the context of the peak of deaths and infections by Covid, or by the explosion of a truck in Tasajera that left entire families devastated. But I emphasize that we do have reasons to celebrate. If it is not in Colombia, I ask you to think about what reasons we might have for uncorking a good wine or savoring an exquisite meal.

If we move on to a more personal sphere, today I invite you with me to celebrate those little things that make this passage, the so-called valley of tears, a journey like no other. Today I celebrate, for example, that my multiple sclerosis controls, after almost a year of diagnosis, are considered stable. Therefore, we continue as we came. How not to celebrate the love of our family and friends, who make walking light. Or how not to have a party for having found a vegan dark chocolate croissant!

This week, I was shocked to hear the responses of a woman who had lost her son and brother in the terrible accident in Tasajera, given the indelicacy of the journalist. Torn, she narrated how her son's last words had been that she did not want to die and how her brother's last sob had been that she would not see her son born, that she would not to know. Let us not be indolent and unconscious! These previous weeks, in anticipation of the results of the resonance, and in the face of the avalanche of emotions that navigate the days, I thought that more than fearing death, pain or disability, we should fear not squeezing the last juice out of the life, not to comply with the "why" of this little walk. Fear is transformed into a self-confident make-up present. How not to celebrate health, how not to celebrate the smell of garlic, how not to celebrate the caress of your pet, how not to celebrate being able to sing Jorge Drexler's favorite songs on his Facebook Live, how not to celebrate your battles, mine, how not to celebrate your bets for reinvention, how not to celebrate the gift of flow.

Let's use method and intuition to demarcate our work area, let's work with the care of an archaeologist unearthing history with a little brush, let's be respectful of the findings. Let's believe in ourselves, let's free ourselves from the mind that makes us believe that there is no way, that we are not capable of doing what we dream of, that the future is dark, that there is no time for anything. Let's enjoy the meticulous and expensive mission. Let's look for those sensations that we have forgotten from our childhood: do you remember the emotion of hiding or after hitting a run so that the lead would not touch us? And the emotion of riding a bicycle and his freedom, that of drawing believing himself to be Picasso or singing believing himself to be Paloma San Basilio. Can you imagine the Pterosaur traversing the Chicamocha Canyon, flying over steep mountains and eating pineapples from Lebrija? Can you imagine the astonishment of those first aborigines, who decided to go beyond the known, to find a piece of land surrounded by salt water?

“Let's fulfill the task of living in such a way that when we die, even the undertaker will feel it.”

Marc Twain.

Day 124: Downwind

I witness how the seasons change, how from my window the torrential downpours transform the Aburrá Valley, from a place of splendid greens that intensify under the sun's rays to being the cradle of a tucked-in, crouching baby by the roar of electrical discharges. Life seems to disappear before such a majestic spectacle. Who can defend himself against the vehemence of nature? Not even its mountains can armor this valley with the smell of coffee and beans. Time has changed, the pandemic has changed, and we have changed.

In the course of these weeks I have received a potpourri of moving stories, kneaded by the tragic, but marinated by the fight against irreducibility and by the force of giving. I found the first one in a newspaper: Jihad Al-Suwait is a young Palestinian, who decided to climb several floors of a hospital, through its façade, to be able to sit at the window of the room where his mother battled the virus every night. , until he says goodbye forever. What must have gone through that boy's head, seeing his mother in her solitary confinement, night after night, walking before death without his being able to prevent it? His silent company separated by a glass window, the hours slipping by, his impotence, his determination, the void surrounded him, cradled him. His loving ingenuity transformed, even in the distance, the farewell of that being that gave him life into a gala worthy of any monarchy.

The second story is about someone very close to me who was hit by a food truck while riding a bicycle. The bobadita cost him 4 broken ribs, a cracked hip, pneumothorax and bruises all over his body. Can you imagine the pain! In the midst of the hangover from such a major trauma, this person has time to teach us how to sow, how to face pain, how to fill a monochrome drawing with color. Imagine that he wrote in one of those WhatsApp groups, and told a relative of his that all the pain he was experiencing was offered for his health. Beautiful act of nobility, beautiful act of love. A masterpiece!

The last cartoon, so as not to bore you with the list of those infected by Covid, is that of a schoolmate who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001. To make a short story, today she is in a wheelchair and He opened a crowdfunding seeking resources to get a device to help him in his physical rehabilitation, to be able to walk again. The title of her page was as follows: “Help Nicole #move # conquer # #MS will not rule my life. Keep #dreaming.” What he tells us is to help him move, to conquer, so that sclerosis does not dominate his life, to continue dreaming. Don't you think that this should be the title of all our lives, if we change multiple sclerosis for the challenge each one is living? That depression does not dominate my life, that cancer does not dominate my life, that anguish does not dominate my life, that fear does not dominate my life, that economic problems do not dominate my life, that sadness does not dominate my life. Let's not give up, let's strive to achieve dreams, let's not stay still! Nicole dreams of the breeze caressing her hair as she walks. Don't you think that the dream of one is the dream of all? Don't you think that helping another is helping ourselves?

Simply moving. We can scale buildings to lull a loved one in the distance, we can transmute pain into love, we can dream that the way is to take a step. The common factor is we can: we can be inspiration by living our challenges with integrity. Acts of bravery will never be trivial.

Let us receive encouragement from the people who accompany us on this journey with their daily exploits. Let us receive encouragement from those who preceded us. Let's inspire. And with the strength that we receive from his example, let us launch ourselves into the high seas, raise our sails, and sail under full sail. If the wind ceases, let's sail under sail; if the wind changes direction, let's change the sail, but don't lower it; If the effort is too much, let's blow out the candle. Let's set sail and sail to the leeward, enjoying the propulsion of the wind, the heart wandering through the immensity, the experience of living our conquests with our crew. We are all captains, we are all sailors, we are all sail, we are all wind, we are all sea.

“Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero” (Seize the day and do not trust tomorrow)

Day 132: I'll Jump

Anyone else getting loads of voicemails about student loan forgiveness? I'm assuming it's a scam but on the other hand lmao

— smellygirl123 Thu Jul 22 15:28:20 +0000 2021

Following the world of comics from the previous blog, I start this one with one that left me speechless. The good listener few words. This happened on July 20: while in Colombia we were celebrating national day, a couple of children jumped from a third floor in Grenoble (France) fleeing from a fire that was consuming their home. I don't know the causes. Local residents crowded the first floor, yelling at them to jump, while terrified children clung outside the window. The children, one after the other, overcame their fear and trusting in this group of strangers willing to save their lives, they let go, to descend in free fall about 15 meters. In the 21st century, these cries were nothing more than cries for independence. This was the true Vase of Llorente, so that this pair of children learned that trusting others can save their own lives, that fear instead of immobilizing them should mobilize them, and that at a crossroads of such magnitude a decision can be a journey whose port of departure is anguish and whose port of arrival is the happiness of being aware of the transience of life, and of its miracle. The oldest of the children threw the youngest first and then he did. Thumbs up!

Walid Athoumani, a geography student and local resident who was there first to receive the 3-year-old boy and then to receive the 10-year-old. Walid and other neighbors went up to break down the door to get in and they couldn't do it, so they decided to tell the pair of children to jump out of their window. The children were unharmed, they did not touch the ground. While several of those who received the children suffered broken wrists and fingers. Walid did not mind the pain in his wrist and waited for the reception of the second child. The important thing was to save their lives! In his story, which I copy the link at the end of the blog, he says that he was proud of the solidarity of the neighbors and that the great heroes were the children with their courage.

I think of the children and I admire their handling of the situation, their courage. I am amazed that despite the fact that terror galloped in their minds, before this very small decision, they did not hesitate to execute what "some unknown elders" urged them. That intrepidity and audacity is also the fruit of minds without so many prejudices, of the fantasy we adults forget that “everything is possible”. The child plays, and this game was about trust. On the other hand, I think of Walid and his other neighbors, who acted determined to help the children despite adversity. The collective mind is stronger than the individual mind, the adrenaline and the clarity of the objective led them as a team to achieve the unthinkable at such a level of pressure. Can you imagine the energy generated by the shock force when sustaining the free fall? of a child of 15 kilos and the other of 30 kilos approximately? By pure physics, that force of impact deforms matter because the energy is not dissipated but rather transformed, and that's where the injuries came from. They had no way of calculating beforehand the blow nor the result. Willing is power, definitely. None of the protagonists in this story had a way of verifying if the other was trustworthy, but they did so without much thought. The lives of these children are the result of the trust that everyone had: the trust that the neighbors had in each other, the trust of the children in front of the group of neighbors, the trust that the younger child had in the older child. It was a chain of trust that kept these children from lying cold and still; Or seen from another point of view, it was this chain of trust that allowed these children to be born again.

How much do I trust myself? How much do I trust the other? How much do I trust the divine? Does the mind play and chain us to make us think that we are not capable of doing something that takes it out of its status quo? Our pride prevents us from trusting because it makes us feel more than the other or the other less than us, and our ignorance makes us believe the supreme mind of the universe, we believe we are gods, and therefore trusting in something immaterial is a waste of time, because If under my thought I have destiny controlled, why should I trust something that transcends me? We are so unconscious, so selfish!

Someone once told me that trust is a decision. I don't think we take it very often. We live in relation to other people and we start from mistrust almost always. It happens to me, for example, when they come to shout outside the building asking for money, entire families, more than once a day, with chairs and tables. The business already sounds premeditated to me. I no longer trust the veracity of their moans and laments.

If we want to transgress our limits we must trust ourselves, if we want to one day glimpse into the divine, we have to trust in his presence, order, and benevolence. If we want to learn to live with others, we must learn to listen to our perception and intuition about who and when to trust the other. This episode in France gave us a master lesson in putting our lives in the hands of others, strangers. Am I the stranger, is it the other, is it the Supreme Being? Let us have the courage of children to launch ourselves without controlling the result. Letting go of our apprehensions will allow us to be welcomed by ourselves, by unexpected hands around the corner, by awakening to the awareness that the divine imprint is in everything that happens to us, in everything that surrounds us.

“As you walk the path of life, you will see a great abyss. jump. It's not as wide as you think." native american proverb

Here is the link:

https://www.facebook.com/605545973301212/videos/31309074603266

Day 138: Ubuntu

“Umuntu, nigumuntu, nagamuntu”

“A person is a person because of others” Zulu Proverb

In an African tribe in the country of the rainbow, an anthropologist once proposed a game to his children. The game consisted of placing a basket full of fruit under a leafy tree, while the children at a considerable distance had to race for that succulent delicacy. The winner would taste the sweetness of those delicacies. To the surprise of the doctor who proposed the experiment, when he gave the signal that the race began, the children held hands and running thus linked, they reached the shade of the thousand-year-old tree and the colorful and scented basket was within everyone's reach. Together they sat down to enjoy the long-awaited snack, savoring the colors! While the anthropologist, not getting over his astonishment, asked them why they had held hands, the unison response from the group of children was “UBUNTU! How could one of us be happy if all the others are sad?

In a multi-ethnic country, where 80% of the population is black, where eleven official languages ​​are spoken (we in Latin America are 23 countries speaking the same official language!), where 20% of the population has AIDS , where segregationism used education and unequal rights as a way to perpetuate itself, that is where UBUNTU, as a concept, led by Mandela and his government, managed to reconstruct the relations of a society that was not only culturally or linguistically homogeneous (you can imagine, transportation public, public services, education, health...), but also marked by the pain of injustice and inequality. Very surely, the story for a Boer (a white) will be told in Afrikaans and linens, and for a native it will be narrated in Xhosa or Zulu, and it will be framed by the example that nature gives them, respect for their laws, for their inherent hierarchy, for its harmony, for its hegemony. It was an insurmountable crisis. Hate and revenge of the oppressed only grew. In this story, Mandela brought Boers to work with him in his reunification effort. In the words of Roelf Meyer, Mandela never took revenge against his captors, on the contrary, he spent years studying how they thought in order to understand them. UBUNTU! Meyer always found in Mandela a man dedicated to his community role, modestly serving his idea of ​​union, with his generous and empathetic acts he resignified everything, even Rugby!

The West has taken it upon itself to show us Africans as ignorant blacks in loincloths. It is part of their strategy, so that they could perpetuate their control over the gold and diamonds that were extracted from that country. Today, that "so underdeveloped" world managed to teach us an insurmountable lesson. Today people of color, religion, origin, different tribes can sit at the table together. Even more, they understood that the dignity of some depends on the dignity of others.

In Colombia, for some our history is worth forgetting, or at least that is what we do with young people: not tell them the scars of this senseless war, but from which as a people we must learn. Our history of conflict does not arise from our different languages ​​or our being culturally diverse; our conflict arises from the abuse of power by some or the oppression of others. Our guerrillas, under the libertarian sophistry, used threatening means to gain followers, or at least to neutralize opponents. In his imaginary, ideas, by themselves, lacked sufficient strength. Where was the other? In Colombia we speak the same language, we are red or blue, we are right or left. We carry out a peace process from the political constitution, but not from a deep ethical transformation and values. Colombia continues without forgiving those who kidnapped and blinded so many lives!

How is the period of “la Violencia” or the period of guerrilla warfare different from what we are living today? Today we see a divisive language, the left wanting to make a young electorate and biased by the lack of information see that their banners work for justice. The right removing populist voices to advocate for a technical polyphony. The country divided into fanaticism because Uribe is in jail, either because he deserves it in the opinion of some, or with pain for the homeland because this public servant will have to unfairly pay house for jail while Santrich drinks old wine with some good tapas. In this week's round Uribe fell to the canvas because of the left jab that Cepeda gave him.

Let's learn not to forget our history, let's learn from the history of other peoples who overcame segregationism in its maximum expression to focus their transformation, on giving way to selfishness and thinking of the other still different from me, as the object of my service . I don't win if we all don't win. Could it be that the Supreme Court of Justice of this country understands this, is it that Cepeda's actions when it comes to revenge, rightly or not, do not generate more revenge?

May UBUNTU become the substrate of our change. This is true, now in the midst of the pandemic. Instead of yelling at the other because they scolded him for his lack of masks, we should understand that if the other gets sick because of me, in the end it's me who gets sick. Gentlemen, there is no debt that is not paid or deadline that is not met. Life is a breath. Let's not waste time delving into differences or aggression. We are social beings, and as such we have a responsibility ignored by all to help the other, even if he offended me, to forgive him even if he hurt me, to understand his story because it will surely teach me something. Life is not about politics, life is about fulfilling as human beings, and this fulfillment does not depend on flags or parties, it depends on printing love, ethics and justice in each act. Let's resignify our relationships no matter how difficult they are. Today for you tomorrow for me.

Day 146: Discord or union?

A girl leans out of a window of the building across the street, she with her cape, feinting, staring at me, while I ride the simulator (bicycle) and say goodbye to her. Without hesitation, she waves her hand, smiles, excitedly makes me see that she is quite a princess, she makes me laugh a little; in the midst of the agitation of the climb to Richmond, his illusion inhabits me. At the same time, on another balcony I see a young woman organizing a small table, placing a plant in its center and properly placing a coffee pot, cups, plates, and chairs. Everything impeccable waiting for the arrival of your beloved. What do we aspire to as individuals and as a society? Did the girl think she was a princess, did she dream or was she? Did the young woman want to show her love to her husband with the harmonious arrangement of the space they were going to share? And me, for my part, pedaling to where? What was my destiny, what was the goal?

This week I've been a little shocked here in Medellín by the resignations of the boards of directors of EPM and Ruta N. Why? The members of the boards of directors argued that the mayor made far-reaching decisions for the companies without taking them into account, since they are the ones who have the legal responsibility for the direction of the companies. All a "coup d'état". The version of the mayor of Medellín is that he did not trust that board, speaking about the EPM board. Didn't he ratify it? The point here is not whether EPM should sue its builders or not, in relation to Hidroituango. But, by the way, the truth is that this demand makes little sense, since Mapfre, the insurer, had already agreed to recognize the incident, because it was a fortuitous event and the event was not foreseeable. There are still pending payments. Will Mapfre continue to pay EPM knowing that the company owner thinks the builders were at fault? Do you think that "the poor" of this city benefit more from "some rich" occupying the board of directors or the long-term sustainability of the company? The first thing I have to say is that I do not accept from a leader stirring up social anger, division. Using class difference as a pretext for a flagrant abuse of corporate governance, of a company that serves the entire community, is outrageous. It has promoted profound misinformation. His move was premeditated, since a few months ago he presented a project to modify the EPM statutes before the City Council. He had to withdraw it; And where do you let me have names ready for a new meeting the day after the resignation of the current members? Today, the consequence of his political interests prevailing over the interests of the community that chose him, on pain of having elected him flying the flags of being "independent", are sensitive for the future of this city. The mayor swiped the institutionality, the corporate government, and put the company that is vital to the finances of this city in an extremely fragile position. Fitch and Moody's already reviewed their ratings, for obvious reasons, saying that the main risk for companies was the vision of their owner. Quixote! It is necessary to put a lot of legs so that the four previous mayors, who can neither see each other nor sit at a table, agree. Incredible!

I don't want to talk about politics, but I do want to reflect on ambition. For me, the episode that I have just told you about what happened in Medellín resembles Shakespeare's Macbeth. I don't know if you remember the plot of the play, but in short, Macbeth found himself, on his way back from a battle, with three witches who told him three prophecies, among which they said that he would be king, and Banquo his companion of deeds, that in his offspring there would be kings. To make a long story short, Macbeth, urged on by Lady Macbeth to fulfill the prophecy of being king, killed King Duncan with the consequent exile of King Duncan's sons. Lady Macbeth, seeing her husband's weakness, in addition to killing King Duncan's servants, decides to frame them and dye them with blood. Likewise, Macbeth decides to kill his friend Banquo, since he was mortified to know that his offspring would have kings, just as the witches had prophesied. The share of his actions was already paid in the mental health of Lady Macbeth, who washed imaginary bloodstains on her hands, while in Macbeth his guilt made him see the ghost of Banquo. All this leads Macbeth to meet the witches again, worried about his future. They conjure up three spirits and again give him three prophecies, much to Macbeth's peace of mind. However, what Macbeth would not imagine is that the witches' prophecies would be deceptive. Macbeth loses his throne in a fair fight and is assassinated. King Duncan's son is crowned again.

Macbeth was blinded by ambition to be king. He didn't care about framing, murdering and affecting the people around him, including his friend. His conscience, and that of his wife, was uneasy. However, there was no way to remove that remorse, and he sought his peace of mind in oracles. He dies deceived by what he believed gave him peace of mind. Do the means justify the end for those who hold political power? I ask myself, what is the true power? Don't you think that it is the one that each one has, when he gives space to us before the self? It may not be bad faith, but we are responsible for our actions despite our ignorance. True power is in acting with a clear conscience and without remorse, with kindness and justice. Like Macbeth, we will all pay for our mistakes. There is no debt that is not paid or deadline that is not met. We must not consult, like Macbeth, witches or letters; we must consult our great teacher who is within us, there we will have our compass. Our weakness cannot be dissipated by accusing or incriminating the other, but by facing it with compassion and an iron will. Acting without thinking, motivated by fear, is a formula to hurt ourselves and to hurt others.

Ambition drives us, it can lead us to bring about changes within ourselves. It can help us sow transformations in our environment. But it can also make us succumb, when our egoism polarizes the window through which we see reality. The girl in that window made me dream, it made me remember what it felt like to play our characters in childhood: we were heroes, doctors, supermarket cashiers, priests, moms, dads, policemen, firefighters. With the imagination an alternate reality was recreated. Let's use imagination as a bridge to imagine ourselves different, to define the role we want to play in this society in which we live. But, above all, let's imagine that we are respectful of the other, let's not deceive the other by their lack of information. The system is inequitable, but we can give each one a place with our actions, if we truly act from love. We have to be very careful not to cross the border in which the ambition that breeds the unthinkable becomes ambition, which buries humility, which places us on the pedestal, which makes us the revealed truth.

Let us be responsible for our actions, and as the great teacher Francisco de Asís says:

Oh, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hate, let me bring love.

Where there is offense, may I bring forgiveness.

Where there is discord, may I bring unity

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.

Where there is error, let me bring the truth.

Where there is despair, may I bring joy.

Where there is darkness, let me bring light.

Oh, Master, make me not seek so much to be consoled, but to console;

to be understood, but to understand;

to be loved, how to love.

Because it is:

Giving, what is received;

Forgiving that one is forgiven;

Dying that is resurrected to the

Eternal Life.

Day 167: Ready… set… IT WAS WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

All the participants of the race rush through the starting line, each one, of course, wearing the badge that distinguishes him as a runner of this marathon. Just wearing the badge is a source of pride, since not everyone qualifies for the race. The long-awaited hour has finally arrived, hearts beat with emotion, music tries to silence the whirlwind that takes place in the minds of the participants. All very dolled up with the latest toys to measure their performance, wireless headphones, and I don't even tell them the sneakers they wear, worthy of a real roadrunner, right. Will I achieve my personal times? Will I reach the goal or die of dehydration? Everyone knows the rules, running 42 km. and do it in the shortest possible time. Some run for social causes, others for their own cause or for a claim. What is undeniable is that it is not a team sport, what it is about is beating others who are as well prepared and aperated as you are.

While in some parts of the world the starting whistle is blown, in others the attention goes to Messi and his reversal of his decision to leave Barcelona, ​​regarding team sports. And to the demonstrations that seek to end the monarchy and the use of masks. Could it be that we missed the enthronement of his majesty the mask? Spain, facing the second peak of the pandemic, exhausted by the race, seek at all costs not to face the effects of their summer celebration on the beaches crowded with local and Nordic bathers who take their annual getaway, to roast themselves in the best Iberian style .

Have you had a chance to see a waterfall? Well, I remember, when I was 15 years old, going to see Niagara Falls. To my surprise, when seen from above, you can see the force of the water in that free fall, you can hear the solo of a unique percussionist in his class. From above a cloud is seen when looking down. Yeah! A cloud! If you get closer in the boat, you get into the cloud and you can't look up, everything is covered by that dense layer of humidity that doesn't allow you to see the point where the water leaves the earth. So that you understand me: from below you cannot see what is above and from above you cannot see what is below!

This is what is happening to us today. The whole of Colombia is running the marathon. However, I have many doubts that people are aware of the rules of the game of the race. The starting whistle becomes, proportions kept, a vase by Llorente. It is a cry for freedom, for independence, for anonymity. The rules for many are simple: I have to go out to work, to earn money; for others, I must go out because I had to do this other thing, a thousand years ago; for another group, the reason is that I have to go out because I can't wait to see my friends. What is surprising is the collective amnesia. We all forgot that we were cloistered for almost six months due to a virus that has not gone away. Now they all run with vigor, unaware that they are prisoners of a system that forces them to go out to earn their livelihood, despite the dangers to their health. And ignoring a relevant fact, and that is that this is a long-distance race, it is a long-winded race and it seems that we are running the 100 mts. Blueprints by Usain Bolt. We are blinded under a cloud that does not allow us to see the origin of the waterfall, nor does it allow us to understand that beyond the noise there is a rainbow that is drawn when the humidity is colored by the sun. The Spaniards are running the last half of the marathon, and they are realizing that it did not make sense to ignore the presence of the corona virus, since many people are abandoning the feat, and it is being questioned whether the race should continue or not. if rather it is requested to return to quarantine.

We live in community, therefore, we cannot believe that life is an individualistic race. Do you think that a cayenne opens its beautiful petals without the intervention of sun or water? Our life makes sense based on the other, on the other as a reflection of me. Today I write calling for sanity, for moderation. In a race, the important thing is to self-regulate, it is to know the rhythm and cadence that will allow us to reach the finish line. The important thing is to know why and what I run for. Why do we flee fast and fast to the calm of our homes? To lock ourselves up like laboratory mice in shopping malls, falsely believing that with a purchase all our unhappiness will disappear?

My question today is whether we should conceive of our freedom as prisoners of the world and its systems, or if we should stop and watch the downpours fall from the window and wait for the sun to rise on each one of us. Freedom is not given because President Duque issues a decree. Our ability to create is not limited by walls. Our ability to give is not curtailed by physical distancing. I made the decision not to run, but instead to stop. To live freedom listening to Nahuel Pennisi, to live freedom seeing a loved one smile or cry, to live freedom not prey to money, but to the magic, beauty and harmony that lives in everything around us. True freedom we don't see it, we feel it!

Day 187: Frenzy

As the nerds say, we're back to the new normal. I really don't know what that means about the new normality. Leaving aside that I am still in strict quarantine, and I see the hubbub from what our independent media reports, the reality is even more heartbreaking. I can't stand it, to be honest, not even finish the headlines of the Colombian news. It amazes me that just as we believe that all past times were better, we believe that all future times will be better. How will our future be different if we do nothing for it in our present? It is not enough if not to see the killings of people on foot, as the grandmothers would say, due to abuses of the "armed" force. What legitimizes the use of a firearm to end the life of another? They call civilians murderers, the military for having a uniform it seems that we are coining a new meaning. The point here is that we reflect that when we were in the midst of confinement we boasted of how reality was going to change. It has done? Have we changed?

While the violence escalates, the world is like a runaway horse, that is, without masks. It is therefore the episode of a suspense series of the best ilk. The possibility of an inexplicable virus causing anxiety in our lives is masked by the cruelty of other scourges that as a society we have entrenched. The world is resisting the lockdown by demonstrating in the streets with banners and all, absurd as it may seem, while health ministers warn of the seriousness of the threat. The mayors of the cities antagonizing the central governments, in addition to seeking to be the voice of the people, seek to minimize the economic impact of their communities (for the Madrid and Bogotá sample). They seek the heroism that buys votes. What a system we live in, that we end up forgetting the initial motivations of a confinement to make way for prosperity, that we end up forgetting the other human being to make way for my own abundance and security. Spain struggles with this dichotomy, and the Colombian population runs amok towards the inexorable encounter with a red-carpet-worthy regrowth. We are afraid of the future because we feel that we are alone, and we feel that without financial security we will not survive. The ideal that the people of a Neolithic community that inhabited Malta pursued was to be obese, because they lived full of food restrictions and limitations. What is our limitation that reinforces our ideal? What is our ideal? If not, the nephew of Pablo Escobar, who dedicated himself to looking for a cove for so many years that, finally, found himself with 18 million dollars torn to shreds by humidity, answers it. What did you waste your time for some little papers with drawings?

And meanwhile, there are human beings fighting like titans in ICUs, there are others who work tirelessly to make those warriors who fight their battles return safely to their loved ones who long for their return. There are others who grieve for a disappearance, for a murder, for a threat, for hunger, for loneliness, for being discriminated against. Each and every one of us has to overcome the tests that life throws at us. Each and every one of us, in one way or another, we have to take our little pill. We all have to be, for those who like sports, like that tennis player who is in the final of a grand slam and is down two sets. He not only has to come back from two sets, but he must win the fifth if he wants to be crowned champion. That is your litmus test. Thiem, the last US Open champion, had to play hours and hours to beat his opponent when everything indicated that he was going to lose.

Don't you think that photos of loved ones, or little drawings made by children, make people in ICUs speed up their recovery? Don't you think that, for the sister of the young woman murdered in Cauca, hearing the sob of the mother of the soldier who shot her, and being able to embrace each other while sharing her pain, was not a balm for the bitterness that both felt?

Meanwhile, everything seems unchanged outside, as a collective. We as individuals have the canvas ready for the first brush stroke. When imagining the result, the hand goes towards the indicated color, the indicated texture, the indicated mixture. There are as many works of art as there are people. For some the brush is patience, for others it is perseverance, for others it is understanding their defects, for others it is humility. The line becomes miraculous because it begins to give life to an empty space. Love and compassion are the color. How to pretend to make a composition without an inspiration? What sense does our life have if it is not in relation to another person, with a flower, with a bird, with a sunrise, with a pet?

How did Thiem feel when he reversed the score? What does a patient feel when leaving the ICU when they see their nurses and orderlies cry? What do the relatives of a disappeared person feel when they find out their whereabouts? What does an elderly person in a nursing home feel when someone visits him? What do hungry people feel when they order and are not ignored?

Let it be time to quote Calderón de la Barca, when in Segismundo he reminds us:

“...well we are

in such a singular world,

that living is only dreaming;

and experience teaches me,

that the man who lives dreams

what it is, until you wake up...

I dream that I am here,

of these prisons charged;

and I dreamed that in another state

I saw myself more flattering.

What is life? A frenzy.

What is life? An illusion,

a shadow, a fiction,

and the greatest good is small;

that all life is a dream,

and dreams are dreams.”

Day 209: Hatching

The sun continues to display its beauty on us, the blushes take our breath away when we see them. The cycles of nature continue their course and have not been interrupted, like so many things, by the pandemic. Autumn has arrived for some, spring for others, the days are shortened or lengthened while waiting for the solstices. The muleteer ant works tirelessly to load a leaf and take it home. The marine currents make their lines and set the rhythm of the journey of the schools. The winds swirl, they calm down, they rise, they refresh us, they warn us, they remind us. The small leaf that grows from a birch allows a beetle to take shelter from the weather. Everything moves, everything follows its rhythm, everything has its time. Even stillness moves within us, and we are transformed within it. And the rain, how to forget it, with its magic it takes everything and allows everything to shine after a fearsome electrical storm. How not to thank each day and its movement?

We have spent almost 7 months since an event that shook our routines. I keep seeing those movements of nature from my balcony. Sitting on a bench, I see in the distance the mountains that protect the valley where I live, I watch the swallows play full in the morning, the small planes believe they are swallows, the sound of an irrepressible sneeze from a neighbor that mixes with the alaraca of the plane's engines. I see the clouds piling up in the distance, like fans in a football stadium waiting for the match; then I see them suddenly disperse as a result of a stampede on the sports arena. My cat repeats his consummate sleepyhead routine over and over again, which he alternates with his long-awaited walks to his food coke. The stories of births, deaths, illnesses, miraculous recoveries, smiles and tears, anxiety and hope. Everything, like in an apothecary, is presented in this theatre.

In that perennial movement, we stick to the status quo. We believe the idea that we can reverse, sustain or impose our desire in the face of the ups and downs of becoming. We are the makers of unfounded assumptions and on this we build the empire of our existences. You may think that the wave would not even imagine that it would die upon reaching the shore, or that the playful cloud would be surprised to tear itself apart when it finished charging. The wave does not die, its outline will always be marked by that border of bubbles that fall asleep on the earth, and the cloud will always exist in the little plant that is born from the hatching seed. Why do we insist on ignoring what we know?

When we observe the movement of what surrounds us from the window, it forces us to think that this is also reflected in our rhythms and cycles. Do we allow it? Or simply the discomfort caused by the image of what we believe to be imprisons us and does not allow us to let ourselves go to the sound of that melody that resonates so much with us. We must work tirelessly to hatch. Get out of the membranes that immobilize us, of the judgments that paralyze us, of the words that make us unable, of the thoughts that bring us to our knees. Don't you think it's worth being Jacques Cousteau and sailing the depths of our seas? In that case, we have to be like the dolphins and whales who are happy just to exist, as our acclaimed sailor reminds us. We become the explorer and the explored, the known recognized, the loved and protected.

When we leave our shelter we will find that everything moves, but we will enjoy those changes of season; fear will give way to amazement, the germinated shoot will dress up, with the help of the sun it will rise, its trunk will widen, its foliage will become bushy and one day it will flower. It will surely house nests, it will shelter insects, it will be a swing for monkeys and a trampoline for squirrels, and without a doubt the woodpecker will take great care to mark the rhythm of the days and make its trunk a work of art.

The hatching occurs when we warm our soul, when as a good scriptwriter we unravel the characters of the work, when we seek to do good, when we examine ourselves and decide to bet on the movements that transform our lives and those of others , when we bet on evolving, on growing, on leaving the safety of the maternal home and accepting that life and its apparent crossroads are just pretexts to strengthen our determination to search for that fulfillment that we all long for deeply.

And as Socrates said to the Athenians in his apology, before being sentenced to death:

“.. All my occupation is to work to persuade you, young and old, that before the care of the body and wealth, before any other care, is that of the soul and its perfection; because I never tire of telling you that virtue does not come from riches, but on the contrary, that riches come from virtue, and that it is from here that all other public and private goods are born."

Day 216: Of archers and cartoonists

It doesn't matter if the world ignores you, it doesn't matter if the world insults you, it doesn't matter if the world separates you, it doesn't matter if the world points, it doesn't matter if the world attacks you. It matters if by what the world ignores you transcends. It matters if the world loves you for what you insult. It matters if by what separates you the world unites. It matters if the world reconciles for what attacks you.

We live in the Tower of Babel. What we say is misinterpreted. We live with so much noise in our minds and we live so fast that while the other is talking, we are thinking about how to discuss his idea or we simply do not listen. Then it becomes an ego game. The winner is the one who does not bow down to the other and falsely believes that he is the bearer of the truth. Our actions or words are passed through a sieve, prejudice. And from there the epic is built that will support the argument that will make us win the game. We never think if we have the complete information that leveraged a certain decision by the interlocutor. What we think we hear we fit perfectly like a layman in the space of our preconceptions. Thus, everything is marvelous: what was a one-story house becomes a building. Therefore, by having more "air", as they say, everything is deceptively validated and allows the aforementioned to launch an overwhelming judgment that can change the course of our lives. The distance that is created between reality and perception is overwhelming. We become judges versed in the laws of injustice, without declaring ourselves handicapped by being immersed in a flagrant conflict of interest.

Today it is worth doing all the conjugation of the verb to criticize. I criticize myself, I criticize you, they criticize, we criticize each other, you criticized each other, they criticize each other. What do we get by doing it? We are so blind, and at the same time so severe, that despite systematically ignoring the effect of our words on the path of others, we continue to deliver justice. And we are so unaware that we overlook that that word directed like an arrow at the lamb is a boomerang. The weapon aimed at the other ends up being returned with all determination and equal lethality to the archer.

That our words do not hurt, that our words do not invalidate, that our words do not break, that our words do not kill. May our dreams remain intact despite a no, may our hope be built stronger despite doors closed in our faces, may our decision to try not be buried by the accurate blow of the sledgehammer. May severity become perseverance to achieve what we so long for. That the house with air created by others is not taken into account, as long as we bet like Escalona to build a house in the air only for you to live.

Let our voice not be hidden. That our words are not disguised to satisfy the perception of the other. May our words not be chisels that sculpt an inanimate sculpture. That our words do not confine us to an uninhabited island, and like a shipwrecked the days spend thinking about how to return. May life not pass us by waiting for the plane as Fantasy Island Tattoo. Mickey Mouse was born because Walt Disney did not give up making his cartoons while serving as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in World War II, because he continued to insist despite layoffs and bankruptcies, because he decided to experiment with the animation technique at home, because he never gave up.

It doesn't matter if the world ignores you, it doesn't matter if the world insults you, it doesn't matter if the world separates you, it doesn't matter if the world points, it doesn't matter if the world attacks you. It matters if by what the world ignores you transcends. It matters if the world loves you for what you insult. It matters if by what separates you the world unites. It matters if the world reconciles for what attacks you.

Day 239: The cast net

She watches through a stained glass window as her mother dies of Covid. He sees how the word "Pregnant" is painted on a pregnancy test that her lady took, and he cringes at the thought that now she will have more responsibility. She sighs as she celebrates life, noticing the passage of time after one year of a marrow transplant, and being able to celebrate the hemoglobin that her body produces today with a red cake. She crosses herself, thanking God for having found the little house in the country where she dreamed of living so much. She celebrates her 78 years dancing in the street to the rhythm of Carmen de Bolívar in the best style of a Venezuelan band, with wine, the hug of her dog and her son, a smile... what more could you ask for. She struggles with rebuilding her life after a separation. He tries to remove the quagmire in front of his house while he recovers, because the storm left all his furniture and belongings useless. She rides a bicycle for the first time, with the help of her brother, after the amputation of one of her legs.

Since 1103 I have been observing how this web of events unfolds. While some dance, others cry; while some conceive a life, others fight for their lives; While some make their dreams come true, others make their dreams come true. Not even the most dignified scriptwriter could incorporate so many narrative lines into a single composition without any shock or goof. The beauty is not only in the number of narrative lines, but also in the fact that, like a casting net that is thrown at random, the stories come together, and that when tied to each other they sustain and support beyond their own weight. They can fish, they can give food, they can shelter, they can remain suspended in the water to the vaivén of the dawn currents. The fisherman never lets go of the net. The strength of the cast net is in its fabric. The fisherman is the witness to the magic of the cast net and, at the same time, the creator of his dance, his cooing, his silence.

Each of those stories have touched me in one way or another in recent weeks. In my cast net they are woven. In your cast net they intertwine. Your story makes me, it is born to me. My story rocks you, it grows. Isn't this the meaning of our existence?

There are looks that are forever sculpted in the memory due to their mental strength, there are others that are longed for without a hint of return. There are looks that break the silence with their tune. There are looks that sprout and sincere even the most liar. There are looks that welcome, that knock on the door, that play, that conquer, that with mischief, tear down barricades. There are looks that are oases, there are looks that are a bayonet, there are looks that are syrup, there are looks that are unfortunate. There are looks that implore compassion; there are others who, on the contrary, are armored with pride. There are looks that are flooded with hopelessness and others that are like the sunny dawn after the storm has passed. Here I remember Bécquer's rhyme XXIII, which I heard frequently in my childhood, which says:

“For one look, one world,

for a smile, a sky,

for a kiss... I don't know

what would I give you for a kiss!

Day 259: Between drones and perfumes

Bees are swirling around the flowers in the garden. Openly, they break the schemes and draw their trips in the wind, in the supposed invisibility of the air. In the middle of the revelry, a downpour breaks out that makes them run out in terror to take shelter from such a violent encounter, they beat their wings without resistance and safely seek the shortest way to reach the hive, where they can warm their bodies and take off their wet clothes. They do not look back, because there is no time to lose; they focus on reaching their longed-for refuge.

We have so much to learn from bees! They know where they have to go, they know their role and contribution to their society, they fulfill their mission without “buts”. They do not know their ignorance nor do they yearn to be the queen because there is only one. They are drones or workers, yet they overlook the impact of their dedicated effort and it never crosses their minds that they feed so many. We, who believe ourselves to be a superior species, should observe this little combo of critters dressed in a yellow jumpsuit with black stripes, who buzz and buzz, and offer their very lives to ensure the survival of their family and friends.

What if the Providencia hurricane, what if the burned houses of Cartagena, what if the flooding due to the rains, what if the virus reached your community, what if refugees flee their homes in search of safety and sustenance for their children, if those displaced by violence start again, if the victims are heroes or villains. And what do we do?

We have forgotten that we live in community. Falsely, we believe that our survival depends on what we treasure, even if that means even the death of another human being. We systematically omit the need of the other, we only pursue our well-being. And could it be that what we are looking for as well-being is what will give us it in the long term? We live lost, we all consider ourselves workers when we are drones, some resist their reality as drones to become king or queen. We do not carry out our tasks because we are delving into our memories, asking for forgiveness or asking for permission. We break the balance of the hive because we do not respect the universal laws of giving and receiving. We are obtuse in not understanding that the focus of our life transcends, like bees, the borders of the hive. We use our stings to hurt the other, instead of giving our lives for the other. We do not know that we have to look for the sweetest and most excellent flower, the one that feeds our body and soul.

“How wonderful it is that no one needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world!” Anne Frank

Day 273: Plerosis

Lit candles, colorfully decorated lanterns, festive music, burning gunpowder, native foods making a killing: for some, arepas fritas and carimañolas; for others, fritters, custard and flakes. Family reunions are the order of the day, friends are also looking for a pretext to sing together “... my sweet Jesus, my adored child, come to our souls; Come, don't take so long..." There is always a reason to light that candle, a reason to be thankful, a reason to miss. The smell of candle wax mixes with the early morning dew on the coast, or mixes with the cold nights in the interior of the country, in any case, the heat of customs breaks into the coldest corner of our home .

But this year everything was different. We could not meet as usual to share, to live the sounds, smells and colors of Christmas. It's a Christmas that reminds many families of the absence of a loved one, or because Covid made them leave or because the pandemic separated them. It is a year away, of anxieties and fears; It is a year in which so many people, in one way or another, suffered. So, if you are reading this blog today, thank God for the miracle of life, for the miracle of sharing with your son, grandson, husband, wife, friend, friend.

For me, today is a special day. I have been undergoing treatment for sclerosis for a year, with that injection that sends me to the canvas for a whole weekend, and the truth is that it is time to share with you something of what I have learned with this biweekly dose: fear accompanies to the uncertain; It is not a mystery to anyone, but the truth is that fear can be overcome if we accept what we have to live. As Desmond Tutu says, the person who has courage is not the one who is not afraid, but the one who lives, who acts, despite fear. And like any path, all we can do is focus our energy on taking the next step. They often ask me how long they will give me the drug, and since I don't know and the doctors see that it is for a long time, I answer that the doctors say that it will be forever, but I don't think so. Therefore, the question is how I decide to face the biweekly challenge. And here comes the second great learning of this path, and it is that pain is a door that can give new meaning to everything, that makes you more aware of feeling good and fullness; therefore, when I feel good, I squeeze the days to the last drop. Pain is the teacher to teach you that sometimes it is inevitable, but that you can give meaning to those 72 days a year that you must be confined, lying down, overcoming fever and discomfort. Will they ask me if dejected? The answer is no. As a good teacher, he has made me understand the great power that we have within us; the great power of the mind to take us for a walk to the sea, to listen to it, to smell it, to see its serenity at dawn, while my body fights fever, pain and insomnia.

The power of thinking about the other was eye opening for me. So, when I feel bad, I think of so many people in hospitals, intensive care, disabled, undergoing invasive treatments, transplants who also, like me, must face the challenge of overcoming pain. What I have learned is that the crux is not to fight with pain, to accept it and use those days to ask God for people who have stronger trials than the ones I experience. It's taking the focus off my discomfort and relativizing it in the face of the pain of others.

And this year has indeed been full of stories drenched in tears. Therefore, I have always been well entertained. If I think it's a waste of time, it is. If I think that those 6 days a month are a school for my heart to tune in to the pain of the other, it is a great gift.

The third lesson is: if I think the application is going to give me a hard time, it gives me three laps. So the best friend and ally for this test is myself. If I consider myself a victim, I give my alter ego the power to dig the grave, even while I'm alive. If I decide to live, I must exile all the thoughts that force me to think that I am sick. As they told me in one of the first appointments of my new "patient" profession: there are sick people and diseases.

In the end, why are we so afraid of living, why do we try to avoid pain, why do we not value the simple and great moments in which we can give, love, feel. Today I thank life for multiple sclerosis. I tell you that I redefined it: if you play with the letters you realize that multiple sclerosis hides that it is my plerosis. For those wondering what plerosis is, etymologically it comes from the Greek plerosis, "regeneration", and is made up of "pleon", which means full, much, and "osis", which means conversion, impulse. In other words, sclerosis, already called plerosis, is for me a reminder of the impulse that I can never lose to seek fulfillment, to learn every day, to regenerate myself every day, to convert every second of my life into meaningful time.

That this Christmas you seek fulfillment, committing yourself to the other, to the friend, to the one you know, to the one you don't know, because in the end we all seek happiness that sometimes seems elusive. The year is coming to a close, so, like the balance sheets in companies, I invite you not to continue waiting another year to do what we dream of, to give what we are, to be grateful for what we receive without deserving, to live with meaning every second of our existence.

Merry Christmas everyone and I hope that the year 2021 allows us to erase the word separation from the dictionary and allows us to hug and kiss those who are in our hearts. Let it be the opportunity to thank all of you for your comments, your words of encouragement, your company.

Let's sing!

“... tell me you love me

Tell me you love me

That you adore me more

a year to come

and another one that leaves

a year to come

and another one that leaves

I bring a corsage

I bring a corsage

of a pretty rose bush

a year to come

and another one that leaves

a year to come

and another one that leaves

I come from the olive tree

I come from the olive tree

I'm going to the olive grove

a year to come

and another one that leaves

a year to come

and another one that leaves..."

SONGS OF CHRISTMAS

Day 357: The lying shepherd boy

“Catch it! Grab it!” the parishioners shouted while fasting. The beloved pastor made them believe that Jesus Christ was coming back, that to see him they had to fast and deliver all their goods. After meticulously obtaining the collection and giving interviews to the Colombian television media, the lying shepherd boy plotted and carried out his escape to earthly paradise, with a yacht and a little friend included. La Casa de Papel is a mere lampoon next to the masterful escape. Interpol will surely catch him tracing his food on the yacht: buttermilk and sausage imported from Quilla..."Aha, you know!"

Honestly, it impresses me that less than a month ago we said that in 2021 everything was going to be different, while, swimming in indifference, we filled shopping malls and celebrated together. Twenty days later, ICUs in many parts of the country without capacity. And suddenly, so many people known, loved, friends of parents and parents of friends, sailing against the current. At some point this month I managed to count at least 20 people known to be infected.

I don't know if this is happening to you. I don't know if you pray. But when, in silence, I begin to ask God for the people I know who are suffering in some way or another, the list is already so long that my dendrite often sticks to me, and I find myself forced to make a generalization that groups a combo of people, so as not to exclude anyone. I already have more categories than before. And I don't know if you have noticed, but one category leads us to think of others. In short, I discovered how self-absorbed I have lived, how indolent and how little compassionate I have been. I have lived without being aware of the magnitude of the drama of the other, I have thought of myself as a victim in the style of the valley of tears... pure straw... there are many many more who have heavier burdens than me. It is only necessary to open your eyes and ears.

The suffering of so many relativizes ours, the anguish of so many makes ours insignificant. Meanwhile, a Buddhist passage reminds us why suffer if we can change things and why suffer if we cannot change them? While we are alive, we have the opportunity to put a good face on bad times, to be happy despite suffering, to experience the magic of forgiveness and acceptance.

I ask you: What would you like to be said at the ceremony to celebrate your departure from this world? What are you doing to achieve that for which you aspire to be remembered? For example, I would like, among other things, to be remembered as someone who always tried to help others; And you, where do you place your bets? I hope you won't be remembered for being the lying shepherd boy. I bet on you, because if you make a bow we will all do it, we will all celebrate!

“I chose you because I realized that it was worth it, it was worth the risks, it was worth life”

Pablo Neruda

“If I had to start my life over again

I would try to find you much sooner”

The Little Prince

Day 365: The Canyoning Journey

Afternoon falls... the clouds gallop across the immensity as if they were looking for a place where they could take shelter from the elements. The flower bud continues its opening dance. The Burrowing Man perches on a wooden stake; defiant of the dark and motionless, observe the future. It is time to hide and he continues upright feeling the symphony of welcome to the night, with songs, castanets and the buzz of the boiling forest. El Barranquero decides to fly there, where the orchestra of seasoned tiny musicians interpret beauty personified. In that place, despite the darkness and poor visibility, he feels at home, safe and secure from predators.

Inside the house, the candle flame flickers at the slightest draft. Her warmth and presence takes the place, and yes, to the sound of crickets, frogs and fireflies, she also flies towards where her being expands. We, spectators of such majesty, larger in size, but incapable of merging into the perennial movement of what surrounds us, inspired and colored by the halo of its flame, also like the Barranquero, fly without knowing in silence to that place that collects us, that gives us warmth, that protects us from the elements, that invites us to calm down, where we only have to watch our thoughts, where we cannot presume or pretend, where our race, weight, color or preference are futile, where only may be present.

Ignorant we are when we think that we don't have a little bit of cloud, a little bit of the flower bud, of Barranquero, of crickets, fireflies and little frogs, of a candle flame... of the other who loves us, of the other that hurt us, of the other that we hurt. Of the instrument that we are in this composition impossible to be written.

Aren't we men in search of meaning, as Victor Frankl would say? We all live different experiences: some have a brain tumor that they have to remove and then go through a chemotherapy process, others have to have a part of the pancreas resected due to a recently diagnosed cancer, others print their being in musical compositions or in their paintings, others get up in search of their daily bread, others walk fleeing violence to unknown places, others live between bars for past mistakes, others live buried by guilt, others battle discrimination, others suffer loss of loved ones, others suffer from disabilities and depend on others. Anyway, in this world the stories are unimaginable.

Victor Frankl, having experienced Nazi horror in a concentration camp, writes the following:

“The experiences of life in a field show that man maintains his ability to choose. (...) Perhaps they were not many (men), but those few represented an irrefutable proof that everything can be taken from a man except one thing: the last of human freedoms - the choice of the personal attitude that he must adopt in the face of destiny. - to decide their own path.”

“Considering our “provisional existence” as something unreal was a primary factor for the prisoners' lives to get out of hand, because everything was seen as meaningless. Such people forgot that, on many occasions, it is exceptionally adverse or difficult circumstances that give man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself."

I wonder every day if I'm actually deciding my own path or if I'm someone who attends a movie and sees its plot behind the curtain and doesn't personify it. Or if, on the contrary, my indecision keeps me from my dream, or my myopic gaze distorts my perception of reality so much that I decide not to act. Sometimes I wonder if fear immobilizes me so much that it doesn't allow me to be like that Barranquero who serenely defied the night and its dangers, or if my ears close so much that I don't hear what everything around me shouts at me. And not to mention in the pandemic, where physical distance separates us from each other. Will I be walking my path or will I just be seeing how it is delineated on the uninhabited horizon? Could it be that I feel so different and separated that I can't get into the magic that every being that surrounds us teaches us?

“Oh, how belated action it is to start life when you want to end it!” says Seneca. If we really want to achieve the immortality we long for, let's assume the brevity of our existence, and let's take every second as a great opportunity for our spirit to grow, to take the next step on our path, to be coherent, to make sense of our existence, So be a lazy Sunday.

Every day we have the opportunity to merge with the movement that surrounds us, to return home, the compass being that place of calm that the light of the candle invites us on the cold night. We have the opportunity to feel that at night there is beauty, there is harmony, there is meaning, there is DAWN. Let's decide to assume the night as fleeting and the journey towards dawn as certain.

Day 373: The push tug

I don't know if you had a chance to see on the news this week the death of Dick Hoyt, who ran the Boston Marathon 32 times and Iron Man 6 times (the most demanding triathlon race of all). Well, even then it would sound like a laudable feat for an obsessive compulsive exerciser. But this is not the story. Dick performed all these feats of endurance towing his son Rick, who was born with cerebral palsy, who could not speak and could only voluntarily move his knees. A quadriplegic from birth, Rick did not augur more than the coined phrase "vegetable." They communicated for more than 10 years by interpreting the movement of their eyes. In order to see the coherence of his thoughts, his parents went to Tufts University to design him a computer that could speak the sentences dictated by Rick when he hit his head. Some time later they managed to start communicating through the adapted computer, and so one day, out of nowhere, he told his father, now 40 years old, that he wanted them to run a little 5-mile race together, to which his Dad readily agreed. Thus began the story of a hero who adapted his son's wheelchair to be able to run the 42 km. of the marathons, which placed his son in an inflatable boat with a rope attached to his body, while he swam in the triathlons; a hero who adapted the wheelchair mobilized by his sweaty pedaling on his bicycle journeys, and who while he was making the transition of discipline, and the physical tests of Iron Man were no longer challenging in themselves, against the clock he shouldered the son, to locate it on the next device and thus continue their adventure together.

This man of iron, one would think, was sweating with the sole motivation that his son would feel again what he experienced after finishing the 5-mile race: “Dad, when I run, I feel that I am not a disabled person” . This man overcame the limits of fatigue, he overcame his own mind, to offer his son the liberation of feeling imprisoned by an inert body. In an interview with him after finishing a Boston Marathon and pulverizing the times, he affirms that he had no interest in running alone, that the speed they achieved comes from something that emanated from his son's body: "the athlete is he".

Draw it for me, I'll color it!

Day 411: Safe conduct

I start by telling you that they gave me a safe-conduct to get out of intramural detention for 4 days. I still don't know what the reason for the leave was, if it was for good behavior or mental health, but what is certain is that I was able to wander here and there, catch a plane and even see the sea! Lies, pure lies! I am deceiving you, the truth is that I went out in search of Pfizer, the new American superhero, and fortunately I had my close encounter.

But personally, the milestone for me was seeing and feeling the sea. I got in like a cachaca with blue jeans rolled up, but that didn't matter, to feel the play of the water and its currents, smell the saltpeter, jump and laugh when the algae tickled me from time to time and be able to take a look at the horizon. It was sunset and her happiness was perceptible, she was saying goodbye to the day with all the toys. A large fish jumped a couple of times, some white birds with gray wings lined up like school children in a pandemic, with the required distance, to eat the seaweed that swirled on the coast, while the majestic pelican glided freely to stock up on food. a good dinner, and when he saw her: Chuplundum!

You will understand the astonishment of the symphony that he witnessed. It sounded like it looked, as my cello teacher would say. Many times I had told my mom that what I wanted was to see the sea, and there she was breathing its immensity, grateful for the safe-conduct. I went from 1103 where the horizon was the bricks of the building across the street, where the uproar was not because nature was in tune but because the drills from a construction site were breaking the floor and everyone's peace of mind.

And yet, I must confess that not everything is as it seems!

And here comes the missing cliché phrase! "It's that the pandemic changed me." Leaving after a year of being confined, with very little physical contact, with a certain routine, having to be around many people, some defying the use of masks, playing with two hands between the cell phone and the antibacterial gel, drowning Because she had a double mask and a protective sheet, she was like a worthy Teletubi. The experience was not cool at all.

So I asked myself those four days of probation, if it really was the outside that conditioned my freedom or if, on the contrary, it was that for a year I was not aware that the encounter with my freedom is not conditioned by walls and bricks or safe conduct. Could it be that he was looking to get out of 1103 as a mechanism to avoid entering me?

So when they give you that option to see the “outside” you realize that, despite the beauty, of seeing different things, everything is meaningless if that is not connected to that world, from where things are born. songs, poems and prayers. It's like being outside 1103, I felt that the exterior lacked meaning, that where I was truly happy was in me. It was the game of contradictions: the more contact with the outside, the greater the call from the inside.

In the end, it seems that we are the ones who decide to condition our freedom or sometimes even decide to be jailed by our own mind and its judgments. I understood with this meeting trip with Pfizer that the trip where we have full freedom should never stop, and that it is not conditioned by external circumstances. Our commitment to our spirit does not depend on lockdowns or pandemics, it depends on our will. Until our last breath we must bet on feeling the fullness of the sea within us, feeling the amazement of its mysteries, betting on diving into it, dancing in its entrails, singing with its rhythms, praying with its intimate.