you're still on time
You are not going to believe what I found one of those first days of confinement and confusion: a notebook with texts in my own handwriting around in the first years of high school, R.E.M. just published out of time I saw in the cinema The silence of the lambs and it was still four years before my father died: but I did not know it. Laura is right, we never know when the last time will be for almost anything but there is always one last time How terrible is that certainty.
I imagined life as a neverending story (one of my favorite books of that time), a wonderful one-way lane – forward, something like a vaudeville, a circus with a hundred rings where the only thing that mattered was having fun, didn't Johan Cruyff say that? Life is a taranta and you have to follow that teacup proverb at face value: “ the bird is not from the nest in which it is born, but from the sky in which it flies ”. How wrong I was.
The bird is from the nest in which it is born and you will only understand this game if you understand that, somehow, one always (always) remains attached to that nest ; that nest is your parents, it is your neighborhood, it is your school, it is your street and is your planet . From that time, I tell you, I keep a notebook with dozens of writings full of innocence and enthusiasm, one of them was titled you're still on time and was heading to my future self , that is, this me with forty three tacos, married not so long ago and servant of a wild cat; as in that master announcement, I demanded of myself that I never forget that life is to be lived , a warning to never become a gray man . I think I listened to you, kid.
So I thought that today is a good day to do the exact opposite: return that letter . Write you back hoping, if not a DeLorean to take you back as in Return to the future , if you read it from the corner of memory in which you still live: I am one of those who thinks that we live all our lives all the time, as in devs , the masterful series of alex garland around guilt; That is why it is not possible to overcome a breakup without living it again, without feeling it a thousand times. Terrés, kid, take note:
Travel, see the world, listen to people ; Over time you will learn that “traveling is very useful, it makes the imagination work; the rest are nothing but disappointments and fatigue”, a phrase that you will hear in a film that will mark you forever, which will be released in 2013. Travel until exhaustion, Terrés; travel because it is the only cure against stupidity but when you do be absolutely aware that the planet is finite , that there won't be a second part, that every small gesture taking care of the world is also a way of taking care of yourself.
Go to the shelf open Kant's book -which you hate now, I know- and underline in red where he says that we can judge a person's heart by the way he treats animals . It is true: to a man, to a woman, to a society and even a country, if you push me; dedicate your life to caring for animals because, almost always, one receives what he gives and the love of an animal is the purest gift you can give yourself . They will give you so much that it is even difficult for me to write it; you will love them until it hurts and each loss will be like dying a little but one day you will understand that almost all the answers live in their eyes.
The beautiful things that you take for granted will end, I know you imagine the future with flying cars (there aren't any) and clocks that speak with enigmatic voices (yes), but this is the reality since a very strange 2020: a global pandemic keeps your future self confined at home , people can not touch and we walk down the street with surgical masks, the video store now lives on TV and the cheese arrives at home by pressing a button on the mobile: a piece of equipment that you will use a lot. I sense that you imagine nature the same, but it is not: the beaches are full of plastic, the fish die from suffocation and the ice of the Arctic is almost a memory ; the global temperature rise is guilty of millions of deaths a year, there is almost no spring and a toxic cloud settles every morning over Madrid , it won't be long before we can kiss under the most beautiful sky in the universe.
They will tell you many times a piece of shit advice: "be yourself" , ignore them because most of the time It is a slander behind which only laziness and resentment dwell , you have to be better. Do not settle, do not blame the other, do not look askance at the world because, almost always, the blame for how you feel will be yours; cry without fear, love without measure and choose carefully who you decide to call friend: they will be your guide. Read. Take things easy, take care of mom, be a good person.
PS: Give dad a hug, a hug so strong that it reaches here.