CreaSentisciente

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a very short story. Tiny. It’s so small that it hardly seems worth telling… It’s the briefest history of a boy. A somewhat lonely boy. What am I saying, somewhat! No, no, no. Quite lonely. And very shy. A lot. He was one of those who are now called introverted people. Or sensitive people. Or very sensitive people. I’m not quite sure either.

Modern people today love to label everything. They classify everything into lists and rows and columns, and into studies. Especially studies. They say things like, ‘we have a new study that concludes that…,’ and yet, I who have never been able to conclude anything in my entire life. They also really enjoy naming everything and every case. But I don’t fully understand this, to be honest… Because life is mutable, and therefore, labels are useless. I believe that. Yes.

But well, to the point.

This boy found it very hard to make friends. But it wasn’t because he was a weird or special child or anything like that. No, not at all. He struggled to make friends simply because he got very, very bored with the ordinary things that the other kids did.

And he was so bored with his peers that, since he was very little, he asked himself questions that other kids never asked. What am I doing here? What does it mean to live? Where do I have to go? How far do I have to go? … But children, in their innocence, can also be very cruel, and he knew that because he felt it that way. And this is how boredom turns into shyness. Because you know, without knowing why you know, that no one can understand you because, deep down, they don’t want to.

And he kept dreaming…

He dreamed of traveling far, very, very far. He didn’t know it yet, but he truly wanted to be an explorer. One of those explorers who never knows where they are going, and the most important thing is that they never really know where they are arriving. And that would be what he would end up doing for the rest of his life, exploring without knowing where, and discovering without knowing what.

However, long before all this, one day, like any other day, our protagonist, just a pubescent lad, lost the most important person in his life at that moment. And that changed him. It completely altered the course of his life. Or at least that’s what he believed for a long time. Although maybe it wasn’t like that. Who knows? These things are never really known for sure.

And so many more years passed. And during all that time, he was always accompanied and observed. That’s how he felt. He wanted to feel it. And he needed to do so. But always in complete silence. That silence that arises through a quiescent observation… What a beautiful word!… ‘Quiescent, that which, although being, is not seen.’ The quiescent silence of an enveloping, beautiful, and protective gaze.

And he grew up. He met a gorgeous girl, and married her. They had three adorable children: two girls and a boy. However, he was not happy. There was something that just didn’t fit. A kind of inner knot that permanently tormented the thoughts and feelings of the boy he once was.

And many more years went by, living and doing what was supposed to be done. That’s how it is, right? You have to do what you’re supposed to do. What else can you do? Aren’t others always expecting something from us?…

Until one day, at sunset, it is not clear why he did it, he went down to the garage of his house, took his phone out of his pocket and placed it on a board that he had laid out on the floor. Then he rummaged through the toolbox that he usually used at home for household repairs, pulled out the hammer and… BAM!!!

That little device exploded as if it were a small supernova. It had destroyed his phone in one fell swoop. They could no longer call him. Nor search for him. Or arrange meetings, or appointments, or agreements, or send him emails with confidential information, or any of those trivialities that the boy he once was had always considered superficial, empty, useless, and insubstantial…

And then it happened. Like a premonition.

After years and years of enormous internal suffering, contradictions, doubts, impossible dreams, and dawns without hope… it was then that the music began. The melodies emerged from everywhere. All those constant noises of his life faded away. And that music filled him completely from within and invaded his entire world.

And that boy who was once, realized at that moment that he had just discovered the greatest of all treasures that could ever exist: Evolution.

And music became Love, 
and Love became words, 
and words became deeds, 
and deeds became habit. 
And nothing was ever the same again.

Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, the result of a process of evolution in a quiescent state. (Notebook of Roberto Ar. López)

(*) This short story arose from the always wonderful dialogue that I maintain with Isabella Ciampi through frequent correspondence. It is our precious interflow of energy. I make this reference because, of course, the inspiration for this tale came with her on May 23, 2024.