Writing? Why? Would it not be better to keep silent? Personally, I believe that screaming is definitively healthier than writing, but that’s just me. What a weird society we live in! Surrounded by a sea of words that keep repeating just the same message: CONFUSION! That’s the word that should be written on the cover of magazines, buried inside the pages of books, sketched on canvas and repeated in schools. Principals and Presidents should make it their epigram! Confusion is the most accepted sin and certainly the most accurate representation of the inner nature of our time! It’s the state of the world; it’s where we are, but not who we are. In spite of the spirit of the time, in human nature there is something different: inside of every one of us there is a sad, broken angel. And this is the same angel that was running with us around our world when our eyes weren’t corrupted, when nobody had yet taught us how to deceive ourselves, how to be different from what we really and profoundly are. What we are is what we feel. We forgot to free this delicate angel inside of us, and that’s what makes us so poor when faced with the world. True richness is that of the spirit, the only health, that of our hearts. We also believe that this forgetting is an excuse, and that our forgetting will be forgiven, that we will be absolved of our failure to remember. But that’s not going to happen. Would you ever go into a restaurant without money to pay the bill and still order a fine dinner expecting that you will be excused at the exit? Sooner or later, the check will come and not having means will not be an excuse or a reason not to pay!
I like but I don’t enjoy watching rich people and trying to detect the differences between them and the poor tramps on the streets begging for a penny. I am not talking about a social difference, that’s evident; the difference I am interested in is the human difference: the way a rich person perceives himself and the world, compared to that of a socially disadvantaged person. Rich people, for example, smile in a different way: their smile is never open; it’s a tool, a presentation accessory, which they try to impose on everybody.
The rich person’s biggest delusion is that he really believes that he owns something that human life is made to hold and not to give. In fact, he is a poor, dangerous man. Why is he dangerous? Because society trusts him and believes in his delusions, letting him shape the future of us all. Using either coercion or subtle means, he lets many people believe you can measure human value with money and that money is all that there is, all that counts. In their hands even time has become money. Too bad that money is not time, and even the biggest sum cannot buy an extra second of life.
© Sergio Caldarella, 2007.
