lunes, 21 de julio de 2014

I want the world to stop

There was this Argentinian comic strip: Mafalda. It contained almost every idea that is true in the universe!
So one of the strips goes: Stop the world! (after reading a newspaper) I wanna get out.

Sometimes I feel like that: Stop the World, I'm getting out!

Particularly in days like today--rather yesterday, I should say. A lot of bad news, people I know and love going through inexplicably hard situations. Not to mention your regular news-broadcast variety of horrors and hardship in the world.
The problem is, the world doesn't stop. I feel like everyone around me should stop and complain, fight, do something! That's the feeling, when something terrible happens to someone you love: like the world should stop and observe the terrible thing that happened, like the 7 billion people on this planet should mourn the same thing I am mourning. How dare people commute to work tomorrow while some of us are in pain?!
But it doesn't work like that. My dad did have to go to work the day after finding out he has cancer, so did I. And grocery lists still need to be bought and cars still need oil changes amidst the mourning. It doesn't stop, ever! Maybe a few of us will notice and stall for a while... but never stop.

I am sort of discovering... that is the beauty of all this, of the pain, and the heartache, and the things no one can explain: the world keeps on moving. Amidst the pain, babies are born, children learn to read and write, they learn to walk. Even with a chemo machine attached to them, they read fairy tales, they laugh, they fight, they live. That is life, that is LIFE, unstoppable, un apologetic, un-stalling.

I used to believe that heartache--true heartache--meant everything and everyone around you would just stay still, see the pain, observe the pain, and talk about the pain. And then my dad started making jokes the same day he was diagnosed, and I laughed at his jokes, because they were funny.  And so it goes, life keeps on sprouting amidst the chaos, amidst the heartbreak, uncontrollably. Because life cannot be contained it will find its way around the worst of days and keep coming back even when you push it away.

“La Carta” de José Luis González

El cuento “La Carta” de José Luis González es posiblemente uno de los cuentos más conocidos la literatura puertorriqueña del siglo XX. Su ...