A little over a decade ago, anxious and anxious to recognize myself, I wrote:
There is a mirror in front, I see my image
I look myself in the eyes, I just look at myself.
I don't say a word and I keep looking,
the silence is cut off, I hear my heartbeat,
I just look into my eyes.
If I look down, I am scared of myself,
if I continue to look, my heartbeat increases,
while I do not know how much,
I continue to look at myself and cry out inside:
I am the same person I say,
I am the one I look at.
Years passed, from time to time I remembered the poem and especially the time when I had written it, even today I am moved to perceive my desire to recognize myself. Without knowing it, I began the adventure of a journey without return to my own being, that so unknown, although many times suspected of BEING. I felt imprisoned between impassable bars. Was looking for me. It was the beginning and end of that search. The others were always complicit in my confinement, my lack of freedom (jailers?).
I listen to plans, proposals, ideas. I get confused with the others. Distances are shortened to disappear. The wishes of others become my own wishes. My desire is no longer enough. I get lost. I am hopelessly lost, I am aware of it, I cannot do anything to avoid it, I feel powerless to offer resistance. I know I'm sorry. I fill myself with excuses, the others become objects, I am their object. Words are not enough to live freedom. Everything is nothing more than appearance, a subtle appearance.
After years of wandering aimlessly, almost in a defeated situation, I return to the path from the periphery of an unknown mandala, I travel through strange, foreign, fragmented, cut paths. Suddenly, familiar images emerge. I feel like I'm heading downtown. I abandon myself. I no longer care how far away it may be, I recognize myself. It is comforting to see and hear myself in another. It encourages me. I am not looking for myself, but the other. It is magical. The old thing stops making sense. I get scared, I ask for help, they offer it to me, I accept it. I stand up and start my way.
Many things that if they occurred in life would be ominous are not in literary creation, and in this there are many possibilities of achieving ominous effects that are absent in real life. (Freud, The Ominous).
At first I am scared. Unpleasant images are reflected, they happen as in a kaleidoscope. I am a bit of all those others. I discover in myself, hidden under the neat and effective cosmetics of years, the darkness of those who kept me at a distance from a judge role. Some of them belong to me. I feel my holes, my gaps, my shadows. I discover unknown lights.
I listen attentively to what this whimsical lottery of everyday characters holds for me. I am assuming that something of all of them is in me. Little by little, I am trying to complete, laboriously, an integrated figure, light and dark, of love and hate. Much remains to be done, no matter how much, not even if I will succeed.
I listen to plans, proposals, ideas. They belong to others, although they are somewhat mine. I am a mirror to others and others are to me. They get angry when I reflect what they don't want to see, they rejoice when I show them what they want, what they want to be. Surprise after surprise. The others and mine.
I am the tyrant who attempts against their lives, against their liberties, against their dreams. I am the outstretched arm, that protects in silence, that contains. I am, little by little, the words of what I feel, I move away from the words that describe what should be. I feel the words tangle.
I look at her and I'm in her. Her smile reflects my smile, her eyes are mine now lit with passion, now confused or scared. Her body is my map to discover me. I learn to abandon myself to that sacred moment in which I give myself to be what I am in that now and here so unknown, so oblivious to a life of pre-existing reasons.
I have a dream. I am with a group visiting a company. It is located in the center of a mountain. There is a guide that explains what we are seeing and what is done in each of the sections we are going through. Everything is perfect. There are lights, furniture, office equipment, people working. The environment is very comfortable. We move forward as our guide continues his long story.
I suspect something. I shudder. While the others who accompany me are amazed by what they see, I feel that none of it is true. The men who work on the other side of the glazed corridor through which we pass, repeat themselves in all the sections. They are the same, in the same positions, with the same folders, on the same desks and in the same offices.
Outraged and scared, I shout: "It's a trick, they are mirrors." The guide, terrified at my expression says to me: «Now, we are all going to die. This will explode. Everyone starts running. I urge you to do it towards the exit, I even give encouragement to the guide himself who seems to be tired, delivered to a foreign destination, since, apparently, he had not chosen him. "Come on, it won't be long now and we'll get out of here" I said as I patted him on his shoulder. I waited for him and held him. We managed to get out without problems.
It occurs to me to appeal to the magician of the Tarot cards. It has some elements, only some, and with them it is capable of performing some, only some, tricks, astonishing viewers with them. This image became so strong that I use it with my students and the occasional clients who consult me about their businesses. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder what my elements are and what tricks I can perform.
We strive to mount magnificent scenes, bombastic, finished, and in an instant, our tricks are naked before the spectators and especially before our own eyes, causing the collapse of the montage. We blame ourselves or blame others, as if with this we managed to undo the story, go back to that moment and we could relive it in another way, assembling different tricks, but as likely to be discovered as the previous ones. Also, there is so much blindness that we fail to understand that there is a reason for this assembly, for that trick. As Roland Laing argues, "We don't realize we don't realize it." We travel a repeated groove, apparently different.
Desolate, we observed how our assembly that seemed perfect to us, nevertheless, presented faults, even naive. We are presented with the opportunity to abandon the search for perfection, to assume error as the end of something and the beginning of a new production, a new act with the scent of a premiere. Integrate the end with the beginning. An infinite succession of confused ends and principles that delineate the paths we have traveled. Feeling emotionally twinned with Machado; Walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking.
CG Jung argued that only an injured person could provide aid to an injured person. For this reason, I think it is essential to accompany the person who consults me to decide which elements will be used in their act of magic. I am learning to be the company of others and to let myself be accompanied. It is not easy, I travel paths of reasoned certainties (they demand them from me and I usually give them). I am wrong and occasionally I am right. I feel like I'm learning, I feel like I'm alive.
Over time, it may happen that we realize that we do not realize it and that is the only way that we can change our way of thinking and acting. We can jump to another groove. We are becoming aware of ourselves.
If the tricks of the magicians are discovered, at that moment, the magicians stop being magicians. Despite the care, sometimes someone discovers them. The good magician will elaborate new tricks, more complex to discover, he will keep his spirit as an apprentice and he will not believe his own magic, but will know that he has the ability to set up a magical scene, have fun and entertain the spectators. There is nothing simple about being a magician, but nobody can deny that it is exciting.
If the magic act is always the same, sooner or later someone will discover the trick and lose the magic. Life is full of magic and we are all magicians in action.
Little by little, with effort, I become a guide that makes it easier for each traveler to travel their own path, even one that might lead them to make mistakes. I must be there to encourage the traveler to continue his own search, through his own path. That itself is what I am learning to do. There is no end, but a permanent attempt, to continue trying and perhaps fortune knocks on our door and we marvel at having reached a point where life kisses us on the mouth and invites us to dance with it (Serrat, A times life).
I am recognizing my elements and my abilities. I practice my tricks. Some amuse me, others not. I am interacting with the others. They help me, they guide me. I find myself, I get lost and I find myself again. I'm glad and sad. I enjoy and feel pain. I learn to face reality, although many times, as Serrat also says: "life plays a joke on me and I find myself sucking on a stick sitting on a pumpkin."
My ancestors, their experiences, their lessons, their cares, their fears and their sadnesses help me. His achievements and his misadventures. I build my myth, I review it and I declare myself the undisputed hero of it. The adventure has just begun; Dragons, enemies, dangers and witches await along an endless path. There will also be damsels, teachers, stunning landscapes, and faithful friends. To the extent that I have others to help me, I will be able to recognize myself and feel shelter. The others will become my adventure companions. Thanks to them I will be able to be who I am.
If your eyes reflect mine and my hands discover your body, I feel that I am alive. If my eyes reflect yours and your hands discover my body and you feel that you are alive, let's walk together keeping company. It doesn't matter if I understand you, if I vibrate with you and you vibrate with me. Your life is all yours, I am just your company. You are the heroine of your own adventure, but you can count on me to fight your dragons, as I can count on you.
I am each one of the characters in my dream. I let myself be driven and believe. I observe and discover. I am the guide and I am afraid that the trick will be discovered. I am what is repeated and I am even the mountain that explodes when the illusion vanishes. I am all in one and today I travel so that I can be one with all.
You are part of me, but your life is yours. Your smile may be mine, but not the reason for it. I am your lighthouse, here I am, without doing anything to prevent the wind and waves from shaking your structure. If you ever need it, here is and will be my light, it can guide you. My daughter, don't ask me to be something else.
Abracadabra, pata de cabra the act is about to begin, the curtain opens, the music plays, the lights go out and the searchlights turn on. I go out on stage to learn to play the sacred game of living in love for myself in order to love others just as others are. I am an apprentice to life and I intend to become a crier of hope. Endless career and ambitious goal. I choose.
Don't come to me with questions that seek certainty. I'm sick of tagging. The others are all the others. It's them, it's you, it's that other one. They are all. They are all those who make it possible for me to discover myself, to shake me, to feel alive and to want to be. It is those others who strive to accumulate power and who do not measure the means to achieve it, they are those who beg on the street for a piece of bread, they are those who steal and kill, they are the stolen and the murdered, they are the ones who envy and envied, they are those who love me and those who hate me, they are the ones who give and those who receive, they are the unprotected and they are the exploiters, they are the tyrants and the submissive. They are the winners and the losers. They are selfish and generous. They are the rich and the poor, the hateful and loving, the just and the unjust. Enough of descriptions,I don't feel like answering with parts, I feel that I want to integrate each one of those who belong to me and that allow me to feel alive and whole, traveling an endless path, to become what I feel I am and is there, just surfacing; shy and sometimes scared. Also that other, proud to live what he lives, to be the hero of his story.
The others, as I already said, are all the others.
Without them, I am not.
