Hello, friends of @adsactly
Society robotizes us, we systematize our lives in pursuit of what we believe is good for us and will make us happy. We work like ants hoping to obtain economic benefits, comforts, and when we obtain them, we continue working more and more, because we are nonconformist, because the more we have, the more we want, and this is how man falls into a spiral of never ending. And in the end, in the end we die without knowing if we have really lived what we had to live.
Once, my grandmother told me that a child had been born in our family who didn't know how to laugh. This curious fact went unnoticed by the whole family until the boy in question grew up. Everyone in the family wondered how a person had grown up without knowing how to laugh. When the boy's parents took him to the psychologist, they discovered that like many things, laughter is imitated and exercised. No one in his environment, whether for lack of time or you know for what reason, had taught the child to laugh. It took a long time for this person to show his teeth in a splendid smile, but a few years later he died, so he could not exercise much of this action.
Like the previous family story, I remember reading a text by the Venezuelan writer Pedro Berroeta entitled El olvido (Forgetfulness). This story tells the story of a mature woman who has dedicated her life to work and in one way or another has forgotten to live, so her life is sterile and gray. The narrator tells us:
The day the woman discovered that it was easy to become sad, that day she chose grey and dressed in it. Her sadness was not one of those masks that are put according to the occasion. No. His sadness was "prior to the womb". Her life was conceived so that all of her would be a shield and a duel.
This passage allows us to see that the woman always had a sullen, pessimistic disposition, as if it were a birthmark, since, although she tells us that she chose at a certain moment to be like this, her sadness was "prior to the womb":
The fact that she was no longer a girl gave the woman a grim expression that made her unsociable and a hermit. The family managed to find her a suitor, arguing that the lack of husband and children was the cause of so much severity in the face and so much dryness in the body.
The woman fell in love and married, but always with a face of desolation. Everyone who looked at the woman was infected with pessimism and bitterness. One day, the woman discovered that she was pregnant and while her environment was celebrating with the news, the woman took a sigh of resignation. Working at home kept the woman busy, so bringing a child into the world was not one of her fundamental tasks. One day, the woman did not feel the baby in her womb so she went to the doctor. The doctor, after several examinations, told her that the fetus had stopped consuming food. Naturally, the baby had felt all the indisposition of the mother and little desire to live from her, so the fetus or body had activated a suicide:
There was no doubt, the fetus had not managed to survive the sour environment of the mother, the amniotic fluid altered the beats that were just beginning to feel. The sadness had begun to be inherited, but this creature, unlike its mother, had disconnected such a nefarious legacy.
I don't know to what extent this is true and good, but I think sometimes that, every day, we commit suicide. We activate in our organism the process of turning off, to silence what we feel, so as not to suffer what we live, so as not to know anything about what surrounds us. Not definitively, but slowly, almost imperceptibly. We are that relative of mine who never knew how to laugh and when he did, it was already late or like that baby, who knowing himself in a hostile environment, naturally disconnects.
In these days when STEEM was down, before ranting and pulling my hair, I left my room, had coffee and enjoyed the pleasure of doing nothing. I was also with my family, watching the sea, laughing and celebrating being alive. I realized that each beat of my heart was an exact and punctual constancy of being grateful and content with life.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I invite you to vote for @adsactly as witnesses and join our server in discord. Until the next smile. ;)
https://letralia.com/ciudad-letralia/cronicas-del-olvido/2018/05/08/soy-un-escritor-marginal-pedro-berroeta/
Enrique Congrains Martín (1967) Venezuelan stories of the 20th century. Monte Ávila. Venezuela.
Written by: @nancybriti
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