Tribulations

"Thinking about happiness and those places, states, and moments in which man, in his freedom, is truly happy and not simply has a moment of pleasure. Pleasure is an escape; happiness is life. Happiness projects and can be maintained even in the tribulations of the same system that man has invented to submit to. Those tribulations that envy and the frustrations of others seek to turn a happy life into a miserable one and freedom into permanent anguish and worry because, yes, it is the system invented by humans. While he drank coffee at that table in Conde de Peñalver, he thought about how he had stopped writing poetry a long time ago, and despite having written a lot and having written that he would do it, he didn't succeed. He didn't try. It was strange all those tribulations, all that lost the inspiration that only many years later was taken away in moments between liquor and kisses and groping in which there was no longer that purity but a furious desire. She had called him almost thirty years later to apologize. Another day, she would surely do it to ask for a loan. That was what she had become. Her inspiration and her desire at that time. Perhaps another kind of cursed poetry could be written, but there was no room for vengeful pleasure. Nor time. And distance fortunately guaranteed that nothing would happen between them.

Even that which makes the difference between classes and groups, and even between people, does not last long enough to guarantee the tranquility that happiness demands. That has been the case for decades, only that more and more of those unfortunate people are aware of it, while those who guarantee the fall of the system die, and those who remain become sick and feel afraid. The majority is told that they must resist, but resistance is endurance, and endurance is self-denial when acceptance only guarantees more oppression and action is required. But first, the same reflection is necessary so that this activity, which will surely be violent, is more intelligent than the violence generated by the system itself: terror or habit.  Her departure and perhaps a little afterward did not hurt him that much. Much afterward. But more so because his ego made him think of everything he had wished for and had not experienced (for being such a gentleman) while she lived the freedom she deserved, not with the other but with the others. Even simultaneously. More could be said, but it was not a night of regrets, hatred, or trying to understand because pleasure is just that: pleasure. And he, that's it, is in search of happiness.

Habit and terror lead to comfort not in the face of well-being but in the face of fear, of not having the uncertainty that freedom gives but the comfort of being wrong because others are worse off. The comfort that comes from the certainty of being a servant, not realizing that one is a slave because freedom is a sin. And sin guarantees hell, and more so now, hell in life. Strangely, there are those who, despite all that shit, seem to float above it without being splashed, while others fall and submerge to understand that they could free themselves. How? Remember that thinking is contagious. Every day, he became more confident that he had to leave. How could he not do so when he was sure that nothing he had planned (and even what he had given his hours of sleep and more for) would ever happen? The probability was becoming certainty daily, and time had been telling him for a couple of years, well, a little more, that he should not stay, even for the good of humanity itself. Wasn't that the fate he had been fleeing for decades? There were so many attempts that stubbornness made him forget his own rules.

Vengeful people use tribulations as an excuse to spread their terror and eliminate others, thus maintaining the cycle of tribulations necessary to avoid being otherwise. Being otherwise human, however, may not be advantageous to those who love the comfort of others, which guarantees their power, not their happiness. In pleasure, there is enough to ensure sleep that allows one to escape for a moment or actually go towards the moment. In happiness, time is a guarantee of well-being and freedom. Not of moments. They had kept silent because it was a matter that had to be quickly passed over. They wanted him away and regretted his departure. It was typical to cry for those who could no longer bear it and left. That ambiguity led them to opportunism, to be petty. At the same time, in his freedom, he simply emancipated himself and opened his mind and heart to a departure because there was nothing left for him there. Emancipation and raison. Among humans, happiness and sadness are recognized in common languages, the way of...""