Merit

"Somehow, merit is expected to be enough in the face of justice, fate, and the actions of others. The right to feel and react is expected not to become something someone can exploit for personal gain, whether out of ambition or frustration. But the truth is, whether due to fate, chance, or a series of interconnected decisions, things don't always turn out as they should for some people. And that is what makes one question the value of justice, whether human, divine, or natural, and what generates fears and hatreds. And that even the goodness of it is questioned.  All I did was love her. Desire her. Love her. Even though she betrayed me, and it was a series of decisions driven by my longings more than dreams, I always felt that anger toward myself. That resentment toward what happened, toward not being enough. Not being able to make her choose me (and then others) over the one she betrayed me with. Also, in that excess of compassion for her, I thought about perseverance and, yes, helping her. I managed to help her, but then the best thing that could have happened, despite the pain of lost time, never to be recovered, was that she left, and I did too. He finished with that phrase. He talked to himself, trying to understand as the storm subsided. He was very sad about something that had happened twenty years before, and about how today it was unfairly resurfacing. He didn't feel hatred for her for ruining his life this time, again. His compassion and the peace he had made with himself led him to think calmly. Despite the storm.

In the chain of events and the network through which human beings interact, anything can happen. Positive encounters are generally expected to elicit positive reactions, as are positive environments. But anomalies and senseless events occur. Then, the expected merit, the majority probability, is undermined. And then injustice can prevail, and merit becomes irrelevant. So what then? It's a question with many answers. And any of them is just as strange as the situation itself, because the person must react, if they have the resources, to the anomaly. There is always a reaction, but what is perhaps dramatic is that this use of resources is exhausting and, since it is an anomaly, there is no guarantee that, unless the appropriate resources are used (and there is a way to pay for them), a happy ending will be reached. And even more so in times of abuse of power, abuse of the law, and even abuse of good intentions. I wonder what I did to deserve this? And merit has nothing to do with the decisions made for various reasons. Not even the one about perseverance and how, even despite the achievements, it seems that many things want to sink and crush me, now, at this age that I don't want to think is half of my life. I want to do things right, and I do them well. I am loyal and persistent. I love. I don't hold grudges against others, and I consciously follow the laws, even as I worry about unconsciously breaking them. It seems that people like me are weak and have no place in a world of competition and violence. Merit? Not even in anonymity, far from everything I was happy in, where I am happy, do I have that right. And the stories of betrayal, abandonment, and acceptance after a process of discourse, tell the tale, and that is where this loneliness comes from... With that sentence, he finished. He took a sip of water because what had happened had upset his stomach, and his friend just listened. He, Bobby, had always seemed like an idiot with women, and hearing him and seeing that he could only drink water, a whiskey connoisseur, confirmed it. However, he felt sadness because, in reality, his kindness had led him to become the victim of the love of one of his lives, who had come to him in this one.

However, despite this lack of merit, this abuse of legality (legalistic trickery), and all the inconsistencies that make humans question their decisions, their compassion, their weaknesses, and even their optimism, it is precisely because of this last point that humanity must persevere and believe in justice, in the possibility of reconciliation, and in the fact that perhaps we shouldn't just cling to the good memories, but rather to the whole of them, in order to forget and be forgotten. With joy. But how difficult it is. Then it becomes clear why the person, in their kindness, without feeling entitled to merit, maintains their hope, their optimism. Hence the belief in gods, for in the face of the improbable, the miraculous, and the extraordinary. She was the only person, apart from her family, who, forced to accept her and show her affection and understanding, had loved her, as a woman, or as a longing, and despite everything, had held onto the good. And she had changed that, not out of hatred, but out of compassion. Out of pity, and perhaps it is true what the old writers say: that what ends love is not anger, but doubt. And yes, doubt had settled in him, and it was sad because then everything he had done, lost, and said for love of her, in his fanciful romanticism, had been completely in vain. She didn't deserve it. She never had that merit. And even though he told himself that it was he who hadn't had it, he hadn't. Betrayed and wounded again, but that's how the devil repays those who serve him well, his grandmother would say once before she died.

In the prevailing system, it is said that those who deserve oppression and injustice are so because they are weak and stupid. In the prevailing system, those who deserve oppression and injustice are said to be weak and stupid. They are destined to be the losers and the laughingstock because they are poor by choice, and their kindness or moral superiority yields absolutely no monetary value. In the world of abuse, it seems that only retaliatory violence, far stronger than the attack itself, commands respect. But, despite the perception that this is a time for revenge, because it's not just about revenge, it's more a time for justice, merit is human, not superhuman. But we must maintain hope that it should be this way. And defend ourselves, confront injustice. This is the merit of those who, despite everything, are strong and can demonstrate that this kind of strength prevails. In that life, he believed she was the love of his life. But that life ended, and others came, in fits and starts. In that life, which sometimes tries to make itself felt in this one, she not only betrayed him, but, beyond deserving pity, she managed to inflict so much damage that, although he cannot forget, the only memory is pity. And to think that in the next life, the one immediately after that one, he, who remembered and wrote in stories all that he felt, and wrote that she had been the love of his life, for she was a longing, and that life had died, the love of his other life, the demon of the jungle whose name cannot be mentioned, discarded and forgot him, wounded in her pride. Even though that demon of the jungle, whose name cannot be mentioned, had told the rivers, the trees, the animals of the jungle, and the other demons that she loved him above all things. But pride, like so many other things, kills stories. How many lives, then, allow them to live? And to sustain themselves? The other lives, since then, have been shorter and less intense, so much so that they allow the ghosts of past lives to try to steal their time. But they don't succeed; they only wear themselves down and begin to fade into oblivion."