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El Equilibrio de los Espejos Rotos
Hoy 22 de septiembre, el día y la noche se miran a los ojos en perfecto equilibrio. Es el equinoccio, un instante cósmico de simetría, un momento universal donde la luz y la sombra pactan una tregua antes de que la balanza se incline inevitablemente hacia la oscuridad o el renacimiento. Me encuentro pensando en este balance efímero y en cómo pasamos la vida entera buscándolo en nuestros propios mundos interiores. Buscamos el equilibrio entre la razón y el corazón, entre el recuerdo y el olvido, entre la guerra que ruge dentro y la paz que anhelamos fuera. Quizás por eso me siento tan atraído por el cine, por esa gran sala oscura donde nos sentamos juntos, extraños unidos por una luz parpadeante, para ver precisamente eso: el eterno combate de la condición humana proyectado en una pantalla.
Planetario Madrid
Y es que esa búsqueda de equilibrio es tan humana que, inevitablemente, se ha convertido también en un mercado. Pienso en ello porque hace poco me invitaron a participar en varias iniciativas de “crecimiento personal”, pero mi instinto me hace retroceder. Siento que la noble finalidad se pierde, que el balance se rompe, cuando la autenticidad es sofocada por un corsé de reglas y pago por lo que alguien, desde su perspectiva personal, cree que es la mejor participación. Se me antoja una búsqueda que nace ya desbalanceada, inclinada no hacia el ser, sino hacia el parecer; una actuación para una audiencia. Quizás por ese desencanto con las puestas en escena de la vida real, me siento aún más atraído por esa gran sala oscura que, sin pedirme nada a cambio, me ofrece un espejo.
Precisamente, una de esas iniciativas me pide que hablara de los “milagros” que he tenido en mi vida, como si fueran trofeos que exhibir. Y pienso que el mayor milagro es, precisamente, no necesitar ponerles precio. ¿Mis milagros recibidos?, no son eventos espectaculares para una audiencia; son el tejido silencioso de mi día a día. Mi milagro es ver salir el sol cada mañana y sentir el abrazo de mi hijo Matthew. Es haber llegado a los 70 años con buena salud y la serenidad de no tener que preocuparme por el mañana. Es el saludo amable de un buen vecino, la certeza de una amistad que no pide, sino que da. Esos son mis verdaderos fotogramas, los que no necesitan edición. Es el balance encontrado no en un destello cósmico, sino en la gratitud constante.
El cine, en su esencia más pura, es un espejo. Pero no un espejo plano y fiel, sino uno cóncavo, a veces deforme, que magnifica nuestras virtudes, exagera nuestros miedos y destila nuestras esperanzas en fotogramas de noventa minutos o más. Como dijo el gran Ingmar Bergman, “Ninguna forma de arte va más allá de lo cotidiano o de la conciencia como lo hace el cine, directo a nuestras emociones, a lo más profundo del cuarto oscuro de nuestras almas”. Y en ese cuarto oscuro, ¿qué encontramos? Nos encontramos a nosotros mismos. Vemos nuestras propias batallas en la lucha de un héroe, nuestra propia fragilidad en la lágrima de un personaje, nuestra propia búsqueda de sentido en un viaje a través de paisajes desolados o ciudades bulliciosas. La pantalla se convierte en un mapa de nuestra propia geografía emocional, un lugar seguro desde donde explorar los abismos que tememos en la vida real sin temor a hacerlos visibles.
Ayer, mientras el equinoccio se aproximaba, el mundo conmemoraba dos días que, a primera vista, parecen dispares: el Día Internacional de la Paz y el Día Mundial del Alzheimer. Sin embargo, al reflexionar, siento que están íntimamente ligados por un hilo invisible y trágico como lo es la memoria. La paz es una construcción tan frágil, a menudo exige un acto de reconciliación. Y la reconciliación, ¿no es una forma de gestionar la memoria?, para perdonar, para avanzar, para construir puentes sobre las ruinas de un conflicto, ¿es necesario olvidar?, ¿o, por el contrario, es imprescindible recordar para no repetir los mismos horrores? Las naciones enteras se debaten en esta encrucijada. Levantan monumentos para no olvidar, pero al mismo tiempo firman tratados que buscan dejar atrás el dolor, como si la memoria del agravio fuera el principal obstáculo para la paz. Recordé la película Los Juegos del Hambre, tiene mucho que ver con todo esto.
Y entonces, por mi edad, pienso en el Alzheimer, en esa niebla que desdibuja los contornos de una vida. Pienso en la paz aterradora que podría sentir alguien que ya no recuerda el dolor que le causaron, pero también en la angustia de quien olvida el rostro de la persona que más amó. No padezco la enfermedad, pero tengo un amigo que sí. El cine ha explorado este laberinto con una delicadeza sobrecogedora. Recuerdo la película The Father, donde la realidad se fragmenta junto con la memoria del protagonista, sumergiéndonos en su desorientación. O en Siempre Alice, donde una mujer brillante lucha por aferrarse a los jirones de su identidad mientras las palabras y los recuerdos se le escurren como el agua entre los dedos. Estas historias me hacen preguntar si el olvido es una bendición o una maldición. ¿Alcanzar la paz a costa de nuestra propia historia es realmente paz, o es solo un vacío? ¿Se puede perdonar algo que ya no se recuerda? Qué piensa usted estimado lector.
Quizás la verdadera paz no reside en el olvido, sino en la capacidad de recordar sin que el recuerdo nos destruya. En aceptar las cicatrices no como heridas abiertas, sino como el testimonio de haber sobrevivido. ¡Va!, palabras y más palabras… Es un equilibrio tan delicado como el del equinoccio, un punto exacto entre la luz del recuerdo lúcido y la sombra del rencor. El escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges, obsesionado con la memoria, escribió en su poema "Arte poética": “Somos nuestra memoria, somos ese quimérico museo de formas inconstantes, ese montón de espejos rotos”. Entonces, si somos nuestra memoria, ¿qué somos cuando esta se desvanece? ¿Qué es una nación que borra su pasado para construir un futuro pacífico? ¿Sigue siendo la misma nación?
El cine nos ofrece la posibilidad de ensayar respuestas. Nos permite vivir, a través de otros, las consecuencias de recordar y de olvidar. En películas como Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, vemos el desesperado intento de borrar un amor doloroso, solo para descubrir que incluso los recuerdos más tristes contienen fragmentos de felicidad que nos constituyen. Nos enseña que amputar una parte de nuestro pasado es, en cierto modo, amputarnos a nosotros mismos. Tal vez la clave no esté en la eliminación, sino en la resignificación. En aprender a contar nuestra propia historia de una manera que nos permita seguir adelante, que nos dé la fuerza para tender la mano, incluso a aquellos que nos hicieron daño. A caso terminaremos co el trama en la película La memoria de los muertos (título original en inglés: The Final Cut), protagonizada por Robin Williams, quien interpreta a un montador que edita las memorias grabadas de las personas para crear videos acríticos que se muestran en sus funerales.
Hoy, con la luz y la oscuridad en perfecto balance, siento que propia vida es una película que no he terminado de filmar. Cada día añadimos una nueva escena, una nueva línea de diálogo, un nuevo silencio cargado de significado. Y en el montaje final de nuestra existencia, ¿qué escenas elegiremos conservar? ¿Cuáles relegaremos a los extras del director? Al buscar la paz, tanto en nuestras pequeñas vidas como en el gran escenario del mundo, ¿nos atreveremos a confrontar los fotogramas más oscuros de nuestro guion? ¿O preferiremos la edición fácil, el corte que nos presenta una versión más cómoda, pero incompleta, de quiénes fuimos? La pantalla se apaga, se cierra el telón, las luces de la sala se encienden y salimos al mundo, un mundo que, como hoy, nos recuerda que todo equilibrio es, por naturaleza, momentáneo. La pregunta que queda flotando en el aire, como el polvo iluminado por el proyector, es qué haremos mañana, cuando la balanza inevitablemente comience a inclinarse con el peso de los años…
Hoy 22 de septiembre, el día y la noche se miran a los ojos en perfecto equilibrio. Es el equinoccio, un instante cósmico de simetría, un momento universal donde la luz y la sombra pactan una tregua antes de que la balanza se incline inevitablemente hacia la oscuridad o el renacimiento. Me encuentro pensando en este balance efímero y en cómo pasamos la vida entera buscándolo en nuestros propios mundos interiores. Buscamos el equilibrio entre la razón y el corazón, entre el recuerdo y el olvido, entre la guerra que ruge dentro y la paz que anhelamos fuera. Quizás por eso me siento tan atraído por el cine, por esa gran sala oscura donde nos sentamos juntos, extraños unidos por una luz parpadeante, para ver precisamente eso: el eterno combate de la condición humana proyectado en una pantalla.
Planetario Madrid
Y es que esa búsqueda de equilibrio es tan humana que, inevitablemente, se ha convertido también en un mercado. Pienso en ello porque hace poco me invitaron a participar en varias iniciativas de “crecimiento personal”, pero mi instinto me hace retroceder. Siento que la noble finalidad se pierde, que el balance se rompe, cuando la autenticidad es sofocada por un corsé de reglas y pago por lo que alguien, desde su perspectiva personal, cree que es la mejor participación. Se me antoja una búsqueda que nace ya desbalanceada, inclinada no hacia el ser, sino hacia el parecer; una actuación para una audiencia. Quizás por ese desencanto con las puestas en escena de la vida real, me siento aún más atraído por esa gran sala oscura que, sin pedirme nada a cambio, me ofrece un espejo.
Precisamente, una de esas iniciativas me pide que hablara de los “milagros” que he tenido en mi vida, como si fueran trofeos que exhibir. Y pienso que el mayor milagro es, precisamente, no necesitar ponerles precio. ¿Mis milagros recibidos?, no son eventos espectaculares para una audiencia; son el tejido silencioso de mi día a día. Mi milagro es ver salir el sol cada mañana y sentir el abrazo de mi hijo Matthew. Es haber llegado a los 70 años con buena salud y la serenidad de no tener que preocuparme por el mañana. Es el saludo amable de un buen vecino, la certeza de una amistad que no pide, sino que da. Esos son mis verdaderos fotogramas, los que no necesitan edición. Es el balance encontrado no en un destello cósmico, sino en la gratitud constante.
El cine, en su esencia más pura, es un espejo. Pero no un espejo plano y fiel, sino uno cóncavo, a veces deforme, que magnifica nuestras virtudes, exagera nuestros miedos y destila nuestras esperanzas en fotogramas de noventa minutos o más. Como dijo el gran Ingmar Bergman, “Ninguna forma de arte va más allá de lo cotidiano o de la conciencia como lo hace el cine, directo a nuestras emociones, a lo más profundo del cuarto oscuro de nuestras almas”. Y en ese cuarto oscuro, ¿qué encontramos? Nos encontramos a nosotros mismos. Vemos nuestras propias batallas en la lucha de un héroe, nuestra propia fragilidad en la lágrima de un personaje, nuestra propia búsqueda de sentido en un viaje a través de paisajes desolados o ciudades bulliciosas. La pantalla se convierte en un mapa de nuestra propia geografía emocional, un lugar seguro desde donde explorar los abismos que tememos en la vida real sin temor a hacerlos visibles.
Ayer, mientras el equinoccio se aproximaba, el mundo conmemoraba dos días que, a primera vista, parecen dispares: el Día Internacional de la Paz y el Día Mundial del Alzheimer. Sin embargo, al reflexionar, siento que están íntimamente ligados por un hilo invisible y trágico como lo es la memoria. La paz es una construcción tan frágil, a menudo exige un acto de reconciliación. Y la reconciliación, ¿no es una forma de gestionar la memoria?, para perdonar, para avanzar, para construir puentes sobre las ruinas de un conflicto, ¿es necesario olvidar?, ¿o, por el contrario, es imprescindible recordar para no repetir los mismos horrores? Las naciones enteras se debaten en esta encrucijada. Levantan monumentos para no olvidar, pero al mismo tiempo firman tratados que buscan dejar atrás el dolor, como si la memoria del agravio fuera el principal obstáculo para la paz. Recordé la película Los Juegos del Hambre, tiene mucho que ver con todo esto.
Y entonces, por mi edad, pienso en el Alzheimer, en esa niebla que desdibuja los contornos de una vida. Pienso en la paz aterradora que podría sentir alguien que ya no recuerda el dolor que le causaron, pero también en la angustia de quien olvida el rostro de la persona que más amó. No padezco la enfermedad, pero tengo un amigo que sí. El cine ha explorado este laberinto con una delicadeza sobrecogedora. Recuerdo la película The Father, donde la realidad se fragmenta junto con la memoria del protagonista, sumergiéndonos en su desorientación. O en Siempre Alice, donde una mujer brillante lucha por aferrarse a los jirones de su identidad mientras las palabras y los recuerdos se le escurren como el agua entre los dedos. Estas historias me hacen preguntar si el olvido es una bendición o una maldición. ¿Alcanzar la paz a costa de nuestra propia historia es realmente paz, o es solo un vacío? ¿Se puede perdonar algo que ya no se recuerda? Qué piensa usted estimado lector.
Quizás la verdadera paz no reside en el olvido, sino en la capacidad de recordar sin que el recuerdo nos destruya. En aceptar las cicatrices no como heridas abiertas, sino como el testimonio de haber sobrevivido. ¡Va!, palabras y más palabras… Es un equilibrio tan delicado como el del equinoccio, un punto exacto entre la luz del recuerdo lúcido y la sombra del rencor. El escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges, obsesionado con la memoria, escribió en su poema "Arte poética": “Somos nuestra memoria, somos ese quimérico museo de formas inconstantes, ese montón de espejos rotos”. Entonces, si somos nuestra memoria, ¿qué somos cuando esta se desvanece? ¿Qué es una nación que borra su pasado para construir un futuro pacífico? ¿Sigue siendo la misma nación?
El cine nos ofrece la posibilidad de ensayar respuestas. Nos permite vivir, a través de otros, las consecuencias de recordar y de olvidar. En películas como Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, vemos el desesperado intento de borrar un amor doloroso, solo para descubrir que incluso los recuerdos más tristes contienen fragmentos de felicidad que nos constituyen. Nos enseña que amputar una parte de nuestro pasado es, en cierto modo, amputarnos a nosotros mismos. Tal vez la clave no esté en la eliminación, sino en la resignificación. En aprender a contar nuestra propia historia de una manera que nos permita seguir adelante, que nos dé la fuerza para tender la mano, incluso a aquellos que nos hicieron daño. A caso terminaremos co el trama en la película La memoria de los muertos (título original en inglés: The Final Cut), protagonizada por Robin Williams, quien interpreta a un montador que edita las memorias grabadas de las personas para crear videos acríticos que se muestran en sus funerales.
Hoy, con la luz y la oscuridad en perfecto balance, siento que propia vida es una película que no he terminado de filmar. Cada día añadimos una nueva escena, una nueva línea de diálogo, un nuevo silencio cargado de significado. Y en el montaje final de nuestra existencia, ¿qué escenas elegiremos conservar? ¿Cuáles relegaremos a los extras del director? Al buscar la paz, tanto en nuestras pequeñas vidas como en el gran escenario del mundo, ¿nos atreveremos a confrontar los fotogramas más oscuros de nuestro guion? ¿O preferiremos la edición fácil, el corte que nos presenta una versión más cómoda, pero incompleta, de quiénes fuimos? La pantalla se apaga, se cierra el telón, las luces de la sala se encienden y salimos al mundo, un mundo que, como hoy, nos recuerda que todo equilibrio es, por naturaleza, momentáneo. La pregunta que queda flotando en el aire, como el polvo iluminado por el proyector, es qué haremos mañana, cuando la balanza inevitablemente comience a inclinarse con el peso de los años…
Creciendo como persona, busca y encuentra lo que necesitas para ser un mejor humano en la Comunidad Holos&Lotus. De seguro, hay un tema que te llamará la atención.
Infografía propia de la Comunidad Holos&Lotus
Dedicado a todos aquellos que, día a día, hacen del mundo un lugar mejor.
The Balance of Broken Mirrors.
Today, 22 September, day and night look each other in the eye in perfect balance. It is the equinox, a cosmic instant of symmetry, a universal moment where light and shadow agree to a truce before the scales inevitably tip towards darkness or rebirth. I find myself thinking about this ephemeral balance and how we spend our entire lives searching for it in our own inner worlds. We seek the balance between reason and the heart, between memory and oblivion, between the war that rages within and the peace we long for without. Perhaps that is why I feel so drawn to the cinema, to that great dark room where we sit together, strangers united by a flickering light, to watch precisely that: the eternal struggle of the human condition projected onto a screen.
@starwalkapp
And that search for balance is so human that it has, inevitably, also become a market. I think about this because I was recently invited to take part in several “personal growth” initiatives, but my instinct makes me recoil. I feel that the noble purpose is lost, that the balance is broken, when authenticity is suffocated by a corset of rules and payment for what someone, from their personal perspective, believes to be the best participation. It seems to me a search that is born already unbalanced, inclined not towards being, but towards seeming; a performance for an audience. Perhaps because of this disenchantment with the stagings of real life, I feel even more drawn to that great dark room which, without asking for anything in return, offers me a mirror.
Precisely, one of these initiatives asks me to speak of the “miracles” I have had in my life, as if they were trophies to be exhibited. And I think that the greatest miracle is, precisely, not needing to put a price on them. The miracles I have received? They are not spectacular events for an audience; they are the silent fabric of my day-to-day life. My miracle is seeing the sun rise every morning and feeling the embrace of my son, Matthew. It is having reached the age of 70 in good health and with the serenity of not having to worry about tomorrow. It is the kind greeting of a good neighbour, the certainty of a friendship that does not ask, but gives. Those are my true frames, the ones that need no editing. They are the balance found not in a cosmic flash, but in constant gratitude.
The cinema, in its purest essence, is a mirror. But not a flat and faithful mirror, but a concave one, sometimes misshapen, that magnifies our virtues, exaggerates our fears and distils our hopes into frames of ninety minutes or more. As the great Ingmar Bergman said, “No form of art goes beyond the everyday or consciousness as cinema does, straight to our emotions, to the deepest part of the dark room of our souls”. And in that dark room, what do we find? We find ourselves. We see our own battles in a hero's struggle, our own fragility in a character's tear, our own search for meaning in a journey across desolate landscapes or bustling cities. The screen becomes a map of our own emotional geography, a safe place from which to explore the abysses we fear in real life without fear of making them visible.
Yesterday, as the equinox approached, the world commemorated two days that, at first glance, seem disparate: the International Day of Peace and World Alzheimer's Day. However, upon reflection, I feel they are intimately linked by an invisible and tragic thread, which is memory. Peace is such a fragile construction; it often demands an act of reconciliation. And is reconciliation not a way of managing memory? To forgive, to move forward, to build bridges over the ruins of a conflict, is it necessary to forget? Or, on the contrary, is it essential to remember so as not to repeat the same horrors? Entire nations debate this crossroads. They build monuments so as not to forget, but at the same time, they sign treaties that seek to leave the pain behind, as if the memory of the grievance were the main obstacle to peace. I remembered the film The Hunger Games; it has a lot to do with all this.
And then, because of my age, I think of Alzheimer's, of that fog that blurs the contours of a life. I think of the terrifying peace that someone who no longer remembers the pain they were caused might feel, but also of the anguish of one who forgets the face of the person they loved most. I do not suffer from the disease, but I have a friend who does. The cinema has explored this labyrinth with a breathtaking delicacy. I remember the film The Father, where reality fragments along with the protagonist's memory, immersing us in his disorientation. Or in Still Alice, where a brilliant woman struggles to cling to the shreds of her identity as words and memories slip away like water through her fingers. These stories make me wonder whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse. Is reaching peace at the cost of our own history truly peace, or is it just a void? Can you forgive something that is no longer remembered? What do you think, dear reader.
Perhaps true peace lies not in oblivion, but in the ability to remember without the memory destroying us. In accepting the scars not as open wounds, but as the testimony of having survived. Bah! Words and more words… It is a balance as delicate as that of the equinox, an exact point between the light of lucid memory and the shadow of resentment. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, obsessed with memory, wrote in his poem "Ars Poetica": “We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of inconstant forms, that heap of broken mirrors”. So, if we are our memory, what are we when it fades? What is a nation that erases its past to build a peaceful future? Is it still the same nation?
The cinema offers us the possibility of rehearsing answers. It allows us to live, through others, the consequences of remembering and of forgetting. In films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we see the desperate attempt to erase a painful love, only to discover that even the saddest memories contain fragments of happiness that constitute us. It teaches us that to amputate a part of our past is, in a way, to amputate ourselves. Perhaps the key lies not in elimination, but in resignification. In learning to tell our own story in a way that allows us to move forward, that gives us the strength to extend a hand, even to those who hurt us. Perhaps we will end up with the plot in the film La memoria de los muertos (original English title: The Final Cut), starring Robin Williams, who plays an editor who edits people's recorded memories to create uncritical videos that are shown at their funerals.
Today, with light and darkness in perfect balance, I feel that my own life is a film I have not yet finished shooting. Every day we add a new scene, a new line of dialogue, a new silence laden with meaning. And in the final cut of our existence, which scenes will we choose to keep? Which will we relegate to the director's extras? In seeking peace, both in our small lives and on the great stage of the world, will we dare to confront the darkest frames of our script? Or will we prefer the easy edit, the cut that presents us with a more comfortable, but incomplete, version of who we were? The screen goes dark, the curtain falls, the house lights come up, and we go out into the world, a world that, like today, reminds us that all balance is, by nature, momentary. The question that remains floating in the air, like the dust illuminated by the projector, is what we will do tomorrow, when the scales inevitably begin to tip with the weight of the years…
Growing as a person, seek and find what you need to be a better person in the Holos&Lotus Community. Surely, there's a topic that will catch your attention.
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Dedicated to all those who, day after day, make the world a better place.
Dedicado a todos aquellos que, día a día, hacen del mundo un lugar mejor.
The Balance of Broken Mirrors.
Today, 22 September, day and night look each other in the eye in perfect balance. It is the equinox, a cosmic instant of symmetry, a universal moment where light and shadow agree to a truce before the scales inevitably tip towards darkness or rebirth. I find myself thinking about this ephemeral balance and how we spend our entire lives searching for it in our own inner worlds. We seek the balance between reason and the heart, between memory and oblivion, between the war that rages within and the peace we long for without. Perhaps that is why I feel so drawn to the cinema, to that great dark room where we sit together, strangers united by a flickering light, to watch precisely that: the eternal struggle of the human condition projected onto a screen.
@starwalkapp
And that search for balance is so human that it has, inevitably, also become a market. I think about this because I was recently invited to take part in several “personal growth” initiatives, but my instinct makes me recoil. I feel that the noble purpose is lost, that the balance is broken, when authenticity is suffocated by a corset of rules and payment for what someone, from their personal perspective, believes to be the best participation. It seems to me a search that is born already unbalanced, inclined not towards being, but towards seeming; a performance for an audience. Perhaps because of this disenchantment with the stagings of real life, I feel even more drawn to that great dark room which, without asking for anything in return, offers me a mirror.
Precisely, one of these initiatives asks me to speak of the “miracles” I have had in my life, as if they were trophies to be exhibited. And I think that the greatest miracle is, precisely, not needing to put a price on them. The miracles I have received? They are not spectacular events for an audience; they are the silent fabric of my day-to-day life. My miracle is seeing the sun rise every morning and feeling the embrace of my son, Matthew. It is having reached the age of 70 in good health and with the serenity of not having to worry about tomorrow. It is the kind greeting of a good neighbour, the certainty of a friendship that does not ask, but gives. Those are my true frames, the ones that need no editing. They are the balance found not in a cosmic flash, but in constant gratitude.
The cinema, in its purest essence, is a mirror. But not a flat and faithful mirror, but a concave one, sometimes misshapen, that magnifies our virtues, exaggerates our fears and distils our hopes into frames of ninety minutes or more. As the great Ingmar Bergman said, “No form of art goes beyond the everyday or consciousness as cinema does, straight to our emotions, to the deepest part of the dark room of our souls”. And in that dark room, what do we find? We find ourselves. We see our own battles in a hero's struggle, our own fragility in a character's tear, our own search for meaning in a journey across desolate landscapes or bustling cities. The screen becomes a map of our own emotional geography, a safe place from which to explore the abysses we fear in real life without fear of making them visible.
Yesterday, as the equinox approached, the world commemorated two days that, at first glance, seem disparate: the International Day of Peace and World Alzheimer's Day. However, upon reflection, I feel they are intimately linked by an invisible and tragic thread, which is memory. Peace is such a fragile construction; it often demands an act of reconciliation. And is reconciliation not a way of managing memory? To forgive, to move forward, to build bridges over the ruins of a conflict, is it necessary to forget? Or, on the contrary, is it essential to remember so as not to repeat the same horrors? Entire nations debate this crossroads. They build monuments so as not to forget, but at the same time, they sign treaties that seek to leave the pain behind, as if the memory of the grievance were the main obstacle to peace. I remembered the film The Hunger Games; it has a lot to do with all this.
And then, because of my age, I think of Alzheimer's, of that fog that blurs the contours of a life. I think of the terrifying peace that someone who no longer remembers the pain they were caused might feel, but also of the anguish of one who forgets the face of the person they loved most. I do not suffer from the disease, but I have a friend who does. The cinema has explored this labyrinth with a breathtaking delicacy. I remember the film The Father, where reality fragments along with the protagonist's memory, immersing us in his disorientation. Or in Still Alice, where a brilliant woman struggles to cling to the shreds of her identity as words and memories slip away like water through her fingers. These stories make me wonder whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse. Is reaching peace at the cost of our own history truly peace, or is it just a void? Can you forgive something that is no longer remembered? What do you think, dear reader.
Perhaps true peace lies not in oblivion, but in the ability to remember without the memory destroying us. In accepting the scars not as open wounds, but as the testimony of having survived. Bah! Words and more words… It is a balance as delicate as that of the equinox, an exact point between the light of lucid memory and the shadow of resentment. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, obsessed with memory, wrote in his poem "Ars Poetica": “We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of inconstant forms, that heap of broken mirrors”. So, if we are our memory, what are we when it fades? What is a nation that erases its past to build a peaceful future? Is it still the same nation?
The cinema offers us the possibility of rehearsing answers. It allows us to live, through others, the consequences of remembering and of forgetting. In films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we see the desperate attempt to erase a painful love, only to discover that even the saddest memories contain fragments of happiness that constitute us. It teaches us that to amputate a part of our past is, in a way, to amputate ourselves. Perhaps the key lies not in elimination, but in resignification. In learning to tell our own story in a way that allows us to move forward, that gives us the strength to extend a hand, even to those who hurt us. Perhaps we will end up with the plot in the film La memoria de los muertos (original English title: The Final Cut), starring Robin Williams, who plays an editor who edits people's recorded memories to create uncritical videos that are shown at their funerals.
Today, with light and darkness in perfect balance, I feel that my own life is a film I have not yet finished shooting. Every day we add a new scene, a new line of dialogue, a new silence laden with meaning. And in the final cut of our existence, which scenes will we choose to keep? Which will we relegate to the director's extras? In seeking peace, both in our small lives and on the great stage of the world, will we dare to confront the darkest frames of our script? Or will we prefer the easy edit, the cut that presents us with a more comfortable, but incomplete, version of who we were? The screen goes dark, the curtain falls, the house lights come up, and we go out into the world, a world that, like today, reminds us that all balance is, by nature, momentary. The question that remains floating in the air, like the dust illuminated by the projector, is what we will do tomorrow, when the scales inevitably begin to tip with the weight of the years…
Today, 22 September, day and night look each other in the eye in perfect balance. It is the equinox, a cosmic instant of symmetry, a universal moment where light and shadow agree to a truce before the scales inevitably tip towards darkness or rebirth. I find myself thinking about this ephemeral balance and how we spend our entire lives searching for it in our own inner worlds. We seek the balance between reason and the heart, between memory and oblivion, between the war that rages within and the peace we long for without. Perhaps that is why I feel so drawn to the cinema, to that great dark room where we sit together, strangers united by a flickering light, to watch precisely that: the eternal struggle of the human condition projected onto a screen.
@starwalkapp
And that search for balance is so human that it has, inevitably, also become a market. I think about this because I was recently invited to take part in several “personal growth” initiatives, but my instinct makes me recoil. I feel that the noble purpose is lost, that the balance is broken, when authenticity is suffocated by a corset of rules and payment for what someone, from their personal perspective, believes to be the best participation. It seems to me a search that is born already unbalanced, inclined not towards being, but towards seeming; a performance for an audience. Perhaps because of this disenchantment with the stagings of real life, I feel even more drawn to that great dark room which, without asking for anything in return, offers me a mirror.
Precisely, one of these initiatives asks me to speak of the “miracles” I have had in my life, as if they were trophies to be exhibited. And I think that the greatest miracle is, precisely, not needing to put a price on them. The miracles I have received? They are not spectacular events for an audience; they are the silent fabric of my day-to-day life. My miracle is seeing the sun rise every morning and feeling the embrace of my son, Matthew. It is having reached the age of 70 in good health and with the serenity of not having to worry about tomorrow. It is the kind greeting of a good neighbour, the certainty of a friendship that does not ask, but gives. Those are my true frames, the ones that need no editing. They are the balance found not in a cosmic flash, but in constant gratitude.
The cinema, in its purest essence, is a mirror. But not a flat and faithful mirror, but a concave one, sometimes misshapen, that magnifies our virtues, exaggerates our fears and distils our hopes into frames of ninety minutes or more. As the great Ingmar Bergman said, “No form of art goes beyond the everyday or consciousness as cinema does, straight to our emotions, to the deepest part of the dark room of our souls”. And in that dark room, what do we find? We find ourselves. We see our own battles in a hero's struggle, our own fragility in a character's tear, our own search for meaning in a journey across desolate landscapes or bustling cities. The screen becomes a map of our own emotional geography, a safe place from which to explore the abysses we fear in real life without fear of making them visible.
Yesterday, as the equinox approached, the world commemorated two days that, at first glance, seem disparate: the International Day of Peace and World Alzheimer's Day. However, upon reflection, I feel they are intimately linked by an invisible and tragic thread, which is memory. Peace is such a fragile construction; it often demands an act of reconciliation. And is reconciliation not a way of managing memory? To forgive, to move forward, to build bridges over the ruins of a conflict, is it necessary to forget? Or, on the contrary, is it essential to remember so as not to repeat the same horrors? Entire nations debate this crossroads. They build monuments so as not to forget, but at the same time, they sign treaties that seek to leave the pain behind, as if the memory of the grievance were the main obstacle to peace. I remembered the film The Hunger Games; it has a lot to do with all this.
And then, because of my age, I think of Alzheimer's, of that fog that blurs the contours of a life. I think of the terrifying peace that someone who no longer remembers the pain they were caused might feel, but also of the anguish of one who forgets the face of the person they loved most. I do not suffer from the disease, but I have a friend who does. The cinema has explored this labyrinth with a breathtaking delicacy. I remember the film The Father, where reality fragments along with the protagonist's memory, immersing us in his disorientation. Or in Still Alice, where a brilliant woman struggles to cling to the shreds of her identity as words and memories slip away like water through her fingers. These stories make me wonder whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse. Is reaching peace at the cost of our own history truly peace, or is it just a void? Can you forgive something that is no longer remembered? What do you think, dear reader.
Perhaps true peace lies not in oblivion, but in the ability to remember without the memory destroying us. In accepting the scars not as open wounds, but as the testimony of having survived. Bah! Words and more words… It is a balance as delicate as that of the equinox, an exact point between the light of lucid memory and the shadow of resentment. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, obsessed with memory, wrote in his poem "Ars Poetica": “We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of inconstant forms, that heap of broken mirrors”. So, if we are our memory, what are we when it fades? What is a nation that erases its past to build a peaceful future? Is it still the same nation?
The cinema offers us the possibility of rehearsing answers. It allows us to live, through others, the consequences of remembering and of forgetting. In films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we see the desperate attempt to erase a painful love, only to discover that even the saddest memories contain fragments of happiness that constitute us. It teaches us that to amputate a part of our past is, in a way, to amputate ourselves. Perhaps the key lies not in elimination, but in resignification. In learning to tell our own story in a way that allows us to move forward, that gives us the strength to extend a hand, even to those who hurt us. Perhaps we will end up with the plot in the film La memoria de los muertos (original English title: The Final Cut), starring Robin Williams, who plays an editor who edits people's recorded memories to create uncritical videos that are shown at their funerals.
Today, with light and darkness in perfect balance, I feel that my own life is a film I have not yet finished shooting. Every day we add a new scene, a new line of dialogue, a new silence laden with meaning. And in the final cut of our existence, which scenes will we choose to keep? Which will we relegate to the director's extras? In seeking peace, both in our small lives and on the great stage of the world, will we dare to confront the darkest frames of our script? Or will we prefer the easy edit, the cut that presents us with a more comfortable, but incomplete, version of who we were? The screen goes dark, the curtain falls, the house lights come up, and we go out into the world, a world that, like today, reminds us that all balance is, by nature, momentary. The question that remains floating in the air, like the dust illuminated by the projector, is what we will do tomorrow, when the scales inevitably begin to tip with the weight of the years…
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Dedicated to all those who, day after day, make the world a better place.
Dedicated to all those who, day after day, make the world a better place.