So it is a New Year.
Most start it full of joy, drinks, celebration. But not everyone.
Bad news arrived today and I then realized it is January 6th. In 2002, it was one of the happiest days in my life. I was in love. Deeply in love with A., and the way he felt - enormously content - made me really happy. I miss it. It is strange how we went against all that life, that energy. He especially did. And so it was worthless my resisting and keeping to love. He was a priest, forbidden to get married, to seriously take a mate.
Another person who I fancy a lot is now very sick. I just came to know about it. And his suffering hurts me.
We met and kind of re-met. And just had this sort of loose connection. But I took the courage last year to go and tell him that I once did want more, did want to have a closer relationship. But I was afraid.
He is very intelligent, diligent, with terrific sense of what really matters and loads of positive thinking. Once he told me, as I complained about being the third on a waiting list: 'Better than being the fourth!' Two or three days later, I was the first. Of course, he was responsible for that. And I was so busy that skipped him a feedback.
Just one thing I do not appreciate in him - he would not give an answer altogether in order not to decline, to say 'no'. I always prefer an answer, every one out there knows that!
He had a very busy 2010. Traveled a lot, giving speeches, etc. Now and then I would send him an email, and he would complain he was exhausted from teaching. I replied: 'Remember those who love you, including myself. Do not kill yourself working so hard'. In summer (six months ago), he said he was not in Hawaii, but taking every minute to prepare classes.
How can such an active person suddenly be forced to stop that way!
I have myself changed a lot recently. I just came to think: even though I look as if I were 35, I am now at an age many just... puff. Die. So, why sweat over this and that! Still, we do live as if we would be here forever. We may even draw up a will, make all arrangements for our funeral. Whatever. We find life only tasteful once its end is not really there.
But today this dear friend of mine, who so much helped me when I was forced into deep depression last year, writes to me: I face my appointment with mortality. Yes, he is always wit, down-to-earth.
I read one of his most important books last February. His work is impeccable. Yes, do not be surprised with that - when someone deserves a compliment, I say so. Most just do not deserve it. And then I also say so.
After commenting on his work, I provoked, 'Are you waiting to turn 60 to come to Brazil for Carnival?' He replied, 'Then it will be too late.' I got mad: 'What!? Too late for what?! Just do not say anything else. Just forget it.'
And he was quiet.
Funny thing. How we grow to know a certain person by seeing and talking so little to him or her! And, even funnier, I met this friend of mine so far from home! He was my supervisor. Well, ok. I do not want to say his name. And no one knows the name of my supervisor abroad. So, I still protect his identity, while I add salt by further revealing that someone else was initially to be my supervisor, not him. The director corrected himself several times when pointing my supervisor: 'Mr. X, oh, no, it's Mr. Z, actually.'
So, Mr. Z crossed my path. It seems it was meant to have been much different. But we do interfere with fate.
As I came back to Brazil, I was the one who almost died. Not from an illness, however. Regardless, internet allowed me to get back in contact with him in 2003. He was thrilled to hear from me. Soon, however, he was not that thrilled - I talked to him about the challenges I was facing. He was afraid to get involved. In the end, I was able to forgive, make him less frightened and so we kept in touch.
Distance amplifies our capabilities, our soul, just as blindness does. So I feel my friend so close to me as if we had been a lot more time literally together. That is true when we really care about the other one.
Illness has also to do with that amplifying effect. But it is much more pressing in a way we do not find pleasant.
So we are suddenly mortal in the beginning of 2011. My very path was twisted by the fact my dear friend is seriously sick.
The point is not just death or overcoming, this time, death, but a number of 'im-'s, impossibilities. But the most defiant is an 'un': uncertainty. How much longer will I be here? The very question we all avoid as much as we can.
As I did not know about his condition, I wrote: a bright 2011. He had not replied my last email. I thought the reason was the subject - I commented on crime in Rio and that strange military operation in a favela.
And so what? Let us keep learning. Learn how to live highly conscious of our mortality every single minute, and not only briefly, vaguely conscious of that.
But then you all ask me: how can we learn that?
'We'? How many goes into that 'we'?
Not many. There are lessons that are the fate of only a few. Only a few master them eventually. And telling why has its share of mystery just as bridging distance, fear, guilt also does to some other extent.
Do we fear more when we enter this stage of 'permanent' mortality? I dare say we do not. We are just more conscious of our fear. And our fear of life is greater than our fear of mortality.
It may feel one thing when we love being young and healthy, and another when we are older and sick. But we are not just feelings. Those who learn that fear is always there, and so is love, are those rare ones who properly frame feelings, tackle suffering, embrace good luck as well as bad luck.
When I was only fourteen, I was already fond of readings that claimed there is no distance. And time is beyond our grasp. Then we grow not to be in the mood for such intangible matter. We get in the mood to be admired by others, to be a winner. We want to stay always in good mood, for when 'we cry, we cry alone'.
Precisely. Time eventually comes for us to be in the mood to be alone. We remain close to the ones we really follow, but certain lessons are only learnt when we find ourselves, precisely, alone.
Yes, sadness is here. But most importantly, I realize control is not. The delusion of being in control of life is stronger, just when we are less able to even control our moods.
Now that has changed radically, as we take a U-turn toward, I suppose, brightness: we will take control of our moods, while aware that we, of course!, are not in control of life. And this is pretty different from interfering with fate.
January 6, 2011
Mariangela Pedro
