To keep promises

Friday, April 15, 2016



"I understand how this pain hurts,
but sing and do not cry. Your best witness is a voice in the air
  and not the outcry bordering the speech that, at the end,
  prevents reflection on what is happening ".

Juan Goytisolo in "La voz y el mundo".

Our power is the voice and the word. An indomitable strength when it becomes the cry of the people makes us moves towards havens of light and hope.

On one hand, we have to say "No" to force, and renounce always to violence. On the other hand, we have to say "Yes" to the tenacious perseverance in not underestimating the consequences of war, imposition, force and power, in such a way that encounter and dialogue, our long standing dream, are reachable.

The future cannot be as permanent as the past: Don Antonio Machado urged us to review history lessons to discover if a description of the past is faithful to the facts.  But above all, urges us to write the future together.  The only way to calm the pain and the memory of past wounds is to dare and imagine to walk together, to define together, to live together -all different, all equal, all unique- the time and space that are yet intact before us.  This is the supreme legacy.  This is the supreme inheritance.

We have not fulfilled our promises too often. In times of prosperity we have not recalled the measures taken in times of trouble, when human pressure is more creative and when passion and compassion include so many things.

To dare is essential. We must remember the appalling words of Albert Camus: "I despise them  because they could have done so much, yet dared to do so little”.  Let us raise our eyes and look forward. What matters is what is in the bend of the road, beyond the valleys of the nearby hills that prevent contemplate the horizon. Only on the ledge, with the fog in front of you, on the dividing line between light and darkness. With more doubts than certainties. But with hope because the future is there, waiting the cross-ploughing line, water and seed.

Planting and sowing without thinking of the harvest. Many seeds will not give results, but there is a fruit that will never bear it: the one of the seed that has not been planted.

We cannot allow that nature and heart die out at the same time. When it is said that there is no solution, do not believe it. It's because they do not know how to find it. It is because they cannot see beyond the urgent tasks of each hour. Each time we must move forward, invent and design the route.
 

The answers are always within us, never outside. We need to listen to everyone, to everything but then it is necessary to be free, free to express stubbornly and decide for ourselves. To be guided by our thoughts and not by instructions and suggestions of others.

Hope is part of the creative capacity of the human beings to be used against inertia and routine. To act
differently and not in a predictable way. And to respond without hatred or resentment like President Mandela.

Large sums of money are invested in borders’ protection and very little to safeguard what lies within them: children, women, wood, water, soil, air... We have come to accept the unacceptable: street children, abandonment. What kind of civilization is this that finds excuses to not take care of the children and considers "expensive" the AIDS treatment in patients without financial resources?

This is the crime of silence. We must work tirelessly to raise the voice, more and more voices, until we achieve for you -for you that you are already with us and for you that will be tomorrow- a life more in accordance with the dignity of every human being. Only then we will be able to look into your eyes.

Much courage will be needed to, with the power of the word, change everything that we have not been able to change until now.

One day in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, with our minds and eyes full of horror, promised to avoid future generations, suffering from violence and war. We must now urgently fulfill the promises we have not achieved.

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