THE WALL

Where I work there´s a school where we must take a number of classes to grow a career. Sometimes it is useless and annoying, but time to time if u choose it well, it can bring benefits.

I am an optimistical person, then, when the class brings me limes I try to make one caipirinha. In one of these classrooms, something about excellency in attendance, the teacher was a likeable and livened up psychologist. The group was a little reluctant. I went with a friend who did not enjoy it, but had to go.

Certain day the group was gathered in a circle and started an exercise. With eyes closed we were supposed to create a story while she was giving the details, displaying the situations. It had to do with a mission to fulfill, a path, the tools and facing the highest wall that we had that to cross at last to fulfill to such mission. Then everybody had to open eyes and, one by one, tell the little story.

I was listening, interested. The majority was in a beach place, used the celphone to contact the other part in the mission, ran, blew up the wall quickly and, as in an action film, fulfilled the quest. Some had funny details, but they were told fast and practical, I got distracted, and then was my turn, I thought: ohhh, there’s no time to create another story, I gotta tell what had sprouted in my mind…

I started: Paris, 1928. I was hasty crossing the Champs-Élysées Avenue; dressed in a dark coat, vaporous dress, on the head a beautiful hat. Suspicious, went to the bistro, already well known, where would find Simone, Jean-Paul and other friends, had something in the pocket, a message.

 

Suddenly, around the corner, I am in 1933, wearing a trench coat, a little scared, but courageous, I had to fulfill the mission. In the dark I crossed the dirty alleyway. In front of me a wall, so high and deep, impossible to jump over or dig and cross underneath. At the other side: my goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Didn’t think twice, leading the hand to the lips, a strong whistle, and soon I see Superman, he carries me and takes me to the other side.

 

I will never forget the expression my dearest friend had on; she, much more practical than me, silently said: was it really necessary?

TOLERANCE / EMPATHY

TOLERANCE / EMPATHY

Today on the way to work I could digress and in my thought 3 events were mixed as in one of those films in which stories run in parallel and like a surprise, all end in the same point. (I remembered the film 'the hours' - if somebody knows where I find the dvd to buy, I thank)
In Toulose, France, a man decides to transform in daily activity his will of killing, at first kinda random way, but probably ahead we will get news about his intentions, which nothing matters. He holds a girl by her hair and shoots her in the head, leaving the victim to die in the parents' arms. Thats only to illustrate one of his actions.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it is exposed a horde of entrepreneurs that  negotiate tips to public employees, diverting budget of the public health. Without holding their victims by the hair or pointing a gun, they kill them in the end.

Still in Rio, wonderful city, Artur Xexeo, famous columnist of the Globo, turns into enemy number one of the cyclists when criticizing the plan of a cycle trail in Botafogo. And when emitting his opinion and experience in relation to traffic disturbance he was attacked in a disproportionate way.

In the left-handed blender that exists in my head was formed a thick broth: our daily disaster.

Some free words sprinkle the broth: empathy, tolerance and ethics.

The rules exist for two reasons, in our little world of mankind: to make possible the coexistence and to be subverted. And the two reasons got confused and in an incestuous connection f***ed up our species.

In times of the famous politically (in) correct, we live a virile and awake censorship and it attempts. There is no degree, or measure for ideas. Once again we used our endless talent to distort good initiatives.

To protect the ones who are attacked, or the minorities, it is beautiful. But there is a misunderstanding in the administration of that, maybe because it is new, we are just formatting a new society. Maybe.

In case the ethics, the empathy and the tolerance could be disseminated, at home, in the school, in the work, that police force would not be necessary, that measure of dictatorship that transforms you in pariah if express yourself. It would not be necessary to kill the ones that don't live in the way that you find correct. It would not be even imagined a way to take what doesn't belong you.

When I listen to a gentleman saying that he teaches his children the forms of establishing as corruptor, I shudder and begin to believe that am crazy. When 'I learn' that a new ethics, mobster, that to the fellows everything allows and to the others reserve the mud I notice that I had understood everything 'wrong.' When I attend to other people's cowardly slaughter, I am sure that we are all out of control. It scares me. Does Does it scare you?

As Xexeo, I thought: funny, I could swear that the people that has the opportunity to cross the south area by bicycle were more relaxed, good-humor, feeling good about life. I imagined that they could transform the columnist's critic in a game that would provoke the community being interested at their roads, for their claims. When reading his last column I could visualize the scene: he leaving the newspaper to catch a taxi - burn in hell for that - and being attacked, blows and curses, like the ones sent to his email. Disappointment. And if it was to me to choose, everyone would live on sunny Jardim Botanico (botanical garden) and would go by bike to work at Leblon, I am totally for life quality, for all.

Then with the same rage maybe kills the neighbor for being Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or black, white, green, printed. With the same proportion imagines that if someone dies in the line in front of public hospital, “better him than me”. And still holding the gun decides the destiny of somebody that seems strange.

The famous witch hunting didn't finish in the inquisition, but gave powers to anyone to do anything to call it morals, ethics. I try to imagine how can disguise the intolerance and the lack of empathy. Those are printed in the beings that are called thinkers, agents, important. We are so small and at the same time each one of us so special.

What differs us from plants and bugs: the ability of expressing feelings; and the chance to brake. Who didn’t ever felt rage, will of strangling somebody? Who never crossed the street with fear of that other one with appearance you find strange? Who never stopped noticing the pain that caused in somebody? All of us did. The difference is the possibility to choose what will do with fears, prejudices and especially with feelings. Will you be the reagent being, who just ignores ur own force? Will you be a coward that attacks before being attacked? If the rule now is that, why did leave the caves?

Sometimes I want to hug the first men and to apologize; u know those guys who struggled, made it grow, learned and gathered to build a better world? Who did dare to call society, who did not think about strings, religions, languages, politics, and even so did imagine the best of the worlds? Sorry, there.

Doesn´t they say that an enterprising man passes his life building and making fortune for the grandchildren to toast in one year? There u go, we are those grandchildren...

Nowadays KINDNESS is synonymous of character weakness, of antiquated and old-fashioned person and more precisely of fool. Kindness is almost the tangible form that brings the empathy, the ethics, and the tolerance. Caretice.

Make funny faces and provoke a smile. Who knows the world begins to rotate in the direction of those ancestral ones that imagined something that we didn't reach.

I wish to all the chance of doing the best choices, the courage to face the fears and to build, the beauty of the good-humor, the delicacy of being kind, with urself and with the other ones. The other ones... They are each one of us, divided within geometric progression. We are capable to ride through life, opening highways for all to pass, with differences yes, because difference is good and I like.