* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
Youth, among other things, brings a certain ambition, I suppose also a certain ignorance. And I'm beginning to discover that, although they are a priori independent traits, perhaps they are more related than I used to think.
Young people, honoring Gil de Biedma's poem ("like all young people, I came to take my life ahead"), without any awareness of our ambition or ignorance, we do not skimp on dreaming big.
We think about the great achievements that life has in store for us, the high goals that one day, without a doubt, we will achieve. However, just because we think about the future does not mean that we neglect the present.
We live in the contradiction of seeing our triumph there in the distance, at the same time we try to live as if there were no future. We look for the most powerful sensations in the present, nights that end at dawn and in which we can claim to know what it means to live, trips in which we can boast of vitality, we tend to think that life must be sought and experienced in the great moments. of adrenaline, in the great explosions of joy and pain.
However, there are moments, there are moments, in which doubt appears, maturity knocks at the door. Books usually help her. She played insistently when I read The Road, by Delibes. Almost at the end of the book, Don José, the priest, gives a sermon in which he says: "Happiness is not, in reality, in the highest, in the greatest, in the most appetizing, in the most excellent; it is in adapting our steps to the path that the Lord has indicated to us on Earth. Even if it is humble." After reading these lines, I remained silent and asked myself what is the path that Don José, the priest, is talking about.
I followed his advice, I didn't think about big parties or trips, nor about big moments of pain or joy. On the contrary, I thought of simple things.
I thought about the college notes that I spend hours studying in front of, and I thought that maybe they are part of the journey. I thought about the little hem I make to mark the most memorable pages of the books I read, and I thought that those pages must be the way too. I thought, I don't know why, of my grandmother's voice singing a pasodoble from her youth, of our uncoordinated feet dancing around the kitchen, and I thought that this must also be the path. I thought about the conversations that overlap one another until there is only a general murmur at a long family table, that must also be the way, and the sun that at four in the afternoon illuminates the cup of coffee with milk, that too It must be the way. The path is, I think, more than in parties or memorable trips, in the already worn sole of my sneakers.
I understand now that Delibes was right. We young people tend to think of the road as a great party, explosions of joy and pain in which to seek life, and in our ignorance and our ambition, we do not realize that Delibes was right, that the road "is not in the highest, in the greatest", but in much smaller things, in the memorable pages of good books, in the uncoordinated feet that dance an old pasodoble, the sole of the sneakers already worn out.
How much we do not know, and how long it takes us to learn, that the path is not in great emotions, but rather in a much more subtle and stealthy emotion, its present almost imperceptible, and which needs the passage of time to demonstrate its true value.
Delibes was right. "Happiness lies in adjusting our steps to the path that the Lord has shown us on Earth. Even if it is humble."
In my still ambitious and ignorant youth, I feel some maturity when I read Delibes' words and I find myself wishing that the path was long and humble, that there were many marked pages, poorly danced pasodobles, overlapping conversations, that the sole never stopped wearing out. of my sneakers. Delibes was right.
It must be maturity that speaks through me, when I feel the need to ask that the path be long and humble.
