We are the Good and the Bad as well

We are the Bad and the Good as well" (1)

"To fight against evil, is to fight against ourselves" (Octavio Paz)

A friend tells us his memories of that trip he makes every year to teach in Lyon, in that beautiful city crossed by two rivers, with its hilltops and a magnificent basilica. Another one tells me of his holidays in the peaceful Piriápolis, crossing the Río de la Plata and enjoying the beaches and the ascent on foot to Cerro San Antonio. And his diverse memories and anecdotes become mine, like some confidences that my friends make in those renewed trips, and in each of our reunions. And their stories, reflections and feelings become mine. In turn, I can relate them. Or remind them of them when we get back together. Thus, I become the guardian of their memories. Which I treasure as they treasure mine, which in turn become theirs. Every time a story is entrusted to us, we become a repository of a part of that person's identity. Simultaneously and reciprocally my stories become part of those who listen to them. Every time this happens, these stories of love and heartbreak, of joys and disappointments, of departures and arrivals, enrich the heritage of our narrative identities.

Why the memory becomes a custodian of our worst nightmares and our best moments? Because, perhaps, beyond the neuroscientific explanations, that brain with hidden folds and folds, the dance of circuits, neural networks and synapses, life is an eternal restart - my friends and I coming and going again and again - and an eternal reconfirming - the story told and recounted countless times. When we listen, we confirm the others in their own selves. When we speak, we long for attentive looks and ears and an empathetic smile to ease our burden.

"If I reach out," - writes Kennet Gergen (2) - and smile, this gesture will border on the absurd until it is answered reciprocally. My words and gestures do not constitute a "communication" until others consider it intelligible". And when they respond to me. We long for belonging. Staying in the retinas of others, in their hearts and minds. In the vertigo of our accelerated times (why do they run, I wonder), the word, the gaze and the lavish caress are the oasis, the thirst finally satiated.

In times of pandemic, of medieval persecutions of dissident, sensitive, thoughtful and compassionate voices, amid the rubble of ruthless power struggles as an end in itself, the lucid hope stands for a better world. A world of caring relationships with the other, my fellow man. I care to be cared. I love to be loved. In the eye of the storm, defying my fears, I trust someone. And reciprocally, someone trusts me.

Ephemeral power and glory? The spider weaving mazes for blind and lonely minotaurs. The insatiable night of the wolf, the endless wandering of the shark.

Shared memory and bread? Voices of a children's choir, the inexhaustible echo of a contagious laughter, the fulfilling energy of a tender hug.

So, let's choose which world we want. Confrontation and creation of imaginary enemies or a healthy and loving coexistence.

Claudio Des Champs

1) Inspired in a Claudio Des Champs editorial. In Perspectivas Sistémicas, no 34. December/ February, 1994.

(2) From the book " El Yo Saturado" of K. Gergen