If you could re-experience any weekend from 2023 which would it be and why?
Going back to the beginning after having lived through so many things could be somehow useful if we could change that which today displeases us saddens us or makes us vulnerable. But think how chaotic the world would be if this were possible. Because each person is a world and not all of them would act for the common good. There would be the selfish ones who, to keep something for themselves, would withhold, overshadow, be the centre of some situation and deprive many others of their freedom and happiness. The latter, however, would have the same power and would go to save themselves, or to save others, or would lash out against those who wanted to suffocate them... this is just to give an example, but you can think carefully about all the combinations that can exist, and there are many, depending on the values and thoughts of each one. Of course, this is not possible. And how much wisdom there is in this Universe to not allow us to change what we have lived, isn't it?
On the contrary, we are given the possibility to be creators of our destiny, we are given the possibility to live as we want to live and with each step, we are also presented with challenges. Even here we can choose to stumble over the same stone again, or learn and avoid that stumble or fall. There are so many paths and each one has its own, emotion, mystery, nostalgia, sadness, happiness, and learning.
We are also given the possibility of reliving moments, in our mind, caressing them and being happy because we can keep them there, intact. We can even put a little more magic into remembering them, and we add details or think about what we missed doing or saying, and think maybe about how it would have been that way.
So I would go back right to the beginning of 2023. I looked at the calendar and it was December 31, 2022, on a Saturday. Sunday was New Year's Day and my parents, my sister, my nephew, Chanel (my little dog) and I were together.
I wouldn't change a thing. Everything was perfect. I was so happy because of so many things and among them because my sister was going to live a new life in another country.
So many laughs, and so many jokes, and I was like in a big hug with love and family.
I'm back, I'm there now and I'm looking at every detail: my father's house, which belonged to my grandparents, and which he and his brothers built for them with so much love so that they would have comfort in their last years of life. Well arranged, impeccably clean, with new curtains that my cousin put up to welcome us. He always jokes and tells us to enjoy the hotel.
Yes, it is the grand suite of my fondest childhood memories. And when I look next to that masonry house, I see the modest little house of palm boards and guano that preceded it. That place is empty, the cement floor remains and nature has been swallowing it up, but I see the house with its single-pane windows, wide open, the clay jar where the water was kept, and every piece of furniture it had inside; every little detail, like the oilcloth on the table and the pretty glasses and ceramic plates that my grandmother kept in a cupboard or display case.
I would go back to that weekend to stand in the middle of that space where the house used to be and remember with a smile on my face all the mischief my cousins and I got into, and the happy face of my grandmother Mulata that will never be erased from my mind. She would make the cutest gesture when I would suddenly arrive and hug her. She also scolded me one day because I escaped from the house at dawn, I jumped out of a window, but before that, I left an iron fan she had, on my bed, covered with the sheets, and it leaked grease in that neatness. What a horror, I imagine that those sheets could never be white again.
Of course, being there, maybe I would like to jump to one of those weekends to be with her and my grandfather Torombo, who sat on a stool, leaning against the wall, like a good guajiro, and laughed and told stories. But I know, that before I leaped, my sister would pull me by the arm to make me stay at the beginning of 2023. It was perfect, did I say it? A weekend to remember, to share, to enjoy again that countryside smell that is not just any countryside smell, it is the smell of Pilotos, the smell of my father's house.
I would go to live it all as I lived it and with that experience other new and pleasant emotions that arose from a great discovery, things that have changed over time and perhaps even end up disappearing, but so much joy, so much magic that surrounded me and made me levitate yes it would be great to live it again.
Now I return to my reflection on life: nothing is immutable. Life happens, and things change. We can go back and relive in our mind, but we have walked many roads in a year already and we have to decide whether to move forward or stay stuck in what we dislike or sadden us or make us vulnerable, as I said at the beginning. I think that these are the days to take stock, these are important dates in which the best thing to do is to wrap ourselves in the mantle of love and family, change for the better and welcome 2024 with renewed wings and well-disposed to undertake other flights.
