I must admit that the fault was mine with my worried head and its cumbersome questions.
Some context: Due to the current situation in my country, Venezuela, which has led to the massive emigration of young people seeking for a good life abroad, my fellas and I have had to limit our nightly enjoyment to simple meetings in the square of our urbanization.
We are something like "the last men standing" here in our residence. What we do is sit down, music on loudspeakers, internet, with one or two of the pirates' yaaargh! to stimulate the senses and dedicate ourselves to telling stories for the rest of the night, until our kidneys give up.
Normally we spent the night remembering old days when everything was simpler and we had fewer worries, but this time something happened that changed the theme of the night... And we would not leave our deliberations until we began to feel how our conscience vanished and we agreed to head home and faint in peace.
I think it all began with a question that was asked, I do not remember quite well... It must have been something like: "Why do I have the feeling that we aren't good for anything?"
One of us looks at the questioner with a poker face and says: "Bro, it is just the first round and you are already fucking shit up"
And from there we would enter into a philosophical discussion that would address issues of the nature of man, the origin of good and evil, death, the values of society, the oppression of the system, how difficult it is to do the right thing, little that we interested women (how to blame them), among other things...
Actually, we were willing to be honest with each other. At times we cry because we are alone in this world, next we burst out laughing because we were crying like little bitches, and then open another session of crying because, well, the first one felt good.
And so it would be until we tire our spirits laden with emotions previously held back, and end the night in a state of contemplation similar to the liberating effect of a therapy.
As we went from one topic to another, the issue got heated when we saw that we got drunker, but not wiser, and our positions were so different and so insignificant at the same time.
It is not the first time this happens to us, we knew that nothing would be different the next day, but once the gathering began, all the other topics (TV series, music, movies, events, etc.) were in the background to make way for the more problems rooted in our spiritual uncertainty.
Will we ever know peace? Will we ever really get to understand each other? What good is so much intellect and shit if we can not even agree with each other?
What are you going to do, change the world? Things are just the way they are, the human being is a beast, like the others, we are a pest and things will never change, we only have to thank that we are not going hungry in South Africa and we do not have to be killing anyone on a daily basis.
What the fuck are you saying, how can you be so cynical, so there is nothing you can do? What good is it to live then? Why don't you better go and hang yourself directly? Why wait for death, isn't it better to go ahead and do it yourself, isn't that less humiliating?
Suicide is cowardly, what good would that do to me? That would only fuck more the existence of my loved ones.
Oh, you have loved ones...Weren't you a pest, an animal like the others, incapable of love?
Look man, I do not agree with war, but it has always existed, it is in our nature. I do not know if it can be avoided, but I'm not going to waste my life finding out.
You see that you are a coward!
Me: It is not natural to know death at such a close range... We are not natural, but we can not separate ourselves from nature... We only get to contemplate it in its brutality and in its beauty with these conscient, special heads of ours... I don't know if it is a blessing or a curse to see things so closely (and, paradoxically, we see them at a greater distance than the animals without conscience do, they are limited to just live it)
Why don't you better go and serve another round before you start with your Paulo Coehlo shit.
And so we continued to hit the kidney until it went to the mat.
We mourn the people we have lost... But not because they have died, not because we feel sorry for them, we feel sorry for ourselves, we will continue in the fight of life without being able to see them, without being able to talk or hear of them anymore.
I do not know what message my friends took with them, I know we said goodbye with laughter, as always. But if anything was left of this atypical meeting with my helpless companions in our abandonment, is that we have no choice but to find out the answers on our own, and maybe, if we search hard enough, we can say on our deathbed...
