SITTING BY THE WAY

 SITTING BY THE WAY

I can't wait here anymore

That one day suddenly you come back to me

I see trucks and cars rushing past me

I'm sitting on the edge of a path that has no end

My gaze is lost in the dust of this sad road

Where sadness and longing for you still exist

This sun that burns a remnant of hope on my face

To at least see your look up close that I remember

I need to get this over with

I need to remember that I exist, that I exist, that I exist

Erasmo Carlos was an excellent poet. He left us beautiful compositions, where he spoke mainly about love. Both the one that soothed us, requited love, and the one that tore our being apart, the end of a relationship. Sitting by the Wayside belongs to this second group, of course... but it talks about more than the end of a love relationship. He speaks of the hopelessness that settles in our being when we feel our world crumbling. He speaks of the sadness that takes over our soul, making us unable, at least for a while, to react against the adversities of life. And they are many...

If we're going to think about life, we're going to discover that we're sitting by the side of the path longer than desirable, watching the flow of life pass us by. We are awake, but static, watching life flow minute by minute around us and not knowing exactly how we should react... because life is dynamic and doesn't have time to wait for us to decide what to do in the face of the situations we go through.. It's clear that if the moment we're going through is favorable for us, it's much easier to have a reaction and move on. Even so, if we analyze it coldly, we will discover that in the game of life, even having the best cards in our hands, we often end up losing the game for fear of taking risks... yes, having a good game in our hands is no guarantee of success. in our endeavor, as we have many variants on the game table, and most of them do not depend on our will to resolve. You see, I'm talking about life as a whole. Family, friends, professional career, social life... at this moment, I am encompassing everything that is part of our destiny. And that's where we find life's first mishap... our first discovery is that, in addition to the fact that there is no free will - we are not masters of our destiny at all - on top of that we don't belong to ourselves... everything we do or we stop doing it depends on the seal of the community that lives around us. The group to which we belong designed what they think should be the way we should live every minute... how we should dress, behave... and if by chance we don't match the image made by the group, we should be prepared to pay the price for our rebellion... it is clear that for some elements life becomes easier than for others, which makes the illusion of free will stronger. But those who manage to fulfill some of their desires - those who flee the group's canons - usually do so by taking two steps forward and one step back... that is, if they don't have the wisdom to step back at the right moment, to preserve the small advance they had, they will surely end up losing all their progress... and then they will go back to square one and have to restart the whole journey, repeating steps already taken before, just like Sisyphus with his stone on the mountain...

Maybe that's why we prefer to stay on the side of the road, hoping that a miracle will happen and suddenly all our problems will simply disappear. But of course that will never happen, because as I said, society expects us to fulfill our role... and we must religiously follow the script given to us, because they are controlling us from the backstage, ready to point out the mistakes of our actions in the stage of life. And the show cannot stop... after all, there are other actors acting alongside us, and the success of their presentation depends, and a lot, on our performance... that is, we are not only responsible for our actions, we are also responsible for the success or failure of the actors who are acting alongside us. Of course, the greatest responsibility is theirs, but if we have a poor performance in a given scene, we also compromise the performance of others... and that is unacceptable, from every possible point of view.

In short... we are not masters of our destiny. We do what we have to do, what the group determined our role would be. We have the illusion of being in control of our lives, but when we sit on the edge of the stage and start to analyze our actions, we discover that we are nothing more than puppets controlled by society, doing what we are told to do... even when we think we are. following our own convictions... just like a laboratory rat, crossing the paths of the labyrinth set up by scientists, to check the animal's reactions to each obstacle placed in its path...

It's 7:50 am on this cloudy Friday, where the thermometers are currently showing 20ºC, although the thermal sensation is of a lower temperature... I'm cold now... the forecast is that we will reach 31ºC during the course of the day, but due to the relative humidity of the air, it is very likely that the sensation will fall far short of this prognosis...

May God grant us the most beautiful of all Fridays that we have ever experienced in our lives, and may we manage to achieve even a small portion of success in our endeavor on that day... may God bless us all, and see you tomorrow, if he allows it...