Stop on the Journey

Apparently, the human being comes to life bringing no information but only a predisposition to learn from the world he or she will explore and discover along their existence. But whether he carries around a loaded parcel of items that is undecipherable or he brings a plain tabula rasa it will take a very long time to understand. Yet both situations occur, it takes the surrounding people a lifespan to get to know him deeply and for him to know himself as much as he would like to. The learning materials that he is induced to acquire, he perceives with or without any possible consent. Educational systems, embedded in a particular socio-economical structure, have been designed to make young people, the newcomers, open their intellectual mouths and ingest the food the previous generation had tasted and established the unavoidable thing to eat. That food is the only available as permitted by the circumstances that have conditioned the previous consumers and forced them to preserve it and convey it to their offspring. But we should also admit that those nutrients are what have allowed them to survive. In fact, in the middle of this dichotomy is where individual and social realities are capable to preserve themselves and become human conveyors of all sorts of supply.

First of all, the individual’s sustenance depends upon his parents’ quantity and quality of the resources they have stored consciously or unconsciously along a period of time running from many years before their child's birth up to a number of years, overlapping the individual's own life time. They may have stored it with no intention of having to share it with the children they still had not procreated, but they may have eventually planned to do so. No matter how successful or failing they may have been before their child’s birth, they would eventually convey the principles that allowed them to develop themselves as individuals. And despite their own convictions regarding the cultural inheritance transmitted to them, that is what most probably they will pass on their offspring. No matter how critical they may be of the way they have internalized, processed, and executed the principles of their culture, their child will have to receive it. Undeniably, the parents' deeds during their existence as a couple, and even as single guys, would determine a life-style which unconsciously proposes a moral slant facing their co-inhabiting in their social context. Every act they execute within the turmoil of a hurried pair of lives will refine with a further nuance the world view that, almost automatically, they will deliver to the new born, the toddler, the teenager, and the youth. Additionally and simultaneously their heir is now carrying the still unexpressed inheritance that will be transmitted to the following receiver, his own child. 

The social lore is the whole patrimony of a plurality of individuals that is conveyed, created and made available so that the successive historical stage will profit, and actuate its own capacities under that prior influence. Paradoxically, the assertiveness of the following generation will depend on how they value the inherited resources as worth transcending. The problem for each generation is how aware its individual members are of the things and actions they carry out daily. Another way of articulating it is how authentically they behave when coming into terms with a response to the given situation, and not merely as a position predetermined by tradition. The responses of tradition normally do not take into account the immediate particular situations. In spite of the guarantee of effectiveness tradition may give for several situations, it is still blind towards the particular vicissitudes experienced by the current generation, and probably inappropriate to the unique reality each one of its members faces.   

People will easily lose sight of the ultimate objectives, both of their society and of each person. Broadly speaking, everybody keeps on running along the tracks they unperceptively have run just until something shocks the existential train they are traveling in. This contingency, as it were, makes you look through the window you have always disregarded. You open it and explore the trackless forest you are going across, see far away, and seem to breathe the fresh air that the window stops from coming in. But you also wonder whether the train will safely bring you to your destination. Then, it seems that every action you have taken so far required an explanation. You need the justification that holds that your position in place and time is as valuable as to serve that ultimate goal. You would like to utter the conclusive account that lets you keep your bearings, so that the continuation of the journey becomes not only necessary but indispensable. That statement becomes a requisite and gets major clarity for the first time. Urgency has made it visible and somehow you desired that such a statement be reachable to your mind.

Did the train shake because of an accident? Or, was it you who, having nap, woke up out of a fit of unquietness finding that nothing changed from the moment you fell asleep? Your reply to it might make you recognize that the journey is not worth continuing, or that the train's destination is not yours. You might even draw your memories since the moment you made the decision to travel, bought the tickets, made sure of the destination, the departure time, the luggage, the weather forecast, etc. As you recall the events that brought you where you are now, you realize that life’s meaning can be shrunk to the simplicity of a coin, through which you either see backwards or ahead? Heads or tail? Where is life? Is it in the things I am experiencing and leaving soon after, or in the desires about a future that favors me? What things can and should be forgotten? Which ones deserve your care so much that you would carry them to the end of your travel? Has what you love and care been left behind? Was it somebody? Whatever the words that resonate in your mind are, do they make you proceed, pull or push you ahead? Where is value? What is the life you try to keep as protected as possible? You find yourself stuck in the middle of the train that has not stopped for a second, despite your introspective exercise towards your existence. The world seems to roll over your existence. The world time seems not to be synchronized with your inner timing made of stretches of patience and hurry. The world's din is able to quieten your inner voice.

In this scenario, making a decision is the most difficult thing to do. A decision is not a mere shifting point, the crossroad at which you can stand and boast to yourself and the others that you have the power of going anywhere and that, because you can choose among several options, those things cannot prevent from depending on your intimidating power. Nope. A decision is the nutshell of your entire future and the beginning of the unforeseen long road towards an end that is dimly perceived by intuition. A decision implies risking on the partly known and partly unknown. A decision is the urgency of time pressing on you, which is the same as saying that the world itself is impeding you from flourishing at your peculiar pace and despite your condition of a humble human. A decision is a serious life determination with the appearance of a game. A decision hides its own consequences until you touch its realization with your own hands. However, in spite of the partial blindness, you start your journey well aware that, in the end, your skin will record the marks of any mistake you might make from now on and that, on the other side, your heart will remain untouched. Hopefully, no principle of which you have been a faithful follower will have eventually been betrayed by indecision, cowardliness, laziness, or selfishness.

We need to be strong, therefore, in order to go along the deliberately chosen road in the wide terrain of life, whether it entails getting off the train immediately or having to follow the way proceeded so far. We need to be clean inside and outside of us, act squarely, and try to remain as illuminated as possible in order to pursue the right decision and not lose sight of the lofty objective your heart and mind have cared so deeply and for so long. Carry on is the conclusion to these lines. Your treasure is within your reach if you have seen clearly, from this spot, what to endeavor to. For at the beginning of a new path, you are able to see which the direction to follow, so that your duty is fulfilled.

A decision is a serious life determination with the appearance of a game.