Ruminations of a Fool
I believe in God and in having faith. I believe that all the religion in the whole world boils down to one bottom line: that there is someone bigger, cooler and more glam than the rest of us here now and that Catholic, Protestant or Muslim we all believe in that bigger being. I believe that wars in the name of religion are worthless, fraudulent and a total waste of time, money and life; something better may have come out of all that effort had it been exerted into something else.
I believe in freedom, but I don’t consent to it being misunderstood. Freedom is something intangible and real; something more than being able to consume more than what you can handle, being able to buy the latest gadget at your liberty and waste things that ought to have been used better by somebody else. I believe that freedom is something you work hard for and is not something you just get by whining. Men and women who lived before us fought for the right to be born, to live, to speak and be heard, to work with their brothers and sisters of different races, lineages and faith, to vote and be voted, to be members of the same community as the privileged and to be entitled to the same perquisites that any other Pedro, Maria or Juan can afford. This is freedom and I believe in it.
I believe in living for today, in taking chances and in gambling, but definitely not in casinos. To spend the rest of your life worrying over the lines on your face and the money on your pocket is to waste it and let every good thing pass you by. I do not claim to be free from vanity and, yes, I am a victim too of worrying about yesterday, today and tomorrow, but now and then I break the rules and norms of my life, at least I try to if only to keep my sanity. Yes, I believe in breaking the common way of living, in pushing the accelerator way past 180kph now and then in the highway, in sticking your tongue out at the jerk in the bus when he ain’t looking, in drinking straight off the pitcher and being the crazy little bitch that people don’t expect you to be; life isn’t about following what the law book says, it’s about doing what feels right and good without stepping on someone else’s foot.
I believe in beauty and in fairy tales, but, perhaps, not in the proverbial “happily ever after”. There is always the rhetorical question at the end of every storybook ending and the search for the missing link of what happens to Snow White and Cinderella after Prince Charming sweeps ‘em off their feet and takes them riding into the sunset. Somewhere along the way, Charming will come home late one night, drunk and senseless, and the smashing, slim and sweet lady of the story will become a few pounds heavier with a deeper, more volatile temper. The end note is that the sweet always comes hand in hand with the bitter: you’ll never learn to appreciate life as it is if you never see its dark and ugly part.
I believe in love, dear God, don’t we all? I believe that it comes when you least expect it, want it or need it; it comes when you are prepared. It does not cheat or lie: it only speaks the truth, like the magical sitar in Moulin Rouge. It doesn’t give a damn about distance, color or race; it doesn’t even question political beliefs and religion; it opens doors, makes way for compromise and meeting halfway and it nullifies what division does. It goes beyond the extra mile, it exceeds its limitations and it lives beyond life after death. Love, is more than the cherry on top of a sundae, it is everything on it: the ice cream, the syrup, hell, even the cup where it is served.
I am not a beauty queen, a politician or a millionaire-philanthropist, I wouldn’t even pass for a lecturer, much more a prophet, and I have a good guess that nothing I say here and now will ever change the way people feel or think. It’s not that I lack convincing power, well I do and that is another two-pager for another day, so let’s not go into that, but these things that I believe in? A good thirty million of you guys out there probably believe on these same things that I have enumerated and probably some of you, those who have had the opportunity to read what I have to say, are nodding their heads as they go along my simple rubbish. The fact is these things that we know and already understand are sometimes buried so deep within us, that, rather than live these things out, we forget them, perhaps out of fear or worry, I don’t know, maybe even pain.
I am not selling out a new idea and I know that I am never going to profit over what I am saying, what I’m doing is addressing the things that we, scums that we are, forget as we go along the boulevard of life. We all have become quite perverted and although it is not impossible to change the world, it definitely will take more than ten years to achieve that trite line “world peace…”, but we can make day to day living a little more conducive to each other by just looking deep inside us and remembering the things that we learned in kindergarten. I know it’s getting slightly corny and a wee bit cheesy, but, hey, I said these things and I’m proud of it.
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