When these lines see the light, in digital or printed format, already the new 2021 will have a few weeks, perhaps months, between us. This year brings, ballast of the previous or other lives, hard pitfalls and reefs. However, from hope and from that human capacity to seek the best in the face of the adverse, the cycle also brings its dose of struggle and confidence. It may be possible to glimpse or even bring some better horizons closer.
First, the severe grief with the covid-19 epidemic continues to live. This disease, in an unppealing way, has demonstrated the smallness and fragility of human beings in the face of nature. A tiny but terrible virus has doubled the arrogant homo sapiens. The same one who conquers cosmic space and makes smart weapons at the cost of billions of dollars to exterminate, has now been relegated to locking himself in their homes and enc fenced by death. Reality showed that all the science and technology that our species exhibits today, so easily used to make bombs or dirty the planet, needs time and joint efforts to then be able to fight to save lives. I hope we learn our lesson.
Either way, and being optimistic, some forecasts suggest that maybe in the summer or something beyond the middle of the year, we might return to normal. Whether from our vaccine candidates or from some other foreign medicine, the pandemic that has brought so many sadness and limits to us seems to be finally defeated. That encouragement must prompt us to resist the time we have left, without neglecting prevention and taking all measures, until we can be immunized.
Our country, on the other hand, is entering into major changes in the economic sphere. The attempt to return to more or less normal channels a battered economy, blocked from the outside and also very bloodied by domestic errors, is a priority. We will have to correct the rudder in full gear and, above all, listen to people. At least there were receptive ears and changes in the face of the great discontent brought by the electric tariff, among other prices of various places and products, which had been planned for the new year. While not all established measures seem the most appropriate, despite being widely analysed, at least the attitude of hearing and rectifying is a good precedent and a sign of respect for the people.
The political environment, with a new administration in the White House, also preludes some relief in our courses. While the US government will not change its usual ideals, mechanisms and objectives towards Cuba, unless there is dialogue, taking up the paths of understanding and relations between our two countries would already be a step forward. A less frispid environment translates into greater possibilities for exchange, whether economic, academic, scientific or sporting, among others, and, above all, better family relationships and fewer obstacles to harmony and peace.
In intramurals, it should be a meridian objective to banish aberrant formulas such as unqualified media disqualifications or vulgar and facistoid repudiations for those who hold critical voices. My generation, just by setting an example, grew up educated under the example that our mambises and rebels, after a fight, healed wounded enemies first and dispensed respectful treatment to their prisoners. If our project is supposedly fairer, more humanistic, but not exempt, of course, from mistakes and completely susceptible to criticism and improved, how then to soil it with actions of such low moral catharcy? Those were not the legacies and honors we learned from our neighbors. Strength is the right of beasts. Change, of all that must be changed, is the most revolutionary and cutting-edge thing that a society must practice. If valid, political creeds and ideological platforms of a system must defend themselves in the field of thought, dialogue and not infamy. That rude, deaf and one-sided Cuba, exploited by a few who hide their opportunism under the guise of extreme fervor, is not the one dreamed of by those who shed blood, sweats and weeping for it. Much less is what we all want here, under the still irrefutable aegis martiana, we continue to kneel on the ground for the common good.
In the midst of such circumstances, a thought must be defended. The pandemic, it is true, brought sadness, death and sometimes brutal changes in our lives, actions and labors. The economy is a demented and aggressive hydra that bites us daily with a new head, even if we can close with an intelligent solution or with pure resistance some other. Politics often separates compatriots or families and even brings with it the offense or brutal act of war or governmental, in order to defend their causes. However, there are other faces, paths, truths, that we must enhance and defend.
The pandemic also sharpened our wits or made heroes to many who have assumed their duties with fortitude and total sacrifice. Perhaps in the worst way, we learned that a doctor is more valuable and important than a millionaire and famous footballer. There are galleons, scientists, health personnel or simple people, who care for a sick person, fight for a vaccine or solve a plate of food to an old man alone. There are the artists, writers, creators, without whose works the lockdown would have been irresistible. That grain of sand that everyone contributed to alleviate the hardest moments, is the same one that is needed now from each of us, to advance in tight beam.
The economy must also be channelled by the effort that we all think and defend our rights better and fulfill our duties. In the early moments of change, it is visible that there are people betting on finding a job; that the rating and effort of years of study to draw up scales and payments has been taken into account; and that despite ups and exploits, at least one important first step has already been taken. These good attitudes, which we all carry, but sometimes only emerge in the face of evil or extreme need, are what we must now enhance and turn into plural thought, a collective soul, a duty to one’s neighbour.
If for once humanity were able to fulfill the old judgment of treating the other as oneself, progress would be astonishing. The idea and exhortation to think as a country (unfortunately back slogan for many and used even for crazy and unfulfilled purposes), has a much simpler, more comprehensive and profound translation than mere ideological or political support. Assuming that this idea means, first and foremos than thinking about the other, one clarity expands and solidifies.
Thinking about each other, accepting it, helping them, also making their ideas, paths and dreams possible, is a way to contribute equally to their own paths and dreams. To think of the other is to keep in mind that our work, whether in front of a quartet, behind the wheel of a bus, the post of an agro or the window of a public service, has its fruit and destination in another. Whoever reads to us, to whom we sell or transport or facilitate a management, is like yourself. If we do our thing right, if we treat it and serve it well, that same treatment and service we must receive.
We know it sounds like utopia. We know that outside, day by day someone intends, not to help but to take advantage of others. So is today’s world where it’s amazing, almost a joke at times, to defend and enunciate the pretence of doing good and where it seems silly or alien who do it. However, it was utopia that once made us descend from a tree, seek tools and shelters, till the earth, and try, in the plural, among all, to have a better life. In the new year, in the face of very old but always renewed stingers, there is nothing left but to premiere, again, a new optimism and add the optimisms of others. Collective utopia, our daily human utopia, still has its way ahead. But fates, the martyred destinies tilled by all and for the good of all, are known to exist. We have to walk to make them as good as possible. Ω
palabranueva@ccpadrevarela.org
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