Letters to the Editor: The Passage of Time

Today I’m 80 years old, eating tacos and still not fully aware of what that means. The feeling that the birthday boy is someone other than the one I am secretly observing grows stronger. It is the dissociation between the continent and the content that makes us spectators of our … own life. Sitting in the front row of a play whose script was written, better or worse, by an unknown person. Attentive and anxious, we wait patiently to see what is interesting in the future of the series and how the actor manages to keep the staff attentive and interested. This dissociation of body and mind, of observer and observed, into which we slowly but inexorably fall, and which allows us to move away from the decrepitude of an increasingly damaged body, is a wonderful mechanism which, if it did not function properly, would lead us to an unacceptable situation. As long as consciousness, this ability to perceive one’s own existence, thoughts, emotions and sensations, remains intact over time, the material it brings to us can become bearable, even interesting, even if for some more than others, there is no doubt about it. Everything will depend on the capacity for renunciation and acceptance of the role of observers that life offers us at this stage. The time of protagonists is over and there is no choice but to accept secondary roles with Franciscan humility. Our greatest aspiration should be to go unnoticed. That our presence is diluted and, above all, that they leave us to our own devices, apparently stupid and helpless. That, even if we become more useless every day, our intention is to disappear, to become invisible, so that when we undertake the journey of no return, the little world we left behind does not collapse and everything remains the same even if it has changed. It is said that no one dies completely if they are remembered, even briefly. The bad or good actions that we leave imprinted in our memory, over the years, will be the only thing that will attest to our existence so we hope that they will be remembered with kindness.

Manuel Soriano. Valence

Another great evening!

Last night, December 7, I was on a pilgrimage from Moncloa to Atocha – the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians – for the Vigil of the Immaculate Conception. Seeing so many crowds in the streets like those in the Gospel “like sheep without a shepherd”, he remembered Raphael’s famous song “this can be my big night!” And it was he who made the darkness disappear by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, illuminating through a radiant star: the Immaculate, the all-holy, the sinless. Thanks to Her, sin does not have the last word, evil has been defeated, despair has become Hope. And all this because thanks to his “Yes” – as the motto of this vigil says and which we sing throughout the ceremony – he placed us next to his Son. Thank you, you brought us Christmas forward with this joyful presence.

Jose Antonio Benito. Madrid.