Misfit lives

Ignacio Escañuela Romana

I imagine that lives should be complete, as a union between the beginning and the end, or as a conclusion that follows the events lived. Something common in literature and cinema. Like climbing through history and showing that nothing is banal, that one learns and achieves results. A Hegelian vision of progress.

But my impression is just the opposite, that human life is unfinished and that the senses are constructed by us. We literally invent them. Well, in any case, I belong to that human typology that is incapable of conclusions and to which the perceived senses seem like another distant galaxy.

All the stories of good and evil, or heroes and villains, or guilt to be reborn or simply to be purged, well: it all seems to me to be a waste of time. I have never found that time puts everything in its place. On the contrary, it disturbs everything that had its place and leaves nonsense in its place. Although, I admit, I admire the integrity of a Marlowe in his search for truth. But so much drama for a long goodbye: that actually happens? If what is real is what we feel, the emotions that rule us.

I suppose it is a pessimistic view of life, as the psychologist tells the father in the film Ordinary People. I seem to be certain that I will never be able to reach any final conclusions. Not even intermediate ones. I think that chance intervenes without taking away the importance of our choices. But often there is no realm of possibility, Groundhog Day is fine because repetition is acceptable. But is it possible to stand up again and again in a world war?

Sometimes I think of all those first loves that remain engraved and surpass the experiences of subsequent ones, as in the last story of James Joyce’s Dubliners. It’s true that I don’t tend to share the conclusion of the character in The Dead: better to pass boldly into the next world at the height of a passion… But life does consume, of course. What happens is that Spinoza’s or Thomas’s attempt drives us forward, in the search for eternity.

In The Little Prince, we are told that the rose on his planet is special because he waters and cares for it. I think he is right about that, but not entirely. I imagine the flower in the middle of the desert, unnoticed by others, that is the subject of Bull Durham (a fantastic film, by the way). Even in the most absolute solitude, in the middle of the dunes, in the whistling silence of the wind and the sand, the fragrance is precious as a fact. I think this is true, I have come to understand it. The meaning is not completely given by others, not even by me, but by existence, yes, this throwing oneself outwards, and the courage in it. So remember Jünger, for courage is a disorder of being. There is something in human defeat, something inevitable, that gives it greatness. At least I would like to think so.