Stop Fighting. Give up!

The greatest tragedy in life is choosing not to be happy

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

Swelling up with pride, arrogance and self-sufficiency and wanting to fight against the inevitable is an extraordinary waste of time. Life is tragic.

Dreams, desires and personal goals commit suicide and/or die. There are people who choose to enter the darkness of not knowing, and death is the end and there is nothing to do once it comes.

Life is inevitable, as is death. But telling each other about our passing existence leaves us with some lessons that are worth going through. And believe it or not, sharing leaves a light of hope, dim, almost invisible, but only evident if we want to see it.

Our spiritual life can commit suicide. When we forget about it, we cut it off as if we cut off our primal ability to breathe.

But death is not the end, nor is it definitive, and to avoid it, all you have to do is talk and ask for help. Nothing more, nothing less. And, sometimes is almost impossible. So… What to do? Understand that spiritual life has a trajectory, as life itself:

Birth: the garden of the earth is filled with fine and mysterious lives. Thus, mysteriously we come to life. Where we come from? Where are we going? We also ask ourselves the same thing and many times we do not get an answer.

Childhood: our childhood is pure future and instinct. Everything is almost illusion or dream to imagine. Little by little we are also entering the land of men and things become clearer and the horizon get smaller. We are growing -with the good and the bad that this entails.

Adolescence: blows, shocks, responsibilities and problems arrive like gray icebergs from an unknown sea. And suddenly: sksksksk! We are full of compromises and doubts.

Youth: Our instinct is to go out and earn a living, to fight, to win, to get what we need, to work. We descend into the mud of the daily battle and there it is either lost or won, it is difficult to tie. But we always need to return to the origin, to that mystery of life, to talk to the Author so that he can help us in the battle. Night is usually the time we do that.

Adulthood: The successes arrive, small at first, but they warm the ego. Still young, we still do not forget the origin and the need to return there at night and rest our souls.

Old age: Then come other major successes. What is concrete, what is logical is a good safeguard for daily basis. But the biggest successes make us doubt about the origin and spiritual things. We need very concrete things. These satisfy us, we like them, they give us pleasure and fun. We are happy, but exhausted. The day to day happens to monopolize our whole life. And we forget the origin. We only think about what is useful.

Death arrives. Self-satisfaction, arrogance and pride, selfishness, comfort and excesses challenge us and make us think. If we seriously reflect, we would realize what is truly important, even if it seems useless. But no, many times we choose inertia, out of laziness, fear or hypocrisy. That fatal day, the day of death, we cut the thread. We alone, because we are alone, and we do not ask for help. Because we are right or wrong and we don’t need anyone but ourselves. That’s how we end.

Two things can be done to counteract the inevitable. On the one hand, be open to help, to let yourself be helped and thus save your life. On the other hand, open yourself to love, to the sublime love to accompany you. Let yourself be helped and be loved.

These two things can be done and not many do, and that’s why they die.

Every time I think about death I remember Jorge Manrique’s Verses on the Death of His Father:

Arouse the sleeping soul,

revive the brain and wake up

contemplating

how life passes

how death approaches

so quietly;

how quickly pleasure leaves;

how, after we recall it,

it gives us pain;

how it seems to us

any past time

was better.

Death comes so quietly, but we don’t realize that life is also quieting us down, little by little, losing it, wasting time, not asking for help. Thus we cut the thread that unites us to Life. And slowly, our own choices close like a fatal trap on us and we die.

Do not choose claustrophobic and selfish loneliness. Do not live as solitary beings who speak only to themselves. Ask for help, yell if necessary.

The great news is that we are alive, but maybe something inside us is broken, split or dead. Perhaps our spirit is disintegrating on earth, already lifeless, on this black day of death, tragic. And it seems that there is nothing left to do.

But no! While there is life, there is hope, Roberto Canessa, one of the survivors of the Miracle of the Andes, told me that once: While there is life, there is hope!! And here we are all alive. We must have the full, total and absolute hope that we will get to see a Sunday without sunset, a Sunday of light.

I still have to get through Saturday. What is this Saturday that many won’t see? Saturday is a day of trial, of transit, of passing from death to life, of change and transformation. Saturday is difficult, but you can walk in community, you walk with others, accompanied and accompanying.

Many don’t get to see it because they choose to die first. They don’t see that day because they don’t want anyone to attend, because they don’t talk to anyone, they want to fight against the Author.

To arrive to the glorious Sunday it is necessary to spend the mysterious Saturday. Friday of death, Saturday of mystery, Sunday of glory. The most beautiful thing about tomorrow, if today we choose to revive our spirit, is that we will go through it together with the owner of Saturday, with the Lord of Saturday.

We have our hope set on Sunday. That day is a holiday, a day of celebration.

If we give up we’ll enter our intimacy and that of the mystery. This is a commitment and implies a change, the change of communion, the common union. We have to be willing to change. I cannot make communion without dying, without dying to my own criteria, to my own way of looking at things.

We cannot enter into the intimacy of the other without a deep adherence of the heart. Entering there is putting all that is mine at the disposal of the other and all that is of the other at my disposal.

Pride, arrogance, vanity, envy, jealousy, selfishness are not compatible with intimacy. None of these things allow us to enter into true intimacy. Today we celebrate, we celebrate with pain a Friday of death, of total failure. Today we spit on the truth, we flagellate it, we slap it, we make fun of it… we kill it. The TRUTH with capital letters cannot die because it is eternal and yet it dies. A scandal.

Don’t our falsehoods disguised as half-truths have to die? “I can do it alone” “I’m fine” “I don’t need anything or anyone” “Tomorrow” “Everything is fine”… This is how a house of cards is built on our excesses.

Today we can make a decision, on this day. We can die to ourselves in order to live in intimacy with others and with the TRUTH. The key to living in love is in our hands, on the inside of the heart and it depends, today, only on us to open that door to be soaked by love, compassion and joy. Therefore…

Let us dare today to let ourselves die to our finite and biased desires.

Let us encourage ourselves today to let ourselves be surprised by Truth and Love.

Let us encourage each other to walk together.

Let us encourage ourselves to fully live this moment, this day. Here, now, us.

Let us be encouraged to be in solidarity with others and invite them to the intimacy of the heart and enter carefully, barefoot of prejudices, in the intimacy of the other that is sacred ground.

Let’s encourage ourselves to give thanks for everything.

Perhaps today our eyes will open and we will discover that we are with a completely naked soul and we want to make a loincloth to cover it and not let anything be seen because we are ashamed, very ashamed to show ourselves as we are. And perhaps our reaction will be to hide out of fear if we hear the voice inside us that is looking for us and asks us: Where are you?

Perhaps we have fear or shame or some other feeling that does not allow us to enter intimacy today in this place. Let’s not be afraid. There is nothing to fear.

We start a path together towards Sunday of light, full of hope. When we hear the voice that asks us “Where are you?” Let us be attentive and listening to be able to respond with sincerity and openness.