We walk through life on a trampoline. That’s the way it is. There is no way to live without falling, getting up, balancing and moving on. Things do not calm down – they come and go unsteadily. Hands sometimes clench, sometimes pull triggers. Sometimes we want more, and other times nothing is lacking. In love we feel whole, and soon after, incomplete. Problems bother us like a swarm of insects, but positive emotions and dreams equally get us off track.
Despite the ups and downs of this road of surprises, we keep believing in a firm and definitive floor, a life eternally beautiful, clear, serene, and happy. We dream of a place where our uncertainties and conflicts cease completely.
Why does it seem like common sense that such a place exists?
Throughout the ages, the image of the ideal place has been created as if a paradise could be found on a map. This paradise is on posters, magazines, screens with beaches of white sand and blue sea. However, to paraphrase the poet Drummond [1], we are left without knowing if this address exists “to be catch”.
It certainly exists, but it is the opposite of the glamorous image of eternal vacations. It has the simplicity and warmth of a village, an infinite village, radically different in everything, radiant, to be lived day by day. The key to being there is a burning desire to reach the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of oneself. There the deep conflict we carry within, our chaos, is appeased.
However, don’t think that you will reach it by the next flight or by a paved road. Not at all. You will have to take the path of the stars – and it is even more unstable than where you are now. And more promising too.
Walking on the path of the stars
The path of the stars is a thread that crosses a chasm connecting what you have been to what you are meant to be. You can’t see its end, and you know that you will spend many nights on this lonely crossing that connects you to your other You.
Any carelessness on this long road can bring you down, and you will have to recompose yourself if you want to start over.
For each step, you will need to stand on one foot at a time, while the other foot will wander without support. The string will sway because of your movements and your weight, and you will need to spread your arms to balance the whole body on one foot. Seen from afar, with your arms spread, your head erect, one leg on the string and the other stretched out, the truth is revealed subtly: you yourself are the becoming of a star.
You strive because you don’t want to be a shooting star. You want to be the star that will dance triumphantly on arrival.
There may be wind, cold, hunger, fear of the abyss and the dark. You will persist. You will overcome your vertigo and the internal obstacles. How much insecurity! You will win because you know that each step ahead will be an overcoming towards a new and overflowing being, the one that will have transformed your own consciousness.
The overcoming will come from your strength, from the impulse and the advance.
And, in front of you, you will see the star you yourself have brought to light, and which will give the birth cry in the here and now.
Reference:
[1] ANDRADE, Carlos Drummond de. Um Chamado João (1967). Available at http://memoria.bn.br/pdf/089842/per089842_1967_22894.pdf. Accessed 22 December 2022.
