2023-09-05 04:49:00
A child is a blank sheet. From his birth, the first page of the book of his existence begins. Those who write it are most often the father and mother. And, due to things in life, sometimes other people who, willingly or not, assume the role of parents. Grandparents, uncles, godparents, foster mothers, false fathers, whose hand does not tremble to take the pencil and start writing a new story.
Later, everything will be revealed regarding who or who writes those first lines: waiting, love, tenderness, generosity, care, stimulation, playful spirit, ambitions, security, but also neglect, heartbreak , annoyance, resentment and, even in extreme cases, hatred.
That page alone tells us a lot regarding the person that being will become. The ink used in those first lines seems, in many cases, impossible to erase, although some special people are capable of eliminating all traces of indifference and hatred, and they themselves rewrite the last lines of that page. You know, the power of memory is very strong.
With the passage of time, we see how that first page reappears over and over once more in each existence; how the lights and shadows of souls have that tonality imposed in the first years of life. Some are lucky enough to rewrite their origin, to choose other colors, without tearing that sheet off. Others never find those first pages of the book of their lives and only continue a story from day to day. And they are capable of writing wonderful life stories.
Most of them have memorized those first lines, like the children’s songs that we have not forgotten, and they never seem to want to go beyond that, because the colors and the love with which their parents wrote those first lines are delicate and sweet that no one else wants to forget They are the ones who were expected, loved, cared for, pampered. Of those whose parents preferred to always see the little and defenseless child who would never stop needing them.
They are those happy spirits and adults happy with themselves. That they read and reread that page and see all the love and care they enjoyed, and that for the most part fades smoothly to reappear pages later, when they are the ones who have in their hands the task of writing the history of their children.
And then those new parents will carefully and patiently choose the words, colors, commas and full stops in their children’s story. They will have the responsibility of choosing whether to pass a line and give air to the story. Whether to write with a pencil, to erase what doesn’t work, or whether to write with ink deciding not to reread what was written for fear of regretting it, as their parents did.
The book of life continues with several more chapters: adolescence; youth; coming of age, which is not the same as maturity, since some people never reach it; adulthood, the age that extends the longest and that writes the greatest number of pages, and finally old age, in which sometimes –as at the beginning of the story– others take the pencil and write, for better or worse, the Last lines of a life.
Personally, I would prefer to hold the pencil myself and sign the last page in the book of my life in my own handwriting. It’s just that the first page of my book was wonderfully funny.
* Degree in Sociology
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#lines #life
