To live is to coexist | By: Antonio Pérez Esclarín

By: Antonio Perez Esclarin

Human plenitude is only possible in encounter. One becomes a person as a being of relationships. All authentic human life is life with others, it is coexistence. For this reason, we need to move from others to us. The human person is impossible and unthinkable without the other. As Camus said, “happiness alone is impossible.” What is characteristic of the human being, what defines us as persons, is the capacity to love, that is, to relate to others seeking their good, their happiness. What dehumanizes us is living and dying without love.

In order to move forward in Venezuela towards the necessary reconciliation and a respectful and enriching coexistence, we must once and for all overcome the confrontations, threats, insults, lies, and learn to disarm the heart, the word and the gaze. This requires us all to learn not to attack anyone physically, verbally or psychologically, an indispensable requirement for social coexistence. Aggression is a sign of moral and intellectual weakness and violence is the saddest and most inhuman absence of thought. Violence dehumanizes those who practice it and unleashes a logic of ever greater violence. Those who insult, hurt, deceive, offend, persecute and imprison without reason are degraded as persons and cannot contribute to building a just and humane society. Violence is not eradicated because it has been crushed by greater violence. Violence only engenders new violence and aggression. Brave is not the one who offends, threatens, persecutes, hits or dominates another, but the one who is capable of dominating himself and responding to evil with good, to intolerance with respect, to revenge with forgiveness, to hatred with love.

Only those who have a peaceful heart will be able to be peace-sowers and contribute to creating a better Venezuela in the midst of so much violence, injustice and problems. The struggle for peace and justice must begin in the heart of each person. Being peaceful or a peace-builder does not imply adopting passive postures, but rather committing to and fighting non-violently for truth and justice, so that a fraternal Venezuela and a world where the civilization of love begins to germinate is possible. But we will not be able to break the external chains of injustice, violence or misery, if we are not able to break the internal chains of selfishness, hatred, oppression… that enslave the heart. We will not defeat corruption and injustice with hearts attached to wealth, luxury and possessions; we will not build genuine democracy with authoritarian politicians, clinging to power and without a vocation for service; it will be impossible to build a fraternal Venezuela with hearts full of hatred and violence. Hence the urgent need for all of us to begin by disarming the heart.

In order to disarm hearts, it is important that we learn to resolve conflicts through negotiation and dialogue, so that everyone benefits from it, trying to turn aggression into a positive force, a force for creation and cooperation, and not for destruction. The quality of any institution (family, school, society, nation) is not determined by whether or not it has conflicts, but by the way in which it resolves them. A conflict between a couple, when handled with understanding, can strengthen love. A social conflict where the opposing parties try to resolve it peacefully so that everyone benefits, can be an excellent opportunity to advance towards a more humane and fairer society.

In Venezuela, we also need to disarm our gaze so that we do not see ourselves as rivals or enemies, but as fellow citizens and brothers. The true citizen understands that genuine democracy is a poem of diversity and not only tolerates, but celebrates that we are different. Different but equal. Precisely because we are all equal and have the same and absolute dignity, we all have the right to be and think in a different way within, of course, the norms of coexistence that regulate human rights and constitutional frameworks.

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