There is a positive change when one learns to value past experiences without simultaneously feeling the desire to relive them. It could be said that doing so is something like stimulating and appreciating memory, while at the same time blocking out nostalgia. The resulting feeling has no name, but it gives thanks for the experience by putting it in its place. And from this come valuable lessons, the main one perhaps being the notion that there is time for everything to happen. One learns by living, and learning is the recognition that what has been lived has had its place.
The World Leader in Homicides
It seems impossible for contemporary Brazilian literature not to have the tragic notes and gravity that it has historically lacked, now that the country has established itself as the world leader in homicides. To do otherwise would be a death knell for Brazilian literature. If, relatively speaking, Brazil was spared great tragedies in the past, reality is now imposing itself in the form of a humanitarian scandal, so violent that the writer can only consciously ignore it. And to ignore it, of course, would be to betray his profession.
Frequent Contact With Fatalities…
Frequent contact with fatalities, especially those resulting from human brutality, is an element that has a decisive effect on a character. Much of literature and philosophy cannot be properly appreciated if we disregard it. Those who have lived through the horror of a war, for example, see the words acquire a weight that is sometimes difficult to convey, because the seriousness of what is said can only be grasped by those who also grasp the motivating experience, which is partly attainable through imaginative effort, but never as intense as the real thing. There are authors subjected to a dose of bones, blood and misery whose character, if it is strange to us, is a sign that we are not capable of analyzing it.
Man Is Never Given the Chance to Do…
Man is never given the chance to do everything he wants, but equally, he is never denied the chance to act at all. Everything is always between these two extremes and, most of the time, one can do more than one supposes. One cannot, however, act in the past or move forward in time, and such impossibilities often embarrass. Such impossibilities, in fact, can only constrain, and until one learns to despise them, one doesn’t value the much, even the surplus, that one can take advantage of.