Tag: philosophy

It is no use: either one values what is painful in the past, or one can make little use of it. Time does not return, and it teaches less what requires less effort to absorb. Where it hurts lies an opportunity, and one can only take advantage of the past when one assimilates the paradox of recognizing in it one’s present identity while accepting the part of what was, but is now gone.

Perhaps no more valuable lessons can be learned from life than those that come from intense and prolonged anguish. The moment when this is finally overcome is a milestone, because it usually involves an unusual internal effort. Then comes the effort and the catharsis. The tension eases, a positive feeling emerges, but what happened is not forgotten: it remains a living and authentic learning experience, through which the burden of learning has been felt on the skin

There is something marvelous about these very frequent flashes experienced in the immediate vicinity of death, which spring up as if clarifying the whole life, accompanied by an unprecedented lucidity—unprecedented, just before dying! Rationalizing the phenomenon is pointless, but surely something is happening when the events of a lifetime are finally closed, when they can be connected now that they have taken place, and a final meaning can be inferred. Even the outside observer can see that; but to experience it and feel it, that untranslatable something that transforms and convinces, that pacifies and enlightens, it is a pity that, if it is delayed, in others we can only admire it…

Carrying a doubt for years is a virtue that few possess, and that very few learn to cultivate. And it seems that without it, a true intellectual is not formed. Doubt is an oscillation and also an opening, which is why it differs from certainty, which usually leads to the question being closed. If sustained by a sincere interest, doubt stimulates, and the resulting activity is sometimes more beneficial than finding a possible solution. Dialectical confrontation is the basis of any valuable knowledge; and it seems that, strangely enough, the extension of the former places great value on what can be known.