The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [83]
He explained that parents too often pressured their children to compete, to study incessantly, to take courses, to prepare themselves to survive in the future, without realizing that excessive pressure annihilates the creativity of childhood. It weakens existential values, closes them to new experiences, destroys their humanity.
“Do your children know about the failures in your lives?” he asked. “Do they know how you overcame them? Do they know your fears and your worries? Do they know how courageous you’ve been? Have they explored your most important ideals? Do they know your philosophy on life, about your ability to reason, to analyze, to reflect? And have they seen your tears? Forgive me, but if they don’t know any of this, then you’re simply building machines to be used by the system. If they don’t know these things, they’re missing out on their humanity. And you’re ignoring the very reason our brains made us dependent.”
Then he said something that really unsettled the crowd.
“For just thirty seconds,” he said, “put yourself in your children’s place and think about the epitaphs they would write for the entrance to your tomb.”
The suggestion alone sent many people into a nervous breakdown.
I would hate to know what my son would write about me. He doesn’t know me. I always hid from him. “How can someone living at the edge of society carry around this knowledge? What motivates him? What secrets is he hiding?” I thought.
Finally, the dreamseller took aim at his real target.
“The capitalist system brought about, and continues to bring about, unimaginable gains for society. But it runs a serious risk of imploding in less than a century. Maybe in just a few decades. But it won’t happen the way socialists imagine, through class warfare. There is a problem that lies at its core: It produces freedom of expression and possession, but not freedom of simply being. Capitalism depends on our wants, not on our needs. It depends on chronic dissatisfaction as its engine for consumption. If at some point in time humanity were composed only of poets, philosophers, artists, educators and spiritual leaders, the world’s gross domestic product would collapse, because, in general, these people are more satisfied with just what is necessary. The GDP might suddenly drop thirty or forty percent. Worldwide, hundreds of millions would be unemployed. It would be the greatest depression in history. There would be wars and endless conflicts.”
These arguments left some in the audience with jaws agape. The businessmen hadn’t thought of that. But then, he started to sell the dream of relaxation.
“Getting back to the symptoms I asked you about, I’m going to ask one more question, and if you answer collectively I’ll invite you to open a psychiatric hospital.”
The audience actually laughed.
“Who among you is forgetful? Who has memory lapses?”
Almost everyone raised his hand. They would forget commitments, everyday information, telephone numbers, where they had put items, people’s names.
“Some people are so forgetful that they put their car keys in the refrigerator and look for them all over the house,” he said casually. People laughed. And he went on: “Even funnier are the ones who look for their glasses without realizing they’re wearing them. Others forget the names of colleagues they’ve worked with for years. The cleverest would ask, ‘Say, what’s your full given name?’ when in reality they didn’t even remember their first name.”
Some of the businessmen chuckled because they had used that tactic. I suspect that even the dreamseller had used it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for those everyday memory lapses, don’t go to a doctor. Why not, you ask?” he asked.
“Because he’s forgetful himself!” yelled out an older man wearing a blue suit and striped gray tie.
They shook their heads at their own stressful lives. They were beginning to understand that the memory lapses, in most cases, were a desperate attempt by the brain to reduce the avalanche of worries.
Bartholomew had raised both hands,