The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [96]
This dreamseller’s contagious ideas taught us not to deny who we really are. His ideas were an antidote; before meeting him, we had all been “normal,” and we had all been sick. We wanted in some form or another to be gods, not knowing that being a god means having to be perfect, to worry about our image in society, to give too much importance to the opinions of others, to demand too much of oneself, to punish oneself, to make constant demands of ourselves. We had lost the joy, the simplicity of being. We were brought up to work, to grow, to progress, and unfortunately also to betray our very essence in our short time in existence.
What kind of a madhouse are we living in?
If I Could Turn Back Time
INSPIRED AFTER REVEALING AND INTERPRETING THE STORY of the house, the dreamseller offered his final ideas. Once again he recited poetry in the desert, when his lips still thirsted. He looked out into emptiness, as if on another plane, and displayed an intimate relationship with a god I didn’t know. Forgetting that he stood before the large stadium crowed, he called out:
“God, who are you? Why do you hide your face behind the curtain of time and why won’t you help cure my foolishness? I lack wisdom, as you well know. With my feet I walk on the surface of the ground, but with my mind I walk on the surface of knowledge. I am too prideful if I think I know anything about this world. And even when I admit I know nothing, it’s my pride that allows me to admit I know nothing.”
He lowered his eyes, glanced at the leaders who hated him, then at the audience, and delivered a philosophical speech that stealthily penetrated the depths of our being.
“Life is very, very long for making mistakes, but frighteningly short for living. And being aware of that brevity erases my mind’s vanity and makes me see that I’m simply a wanderer who is nothing more than a flicker in this existence, a flash that dissipates with the first rays of light. In that brief time between flickering and dissipating, I seek to find who I am. I’ve looked for myself in many places, but I found myself in a place without a name, in the place where jeers and applause are all the same, the place where no one can enter without our permission, not even ourselves.
“Oh, if I could only go back in time! I would achieve less power and have more power to achieve. I would drink a few doses of irresponsibility, position myself less as a problem-solving machine and give myself permission to relax, to think about the abstract, to reflect on the mysteries that surround me.
“If I could go back in time, I would find the friends of my youth. Where are they? Which of them are still alive? I would seek them and relive the uncomplicated experiences plucked from the garden of simplicity, where there were no weeds of status or the seduction of financial power.
“If I could go back, I would call the woman in my life, the love of my life, during breaks in meetings. I would try to be a more distracted professional and a more attentive lover. I would be more good-natured and less pragmatic, less logical and more romantic. I would write silly love poems. I would say ‘I love you’ more often. I would acknowledge freely, ‘Forgive me for trading you for business meetings! Don’t give up on me.’
“Oh, if only I could fly on the wings of time! I would kiss my children more, play with them more, enjoy their childhood the way dry soil absorbs water. I would go out into the rain with them, walk barefoot on the grass, climb trees. I would be less afraid that they would hurt themselves or catch cold and more afraid that they’d be contaminated by this society. I would try less to give them the world, and harder to give them my world.”
Beholding the magnificent stadium, its intricate columns, its expansive roof, its plush seating, he continued, intensely touched:
“If I could go back in time, I would give every penny I had for one more day with them, and I would make that day an eternal moment. But they went away, and the only voices I hear are those that remain hidden