The end of the year will see us in parties with family and friends. It is something normal as dictated by customs and tradition. But the usual tranquility has been disturbed by a downturn this year not a happy one at all. The world comes to an end.
Yes, the news has occupied headlines in recent months and the polemic is not at all negligible. For some it seems to be a misunderstanding caused by the Mayans and on top, fueled by the usual media rumor against novelty. But for others, although it is amazing-the end is imminent.
If we make a little history we learn that the fashion of announcing the future is nothing new. In fact it is the most prolific and imaginative fashions in the history of mankind. Thus, we find stories and legends which confirmed the concerns of man for his end.
Remembering in this context the sacred text of the Bible is not idle. Much less the certainty, for his contemporaries unquestioned, of Pope Innocent III in 1284 when he predicted that humanity would end 666 years after the rise of Islam. A little later, and so they do not think it is an old trend only, in 1954 Dorothy Martin a peaceful housewife in the city of Chicago, said she had received messages from aliens, which claimed that the world would end with a great flood before dawn on December 2. It is known to all the case of the millennium, after which it was predicted that millions of computers worldwide would stop working on the start of the year 2000. This would lead to failures in the power supply, control of nuclear warheads and in all electronic systems worldwide.
The new fashion, if the term fits, states that the day of the winter solstice, on December 21, 2012, at 11:12 minutes exactly, the world will end. Belief based on the teachings of the Mayan culture, is justified by the culmination of one of their calendars, which has 5125 years. For these people, that day a cycle called baktun 13will arrives at its end, and this one will be apparently different. Under what circumstances or motivated by what? So far we have been able to find basically three likely causes: the impact of an asteroid, or a black hole, or due to high solar activity.
Now in our peaceful and quiet lives we don’t have a similarly apocalyptic tradition. In this, the land of enjoyment and enjoyment, the apocalypse moves to other attitudes. And it is when the question of the existence acquires an entirely different hue. Walking through Havana we can understand this.
Fortunetellers, santeros, and spiritualists. Offerings thrown in the crossroads. Glasses with water that bear witness to the action of the spiritual power on earth, or red ribbons that adorn and protect. Yes, this is one of those cities where believing is living …you need a lot of faith to live. That is the reverse of the fateful and tragic end of the world. Something forgotten, obviously, for the latest diviners who prepared a list of 14 places in the world where you can spend the end of the world.
I have no doubt at all that the phenomenon in Havana, and on the whole island, is expected differently. Perhaps with our usual teasing and playfulness. Look, if Calderon de la Barca ruled that "all life is a dream and dreams are dreams", here on our island we can say that life is a celebration and parties, parties are.
I discussed these ideas with a neighbor and he said that "… the investment we make on Christmas and New Year’s Eve is more important … what evil would do to the family if a meteorite falls that day, my friend!"
Another friend very knowledgeable in the practicalities of life recommended me, however, to wear the best clothes I had, to do whatever I wanted that day, to try to kiss the woman I have never kissed, to do what I’ve always dreamed, and if there is some of that money get lost in the economic crises spend it mercilessly. "If the end never comes, at least you did something … right?" Very well, I thought, I think here we’re losing a serious perspective of doomsday.
Finally, before the typical pragmatic one that "doesn’t have bad luck, neither in life or death" as the saying goes, was absolutely fearless: "Me? … no brother, if it is up let it come. Yes I’m going to rent the dining chairs and a piece of roof … then I will have a better end of the year"
Well, dear reader, the truth is that if the fateful cataclysm arrives on the island it will find us waiting for it. Even more, I would confess my peace because of the training we’ve had in the past. Yes, mystery of mysteries, the world in this island is finished in concerts, baseball stadiums packed with people amid Film Festival or outside the halls in a Book Fair. Even, why not, we will really waste and deplete our stocks, very much as the fateful tsunami will, the last day of the year with friends and family. For a mysterious and dialectical fate, the Cuban identity, that confuses so many scholars, reverses again an unfortunate event into a savior. The question is already settled: in Cuba, the world always ends and nothing happens.
