At home, we were believers in the Catholic faith. We celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve with parties where we ate and shouted like pagans, the adults drank until they couldn’t stop laughing, they jumped and writhed from dusk to dawn with all the inventions of Cuban music, making fun of each other and telling jokes of increasingly risqué color about the human and the divine, which my grandparents pretended not to hear, and which we children would remember forever.
What I miss most about Christmas Eve was not the midnight mass, when my cousins and I were allowed to stay up late; nor the nativity scenes and the little tree with lights that we meticulously put together; nor the long letters to the Three Wise Men. But the meeting of the seven uncles and aunts and the merriment of my dozen cousins. Christmas Eve and Christmas were so much fun, to put it briefly.
A main part of that post-Christmas ritual was the wait for the New Year (in caps). Preparing for that moment as if we were really jumping forward in time, we had to write a list of good resolutions.
I have no idea where the custom came from, whether it was from the Catholic tradition, another faith, or none in particular; but it had a tone that was not as relaxed and festive as the rest of the end-of-year party. Rather, it required a review of oneself, to imagine recommendations, and attainable goals, that could be shared in the privacy of a little piece of paper kept in a drawer.
Beyond conversations with very special friends, the good resolutions for the coming year were kept in strict compartmentalization. Declaring them publicly was unthinkable.
I confess that I have never stopped making this list of resolutions, even when I later forget them. But it is the first time that, having written them for myself in a notebook, it occurred to me to write them down. And end up giving them the form of a text that I don’t know what it is. So here they go.
Pay attention to those who are wrong, because with them we always learn
In the absence of a star like that of Bethlehem to light the way, the debate of ideas has gained widespread approval in these times. Although it depends on what is understood by debate and what we call giving light, of course. Having tried for twenty-odd years, my little experience is that getting the spark needed for a little light requires people who think differently. Among these, those who are wrong are essential.
Some will tell me that the line between those who are wrong and those who are right is not so easy to draw in advance. That errare humanum est, as Cicero and Saint Augustine said (Luisa Campuzano dixit). And that sometimes those who are wrong can be right, and vice versa. Let’s call this variety Mistakens type A.
As far as my good purpose in these notes is concerned, a sharper line could be drawn between those who know they can be wrong and those who are not at all. As Augustine said, “the devilish thing is to let oneself be carried away by pride and remain mistaken.” These Mistakens type B, who move as if they were grasping the truth, rather difficult as dialoguers, are also key pieces in a debate.
Some will tell me that they are impossible since they don’t even know how to debate. Precisely, I would say. When a closed mind is exposed to public view, in the middle of a debate, what we could call the werewolf effect occurs: many can realize that it is, without the need for further argumentation. So the legion of those who watch the debate from the sidelines could learn to distinguish between truths and dogmas, of one or another ideological sign.
Of course, I am not under any illusions, nor do I believe that such intellectual exploration is enough to erase the effect of living in a world where ideological confusion reigns. But even in this, those who are mistaken make a crucial contribution. Each of them, young and old, are the mirror of that common sense that does not allow us to think independently or critically. In any case, without them, a debate that sheds some light would not be possible. And sometimes we would even be left wondering about something they said.
Thinking feministically, even if it doesn’t free me from machismo
I sincerely admire women’s capacity for resilience, combined with their unwavering willpower, which is to say, a mixture of realism and idealism in exact doses.
Sexists (of all sexes and genders) stand out for claiming a kind of flat realism, which they call pragmatic, and which consists of seeing everything in the short term. A shopkeeper’s mentality, more than pragmatism, I would say. Which includes appreciating only one side of things.
On the other hand, feminine intelligence and sensitivity give the pragmatists and last-minute unilateralists a hard time. They expose them.
One day we will be able to elect as high-ranking leaders women who do not speak with a stern frown or in the authoritarian or decisive style of machismo. That it is not a personality trait, but a civic culture in which contradictory dimensions coexist.
The leaders, when they do not replicate the macho style of leadership, do so in the manner of someone who governs a family without raising their voice and listening to everyone, even those who have strayed.
This condition I am talking about is reflected in a more democratic and collectivist, cooperative, and focused way, which measures the costs and is interested in both the means and the ends. This does not imply fragility or sentimentalism, but sensitivity and persistence. A feminist model of doing politics would open many paths, inside and outside.
Although to be able to think and act like this it is not enough to want it.
Do not waste time with the opportunists, the left-wing right-wingers, the turncoats
There is a particularly curious phenomenon in the media world, which could be called the right-wing left.
I am not referring to independent leftists, as there were many in history before 1959; to those who criticize the problems of socialism from their commitment to change it so that it works; nor to those who use their right to change their way of thinking, and adopt the defense of a “more decent” capitalism, assuming that socialism, this and any other anti-capitalist one, is irremediable.
Right-wing leftists were almost always ultra-red communists, and now they continue to present themselves as “left-wings” (plural), but agreeing with the typical errors and omissions of reactionary reason. I don’t say conservative, because there is much to learn from some conservative critical thinkers. But reactionary, which is a political and ethical condition.
In some of our debates over these twenty-odd years, figures who cultivate a platform on YouTube have made an appearance, who have opted for dissidence, that is, they have put themselves against the system. I keep videos of some of them asking to speak somewhere; as well as of the anti-government media that follow in their footsteps. Almost none of them claim to be left-wing or socialist. Which seems perfect to me.
From there on begins the middle ground of right-wing left-wingers. Able to invoke Haydée Santamaría, Che Guevara, Fernando Martínez, Alfredo Guevara and any radical thinker and politician who is useful in questioning the evils of this system, in a way shared with the reactionary right everywhere.
I have known many of them personally when they claimed to be part of the family. For this very reason, I prefer not to waste time on them.
The last three.
I have left these purposes for last, the most personal ones, and for this very reason those that do not require so many illustrations. Perhaps also the most arduous. Because they are more like wishes, perhaps chimeras.
I would like to behave more inclusively than tolerantly.
Not only because I detest the idea of tolerating, of making others a kind of concession to their differences with me, which I would be willing to accept. At the same time, however, it does not mean that I can behave inclusively just like that. Even if I wanted to.
Don’t think about death
Everyone who has passed a certain age knows that when they were young, or not so old, they behaved as if they were immortal. As absurd as it may seem, that was how it was.
I remember a humorous phrase about the immortality of the crab. But the proximity of death is something serious. Even if one intends not to think about it, to act as if one didn’t think about it, mockingly or jokingly. There is something superstitious about avoiding the subject. Doing so requires another awareness of the temporal, as that gentleman Bayardo said, sans peur et sans reproche.
“Eyes on the prize,” the American blacks say.
A prize that only one can propose and perhaps achieve, without being diverted by the vicissitudes of existence. A prize that is not a prize, and in any case, that no one will give us.
To continue walking with one’s eyes fixed on that point.
Strangely, it is as if at the beginning of this year that purpose was more real than any other.
Author
OnCuba Staff
