The envy

A Madrid bar in an image from before the pandemic. CLAUDIO ÁLVAREZ

I remember well that student I had a decade ago; He told me that he had been a manager with a collapsed schedule, but that life paralyzed him with a stroke as an unfortunate gift at forty. The year after the tragedy, stuttering and verbally disarmed, he was giving himself a new opportunity in a classroom of the Faculty of Philology, studying among tablemates who did not exceed the joyous youth of twenty years. At the end of the exam period and seeing a colleague cry for a note, he told me: "When I see you cry for an exam, I am envious of their tears" ....

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