Imagine that before the newspaper gives us our well-deserved vacation, we receive the proposal to write about what we have done wrong.
That is what
The New York Times has asked
to some of their most famous pens and have responded by exposing their mistakes, not from the last course but in general: from those who admit having celebrated the deregulation that has led us to this uncontrolled capitalism to those who regret having asked for the resignation of a senator after being accused of harassing a woman, without waiting for the case to be investigated.
Assuming mistakes is as complicated as asking for forgiveness.
I admit that if I don't get down to it, it is because in everything I write I find a posteriori that I have lacked some nuance, that I have generalized;
in short, that I don't agree with myself as much as I would like.
Even so, I try not to be cruel in this strange country where it is good to brag about it, and to be understanding with myself, thinking that I only have 750 words to express an idea,
although I know very well that the job is to manage with this borrowed space.
Chatting this week with my venerable friend, the psychiatrist Luis Salvador Carulla, he told me something that made me think: when before investigating, as he does now, he practiced his profession in a hospital, it was his rule to ask the patient in the first interview to bring in writing what he considered his problem.
The patient used to return with six or seven confusing and long pages about the mental conflict to which he was subjected.
Dr. Salvador (what an apt last name!) dared to tell the patient that after a while his writing would be reduced to half a page.
Listening to him, I thought that this is exactly the key to our trade:
take advantage of the limitations and have enough mental clarity not to get bogged down in talk or complacency.
The inevitable is that sometimes size prevents us from being as subtle as many of us would like.
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I have seen this week, as surely you, the forgiveness of actor Will Smith.
I can be calm about that extraordinary event: I didn't screw up because I didn't have an opinion.
It happens that when there is an excessive ideological interpretation of a fact, I tend to withdraw.
Besides, I was extremely annoyed that such a privileged individual could not contain the violence.
But now that I see him recognize his folly, apologize without justifying himself or hiding behind childhood traumas, I think his words contain the sincerity of a man dejected by a big mistake.
There will be those who think that forgiveness is part of the show, and sometimes it is, but being in contact with the Anglo-Saxon culture allowed me to observe that there is a habit of assuming mistakes out loud,
something that requires a lot of courage and that has little to do with the forgiveness that is obtained from confession.
I don't know if it will finally help him get his career back on track, because the show was too unfortunate, but remorse, despite having such a bad press, is a heartache, that unease caused by the damage done.
And sometimes it is necessary.
Words also hurt and age teaches that you can be radical in some convictions without bloodshed.
Have I done damage with mine?
It is probable that in the past yes, although it was not moved by the intention of hurting but by making fun.
Now I have limits to my humor.
When I exercise it in public, of course.
In private I allow myself malice.
I think of the mistakes that can be made from this space, in the quick judgment that the weekly opinion inevitably forces and I recognize that there are lands that it is better not to step on.
Having believed in the Woody Allen case, for example, both in his innocence and his guilt successively and with the same honesty, and having received furious attacks both when he exposed one thing and its opposite, I think it is better to withdraw, to leave the Doubts and suspicions, like malice,
for the private world.
The networks have dragged us to be reactive, to leave little room for the creation of ideas and much for immediate response.
The readers need to rest from us and, what is more important, I also need to relieve myself from myself, from my public name, because it will not be a matter of taking a mania either.
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