Plant a child, have a tree

“Caring for a nephew, reading a book, watering a plant.

I already lowered my expectations”, writes Iñaki Goldaracena (@igoldark) on Twitter.

And he asks for it.

Almost 10 thousand retweets and 76 thousand likes.

It is releasing this pearl and the phrase lights up the hearts of thousands of people who no longer empathize with the old and famous phrase of the poet José Martí (1853-1895): "There are three things that each person should do during his life: plant a tree , have a child and write a book”.

Take care of a nephew, read a book, water a plant.

I already lowered my expectations

– Iñaki Goldaracena (@igoldark) July 10, 2022

Apparently, the old expectations are in the doldrums and there are many young people who dare to alter the old priorities.

“Call the nephew, read a

, have a cactus”, proposes Tamara Aros B, as if she wanted to cling to the law of minimum effort.

Manu Herrera continues the thread with a confession: "I'm in... Having a pet, reading a book, seeing how the plant learns to survive."

Or my favorite, that of the user @jotaped, who tweets: “I was in: walk through the door of a kindergarten, leaf through a brochure that they give me at the exit of the subway and see how the rain wets the plants that will later grow ”.

Shuata and I who were in:

- walking outside a kindergarten

- leafing through a brochure that they give you when you exit the subway

- seeing how the rain wets the plants that will later grow

– 70% H2O (@jotaped) July 10, 2022

Not so long ago, being licensed promised a decent salary.

Today, however, the professional future of young people always begins with the word precarious.

There was a time when even getting married and starting a family was perceived as a horizon of stability, while today it portends an economic and sentimental precipice.

At the same time, fame or social notoriety seem to guarantee the narcissism of the recognized person in question rather than the excellence of his work.

Because today everything that is coming is apocalypse: in movies, in series, in the weather, in love, in the newspapers, in the Euribor… Living is turning into preparing for the worst.

Personally, I celebrate living without hope and I thank the youth for it.

After all, hopes are as immeasurable as signing up for a pension plan at 45. How do you know you'll make it to 65?

It makes no sense to mark your life what is not in your hands and therefore living without hope can only be a relief.

So, be it: goodbye to the great works, to the perfect children, to the better half, to professional success and to pension plans.

But saying goodbye to expectations is going one step further.

Because an expectation is what guides an effort to achieve a specific achievement, it is precisely what does depend on us, like planting a tree.

I admit that I read these tweets after having had two daughters, written some books and planted several trees.

So if expectations were traps (and in part they always are), I have fallen into all of them.

Even so, I dare to defend them.

Because once hopes are dead and expectations annihilated, the next thing to die will be desire.

And without desire there will be no action that is worth an effort, which might be fine, but there will also be no way to value one's own life.

Because killing desire means ending up living off the desire of others, until you end up believing everything.

Or you end up buying everything: a dog, a cactus or a free brochure.

Desires deserve to be everyone's and in this sense the expectations of young people must be transformed: killing the illusions of a 19th century poet is not enough.