Perfect victims

2023-09-24T10:43:55.843Z

Highlights: Humanity doesn't know what to do with grief, not even with our own, and we are catastrophic with that of others. Paul Theroux quotes a 97-year-old woman who said: "Grief is sacred." We are that afraid of pain, we reject it, we become moralists, even lynchers, even judges, he writes. We should be truly empathetic and respect the sacredness of grief, that is that everyone has to try to cope with their suffering as they can.

Humans don't know what to do with grief; not even with our own, and we are catastrophic with that of others.

I suppose you have heard about that media mini-lynching that Rodolfo Sancho suffered when he went to Thailand to visit his son. I did not see the actor's statements when he left prison, although I imagine that they would pass them a thousand times in all those programs that have been hooked like ticks for two months to the morbid jugular of this tremendous crime. But then I read in the press that they turned him green because he told journalists that "they were not going to get tears from him" and that such an event could be faced "as a tragedy or as a challenge", and that for him it was going to be a challenge. These simple phrases created an uproar; They bashed him and branded him as arrogant and arrogant, and even a newspaper as solid and serious as La Vanguardia took out this headline: "Harsh criticism of Rodolfo Sancho on the first visit to his son Daniel in Thailand: "He has been unlucky." The pressure was such, in short, that the next day the actor had to apologize more or less. Something unheard of, because I think his words are very normal. Moreover, taking into account the horror he is going through and that he was leaving to see his son for the first time, he would also have found it very understandable that he had started singing the Macarena or going around the prison with a lame leg. Please, a respect for the mourning of others. A true respect for pain.

So the multitudinous judges of the behavior of others ruled that Rodolfo Sancho had been "unlucky". Society always seems to be very clear about the attitude that victims should maintain. That is, when something very bad happens to you, not only do you have to deal with it, but you are also obliged to do it with due decorum. Playing your role, wow. To those who suffer from cancer they say: optimism, optimism, positive thinking, constant joy that this is how the disease is defeated! With which not only do they not allow the patient to experience their natural and inevitable downturns, their tears and their fears, but they also blame them for the possible worsenings: it is that you did not try, you did not laugh enough.

Widowers (I am) are asked, ordered to cry at the first moment of widowhood, in the morgue, in the cemetery, which is just when, exhausted by the near agony, you have no tears. But cry, cry, you cry, don't worry, cry!, pull. Now, a couple of weeks later, which is when you are beginning to find your way to your grief and your crying, everyone again knows divinely what you have to do: Cry no more! Enough sadness! Go out, go to the movies, cheer up!

In the dark years after the crisis of 2008 I opened a couple of dozen Teaming groups, a solidarity platform that allows you to give one euro a month for a cause. The groups were of families without resources (some are still in force). Although their extreme economic conditions were demonstrated with documents, at first I had a few discussions with readers who were outraged to see, on the Facebook of some of the families, photos in which they smiled while having a coffee on a terrace. They were shocked by their joy and that they squandered money on coffee. As if the poor had to be sad and miserable in perpetuity, as if to earn charity eternal suffering was required of them. They did not understand something obvious to me: that, if you are made of dust and they are going to cut off the light, maybe scratching a little sweetness to life by taking a cut in a beach bar is more necessary than buying chickpeas. Anyway, that's why there are people who beg in the street kneeling on their knees. I have always detested this dramatic excess, but in reality they respond to what a certain society demands of them: they represent themselves as poor.

In his book The Shadow of Naipaul, Paul Theroux quotes the beautiful words spoken to him by a 97-year-old woman: "Grief is pure and it is sacred." How wise and how exact. Humans don't know what to do with grief; Not even with our own, and of course we are catastrophic with that of others. We are afraid of pain, we reject it, we become moralists, judges, even lynchers. When we should do just the opposite: be truly empathetic and respect the sacredness of grief, that is, the right that everyone has to try to cope with their suffering as they can.