The season of goodbyes has begun. People say goodbye or are said goodbye to. Stages end because nothing lasts forever. We are creatures of habit, but some people need to break routines more often than others. There are also those who wait for others to break them. It cannot be said to be better or worse. Saying goodbye voluntarily is the result of making decisions,but goodbyes, even if you have thought them over, are not easy. Nor is it easy to digest being told goodbye. It is a time for tears, for gratitude, and for disappointments. It is the season of cherries and bitterness. But beyond the most notable goodbyes, and taking advantage of the fact that the summer season is approaching, although, climatologically speaking, we have already fully entered it, it would be wonderful to be able to say goodbye to the perpetual burdens with which current events constantly assault us. To free ourselves from endemic weights that only serve to sow despair in a world that could be fuller of enthusiasm. To optimize this time of pause and change to clear the air.
We could say goodbye to these early heatwaves that climate change deniers attribute to divine directives; or bid farewell to political corruption and cynicism, which makes us say goodbye to the fire only to fall into the embers. We could also lose sight of the experts on everything who sit smugly on their pronouncements or send away those who proclaim to be in favor of strikes, but one thing is to strike and another is to block roads, which, of course, ends up bothering the rest of the people who are trying to do their jobs and lose empathy with their cause (What the hell do they understand by strike? Ask for their permission to see if the protest suits them? A la carte strike?) We could get rid of the testosterone excesses that praise outdated values and persist in an ingrained violence that only calls for perpetual destruction. It would be good to dismiss the agonizing pressure of having to be everywhere all the time and eager, as if missing out on what is fashionable meant being dead. We could say goodbye to the artistic contradictions that come with claiming the identity of a people and at the same time collaborating with a company that has destroyed, among other things, a textile industry that was also part of a people's identity. It would be wonderful to rid ourselves forever of the multitude of ridiculous and unnecessary awards that foster unhealthy competitiveness and praise the mediocrity so longed for by a stunted power. And above all, let us bid farewell in the strictest silence to all the noise that surrounds us: that of the streets and houses, that of unscrupulous speeches, that of the nerves of a daily life that exasperates us, the strident sound that accompanies the lack of respect.
I say we don't need to wait for the Three Kings to write a wish list, which can be much longer than a short article. We don't even need to wait for that time of year to say goodbye. You can even do it in winter, with elegance, leaving with the discretion of someone who is satisfied with their duties and pleasures and has no need to boast about either.
Many farewells make you cry. Even just seeing them, without knowing the protagonists at all. In the same way that realizing that those who cling to a chair that doesn't belong to them make you revolt. Often everyone says goodbye as best they can. And when you leave, if you need to aspire to something, it's that they miss you. But it's better not to have expectations. In farewells and in general. And knowing that all of us, sooner or later, will end up leaving, it's essential to learn to say goodbye.
