John Carlin and the blonde girl who made him a journalist

BarcelonaAfter a Friday packed with audience, speakers, and ideas, Enfoquem opened on Saturday morning with a carlinada Of intelligence and hope. Armed with his characteristic humor and lucidity, writer John Carlin, in conversation with journalist Laura Rosel, elevated the Focus to the level of an insurrectionary uprising against fatalism with a reflection on the role of luck in life. A narrative peppered with unmissable anecdotes from his own life distilled a simple yet profound reflection on the contribution each of us can make to building a kinder future.

An unflappable charmer, a phlegmatic and brilliant conversationalist, Carlin insisted time and again on the need to recognize chance as the fundamental element of our existence. A father, an aviator shot down twice in World War II, who survived; a Spanish mother (Carlin's second surname is De la Torre) from an old-fashioned, wealthy, and conservative family who was supposed to marry someone else; misfortunes, coincidences, twists of fate. A story that reached its climax when the English writer recounted his (casual, of course) entry into the world of journalism: in Argentina during the dictatorship, at the age of twenty-five, he read that a courageous newspaper was looking for reporters. He arrived without much interest or conviction, but once there, the sight of a blonde girl typing on a typewriter captivated him. And John Carlin began to become John Carlin, the world-renowned journalist who would publish emblematic works on football and apartheid-era South Africa.

Because these two topics were essential to the conversation. And they also proved to be a source of human lessons that confirmed the leitmotif of the talk. "The reason football is the world's favorite sport is that it's the most unpredictable. In what other sport do you score own goals?" he exclaimed. And he recalled the image of Nelson Mandela sitting across from a white, racist, far-right South African general. If Mandela managed to have power transferred to him, Carlin explained, it was because he understood that if he himself had been born into the same context as that general, he too would have been racist. "Mandela told me: he forgave them because they were the way they were as a consequence of factors they couldn't control." And here's the lesson: "Understanding the centrality of chance makes you more generous and humble, and more understanding of human error." What we have first and foremost is not virtue or hard work, Carlin clarified, rejecting the prevailing ethics in countries like the United States, but rather luck or bad luck, "and that should make us more Christian." "Here in Catalonia, the most valued virtue is being a good person, and I like that," he affirmed.

Led by John Carlin and Laura Rosel, L'Enfoquem, a series of talks focused on addressing global challenges such as the crisis of democracy and the climate emergency, briefly explored the personal, almost intimate, dimension of solutions for our turbulent times. Faced with a "complicated" world, the English writer repeatedly avoided the temptation to talk about Donald Trump, urging those present not to be swayed by powerful figures who sometimes "seem to have psychotic tendencies," and encouraging everyone to contribute their bit to making a better world. His presentation elicited several spontaneous rounds of applause, and even a few excited whistles, roused by the luminous stimulus of humor and ideas. After all, it was "a historic day," or so the speaker himself described it shortly before finishing. The reason? His Catalan teacher was in the audience. "We've always seen each other on screen, and now we're going to have coffee." To get to know each other, to understand each other, to talk.