dear son taue…
dear son peter…
…there are periods in my life…
where my mind is filled of preoccupations…
recently… I don’t know why…
I’ve been too much worried…
a few minutes ago… I was lying down on bed...
supine position… ready to do my daily exercises…
…and… what happened was that… instead of doing the exercises…
I realized that I began to “daydream” immersed in my thoughts…
I recalled the period when I was 11 years old…
attending colegio-militar…
my mind… at that time…
was… also… immersed in preoccupations…
I was always worried about my homework…
which the teachers were always assigning to us…
I couldn’t relax… until my homework…
was completely well-done…
organized inside my “backpack”…
( which at that time… wasn’t a backpack…
…it was a kind of briefcase… made of a brown-leather…)
--- --- ---
there was a teacher of portuguese…
that used to require us to bring to class…
every thursdays… an “aurelio” dictionary…
( which probably weighted a ton… (at least…)…)…
to make things worse… this teacher…
rarely asked us to use such dictionary…
and we… had to carry that weight… for nothing…
--- --- ---
on a certain day… at the bus-stop…
a classmate of mine…
who… wisely… realized the incoherence of such requirement…
began to ignore the “orders” from this teacher…
so he decided to bring with him…
just a little-tiny-mini-briefcase with one pencil and a notebook…
so… at this bus-stop… at the end of classes…
this friend of mine…
as he saw me with that huge briefcase…
full of books… dictionaries… gym-class-clothes… etc…
he said to me :
“ wow… freire… ( there… at colegio-militar…
…they used to call me “freire”…)
“ wow… freire… what a big “briefcase”…
… I’m surprised at you… ( freire )… a fellow so advanced…
… and at the same time… carrying such a huge “briefcase”…?...”
--- --- ---
nowadays…
I can understand the criticism ( well-intentioned )… from him…
basically… he was trying to tell me…
that I was taking the “regulations” too seriously…
nowadays…
thinking… lying down on bed… before the work-outs…
I can see that…
if on one hand… it is good that the guy is very diligent…
worried about doing all his homework…
… about not forgetting to take…
the dictionary-of-one-thousand-tons to school…
( just because the teacher said so… )…
… on the other hand…
it would be important… also… to try to be…
conscious that…
sometimes… none of this is very important…
… that life is constantly challenging us…
and that we are… usually… trying to handle such challenges…
the best way we can…
but this is not always… possible…
we are humans…
and… therefore… limited…
fortunately… we are not any kind of super-man…
so… maybe…
my classmate from the bus-stop… was right…
as he said :
“ wow… freire…
… I’m surprise at you… ( who are a smart guy…)…
… carrying such a huge briefcase…?...”
yes…
I think that… in this case…
my friend was right…
why take certain “regulations” so seriously…?
sometimes it’s not worth it…
--- --- ---
but… on the other hand…
life is not a “mathematical-equation”…
we have to be careful with any kind of thought…
that has the tendency of being always… trying to…
“generalize”…
it would be good if we are careful with “generalizations”…
sometimes… yes… the guy who is excessively diligent…
he is the one who can reach some basic “success”…
oftentimes… he is a “winner”…
the diligent guy…
the straight “A” guy…
has many chances to be a “winner” in this life…
--- --- ---
me… for instance…
I am the typical example of the… diligent-guy…
… the straight “A” guy…
but… sometimes I suffer for being like that…
sometimes I ask myself…
if it’s worthwhile… to be always so diligent…
… so straight “A” type-of-person…
and then… suddenly be caught by… for instance…
a cancer… and die…
--- --- ---
my aunt celina…
professor-of-history…
with phd… postdoctoral degree in france…
spending all her life studying…
I used to visit her at her apartment in leblon…
there was a room… with bookshelves…
from the floor all the way up to the ceiling…
on the four walls…
I… who also love books…
used to be… simply… astonished…
as I was browsing her books…
she would be talking very fast… as usual…
explaining their summaries to me…
--- --- ---
about two years ago…
she had a stroke…
her health has been very weak during all this time…
being fed only liquids…
… she lost the capability to articulate the words…
--- --- ---
at those moments… I ask myself…
what do we accomplish after so much study…?
--- --- ---
actually… this email…
is about reflections… from me… to myself…
I wrote them to you…
because I like to share my thoughts with you…
fortunately… the three of us… always had much conversation…
…much dialogue… among us…
but… such reflections are important…
because they make us think…
that everything in life… is relative…
there are situations where being the straight “A” student…
it’s a great politic-posture…
a great deal…
especially if the course-of-study is a good one…
and… if it’s going to be useful…
either in a near future… or a distant one…
--- --- ---
… on the other hand…
there are some situations… where it would be good to be…
… “attentive” … “watchful”…
in order to be able to realize to what extent it is worthwhile…
to take certain “regulations”… so seriously…
( see the example of the “dictionary-of-one-thousand-tons…)…
--- --- ---
In short…
I would like to emphasize that… obviously… I am always…
hoping that you seek to be always within-the-law…
this is very important…
since it leaves us with a clean conscience…
that we are not doing anything wrong…
but… it is also… always good to be able to realize…
that there are certain “regulations“…
which are… kind of… “absurd”…
( see again my story related to the “super-heavy-briefcase”…)
in this story…
I let myself have the “luxury”…
of being alienated with respect to reality…
… of letting me… simply…
get involved by a “regulation”…
without enough questioning…
… without even making a little effort in realizing…
that this teacher…
rarely asked us to use such dictionary in class…
I… simply…
used to adopt… ( in relation to myself )…
a posture of total conformation… to the established rules…
for me…
this was comfortable…
in the sense of…
as I adopted such a conformist-aptitude…
my mind was always in peace with itself…
from the standpoint of being sure…
that I wasn’t doing anything wrong…
but… I wasn’t realizing that…
such conformist-aptitude…
could cause some back-problems in the future…
( fortunately… it is doing fine… during these last years…
… thanks to the preventive-maintenance…
I’ve being doing... almost daily… through the workouts… )
( … whenever my “musings”… don’t steal the time…
that were supposed to be dedicated…
to my little exercises… ) …
--- --- ---
in short…
it is good to be a diligent guy…
… as long as we have a political-conscience of the context…
in which such “regulation” belongs to…
( in this particular story we were just talking about…
my classmate-of-the-bus-stop… had an…
“insight”… a perception… healthier than mine :
he realized that such “rule” imposed by the teacher…
was a “joke”…
that his comfort… would be much more worthwhile…
than having to carry such a huge weight… unnecessarily…)
--- --- ---
there was… certainly… a kind of “risk” he faced…
( he could have been “punished”… or something like that…)
but… as he observed the personality of the teacher…
he… probably… concluded…
( and he guessed right )… that… probably…
the risk of a “punishment” would be… minimum…
--- --- ---
actually… all this blah-blah-blah…
serves to illustrate… a world-view :
the world is full of rules…
if we can follow them… that’s just great…
however… it is good to be able to distinguish…
what is important…
from what is “not-so-important-as-we-thought-it-was”…
--- --- ---
for example…
taking care of our health…
this is indeed… a very important… rule…
because we are not going to be trying to satisfy…
an absurd-rule…
imposed by some little-crazy-teacher…
because the rules linked to “taking-care-of-our-own-health”…
are rules that humanity itself has been observing…
for thousands of years…
not to drink…
not to smoke…
eat a balanced meal… with…
carbohydrates… ( rice… pasta… potatoes… etc…)
vegetables... ( roots... green-leaves... beets… etc…)
and protein… ( meat… )
exercise… if possible... daily… ( in moderation )…
--- --- ---
in short :
the “rules”… related to my health-maintenance… are clear…
but the “rules” to satisfy some requirement coming from…
some crazy-teacher…
… are not always… very clear…
--- --- ---
I stop here…
( otherwise… the “crazy-teacher”…
… is going to “castigate” you…
… because you didn’t have time to do your “homework”…
… ( “homework” from school… or… from work…)…)…
a huge-super-big hug…
your father…
…luis antonio…