By, Anamaría López-Abadía Laya - Venezuela

I have always been interested in people’s relationships with life. I was once in a protest against the Government and as we got closer to the authorities, some snipers began to shoot from the top of the buildings against the people who were coming to the final point, the Presidential Palace. I couldn’t believe that it was happening to us, we were probably a million protestors who had gone with flags and whistles and these people received us by shooting and killing indiscriminately and cowardly without being seen. But the most intriguing fact was that a week later the city was as busy as usual. Everyone went to work and to their normal activities and no one remembered much about the protest. It was so painful for me to recognize that they acted as if nothing were happened!

What kind of regression were we experiencing that led us to such indifference and indolence toward a tragedy?

Moved by my need to comprehend our culture, I started to read some of our classical novels, convinced that literature can tell us things about life that life itself can’t. I was surprised when I noted that most of the literary figures never went out to their homes. The adventure of being in love or doing what they really wanted never occurred, because they were so afraid about the unknown world outside and the unknown of themselves, that they preferred to stay safe instead of been exposed to the risk, as we had experienced when we marched on the palace. It is, in fact, the opposite of the real meaning of the novel, which is based in a long quest that ends in the return to home, and only when arriving home, does the personage have an inner understanding and everything recovers its own sense.

I believe that one cannot have a home (a soul, feelings), while one is afraid to feel fear; on the contrary, to live is to go inside this fear, move ourselves in it and benefit from the experience.