
There is nothing more difficult than be merciful. or charitable. This is why the Christian teachings of 2000 years ago are so fascinating. And so difficult to assimilate and incorporate into everyday life. Especially here in our contemporaneity, with so many narcissistic warriors who, behind a computer or cell phone screen, wage wars without blood, but not without victims.
For years, and with some surprises, I have tried to apply the idea of mercy (as I humbly understand it) to ideological warfare – with little success and much failure. After all, imagine arriving here today, in the middle of Monday, and suggesting to the readers of Gazeta do Povo to see Lula for what he is: a man who, despite his power, influence and wealth, cannot even have a cachacinha at the bar on the corner with his union friends. A man corrupted by the very idea of greatness and benevolence, unable to look in the mirror and see himself fully. A man so enslaved by the image that the others make him who doesn’t even know who he is anymore. A moral leper who walks the streets denying the contagious character of his own wounds.
)For me, all this is punishment enough. And that is precisely why the annulment of the sentences against Lula does not even tickle. Okay, maybe do a little, but only on the sole of the foot. But I’m an exception, I admit. And I also vacillate in this exceptionality of mine. Depending on the color of my morning coffee and the shape and weight of the clouds, I tend to be more or less severe with these leaders who see themselves as gods, but (you and I know and even Flamengo fans) they are nothing more than premature corpses waiting for the land that will cover them – because it will cover all of us.
Bigger punishment, for me, would be to give Lula a copy of “The Death of Ivan Ilitch” or “Lessons from the Abyss” and lock him up for a few years, until he comes out of captivity with a deep understanding of its existence. But perhaps this is a form of torture prohibited by the Geneva Convention – less for the masterpieces cited and more for the cruelty of forcing someone to look in a mirror for so long. I myself may not be able to bear it if one day I am forced to spend more than five minutes in front of the pile of sins and mistakes that I am.
And, before you stand there all angry because I mentioned Lula and not Bolsonaro or Moro or Doria or Cabo Daciolo, here is the sentence that, despite the obviousness, will redeem me on the cloudy Sunday morning as I write this text: we are not surrounded or led by saints of any kind. And all these men who rise to the pulpit of politics to offer our sanity in sacrifice to the goddess Democracy, fomenting a fratricidal war (or parricidal, in the case of my friend who fought with his PT father), are worthy, yes, of our most sincere pity, mercy, charity.
And in life ?17112225
Exercise mercy in life everyday life is even more difficult than in politics. And I, like all of us, are wrong more than right. But on the basis of study, experience, and life’s many (a lot!) beatings, this attractive but stern little teacher has learned quite a bit over the past few years. And if you think the previous sentence is an expression of reprehensible and even disgusting vanity (and it is), try to be merciful to me now (I will try too).
Nowadays, with my knees eternally scraped by the setbacks of youth, when I see near me a manifestation of what I consider scoundrel & perversity, I don’t run away to write about the subject and the offender and, pathetically, to try to do justice to the few syllables that I only string together in the form of literary arguments and insults. No way! When I see close to me (actually or virtually) the saying-whose rejoicing in his own or other people’s evil, I only allow myself to give in to private anger – to that curse said to the empty apartment and which perhaps goes on for Eternity, but I hope not. .
Requires effort. Nobody ever said it was easy. For me, silence only comes at great cost – I hope not that of nervous gastritis. Just the other day, when I was faced with the public and poorly disguised perversity of one of these parasites, I felt like shouting his name to the world. To compose a chronicle that would make my revolt clear. And even looking for formal means of reparation – perhaps the greatest stupidity of our time, to which, apparently, I am not immune.
But then I remembered this ancient fragile idea: mercy. I closed my eyes for a moment and remembered the still, cowardly voice, the pachequeque thinness, the empty eyes of someone who has reached old age without ever having tasted a single moment of wisdom. And I understood, in a lesson that needs to be relearned daily, that for some life is just a succession of days. “Poor thing,” I concluded, without brilliance or indignation. And I went to sleep the heavy sleep that is my right.
Because, paraphrasing the Roman historian and politician Tacitus, in a phrase that serves both the scoundrel-next-door and the leader on the platform, in life there will always be those who, surrounded by the most stupid moral (and political) misery, will insist on calling that of victory. And even life.