Emotions

La Voz de Galicia – April 9, 2021 →

I had a dazzling subject, full of nuance. A subject with which I would reflect about the power of putting aside those emotions and thoughts that make us suffer, with or without apparent cause. A subject to remove sadness, to embrace beauty, to celebrate that fact that despite everything we remain here, preparing for the next chapter of a story we never imagined as our own. But suddenly, the subject of this column, that same one that was meant to shed a bit of light at least while I wrote it, vanished. And now I can’t find it. I can find neither the subject nor the emotion connected to it.

Returning from the supermarket, I decided to take the longest way, the one that takes me by a park. I stopped there, with my shopping cart full, sat on a bench and stared at the flowers, beautiful and full of color. My neighbor, the one who walks other neighbors’ dogs, stopped to talk to me. «And who is he?» I asked her, to which she responded, «This is Charlie, the happiest dog in the neighborhood.» I looked at Charlie, the happy dog, and the truth is that he made me smile. But soon, he tugged on my neighbor to go, and with him left my half smile. I thought that because of the dog, the flowers, and a human interaction, I had acquired enough energy to continue with my day, and I decided to take that feeling home with the intention of using it to write this column.

But emotions have a life of their own. And on the way home, that short moment of beauty vanished. And that other emotion, the one I still have not named, appeared again; and like a block of heavy gray cement crushed the image of the flowers I had in my head…Is this just me? Or is it that now it is more difficult to hold on to those moments that make us feel good?