Penetrating the crevices of life

Life consists in opening cracks until finally understanding that that was the way to follow. And then I am again surprised by the capacity of life to find loopholes to let me continue creating. This is something that stuns me, as someone who well understands that life surpasses us and is beyond and above everything that we can think about it. From its deep dark root, life looks for a place to be born again.

And in times of catastrophes like ours, people are forced to demonstrate how many of them still maintain their belonging to what is genuine, to what is human. Only he who carries within himself at least a minimal part of the primordial root will be able to preserve that hidden fountain from which the courage to continue fighting springs. As Jünger states: “In the great dangers we will look for that which saves profoundly”.

Our hope today rests on the idea that at least one of those roots will again bring us into contact with that telluric realm that feeds the life of human beings and peoples. We need the courage to penetrate the crevices so that the fountain of life can filter out again.

In the midst of the fear and depression that prevail in our time, there will emerge, unnoticeably, hints of a different way of living that, in the middle of the abyss, looks for recovering a humanity that feels as if it were fading away.

(Ernesto Sábato, España en los diarios de mi vejez, 2004)

Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler