Pepe Maestre
The young man was young and didn't know what to do. That's why he did what he did. That's how he ended up reaching the old man, his boat, and his water.
The boatman was old. He had a white beard and seemed wise. His wrinkles spoke of life lessons. Without really knowing why, the young man spoke to him: Now that I'm here, what should I do? You can get on, or you can go back, he replied. I came here because I didn't know what to do. I don't know whether to get on or go back. You came here because of love, said the boatman confidently. How do you know? asked the young man fearfully. There are words that speak with the eyes, and I've seen many eyes speak like yours. Besides, there's always a woman; there's always love. He still didn't know why he did things, but the young man paid him and got on.
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The old boatman began to row. The young man felt a gentle breeze on his face. The boat moved away from the shore. How did you end up at my shore? asked the old man. You look like you've run away. I had to escape. I had to escape my life. Why? What did you try in your life that didn't go well? In my life, above all, I tried to be a person. After being a person, I tried to be a poet. As a person, I knew and lost love several times. The last time I understood that love had died for me. This time forever. With love dead, the poet was gone. And in my case, the person went with the poet. The old man's face showed perplexity. Love can't die, he said. Maybe not love, but my capacity to love can. How painful it was not to be able to love her when she was the perfect muse for me. You ran away because you felt incapable of love. Young man, let me tell you that you belong to the cowardly kind, if not the foolish kind.
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The old man's last comment had wounded the already battered self-esteem of the young man. The comment was followed only by silence. He was unhappy enough with his departure to have his wounds poked further. Some time passed before the old man spoke. It's time to learn what you didn't learn before this journey. Look at that log floating in the water, do you see it? Indeed, a few meters from the boat, a piece of wood floated in the water. The young man was still resentful, and although he saw the wood, he remained silent. That piece of wood is you.
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The old man kept his eyes on the wood floating in the water. He continued with his comparison: Every person is a piece of wood, a branch. When two people love each other, they set fire to their wood and join their fires to form a single flame. This can explain all types of love. Try it and see. There are loves with small branches that catch fire easily and go out quickly. There are larger branches, trunks, that take longer to catch fire but offer a more secure flame. Of course, this is in general. Every wood has its own way of burning.
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The old man continued while looking at the branch: There are woods that burn out when the companion branch hasn't burned out. Or woods that require so much oxygen that they end up suffocating the companion flame. The young man could no longer hold back his thoughts and decided to ask the old man. According to you, the future of all love is ashes. I never said that, replied the old man. A person enriches themselves day by day with their experiences. With each one, the amount of wood on their branch grows. When love goes out, it's because one of the branches stops adding its new wood to the shared fire. Possibly this happened to you. Unconsciously, you shut yourself in. You stopped offering your new wood to love. You must know that when wood is stored for too long, it can rot. Fears, bad thoughts, bad experiences are the moisture and rain of the wood. You are a piece of wet wood. And as you know, wet wood doesn't catch fire well. You just needed time to dry out, but you decided to run away.
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The young man was a poet. He knew about metaphors, and the old man's seemed good to him. He spent some time meditating on it. He had to combine what he learned with his own ideas. In his mind, he imagined love as two trees that decide to root together. As they live in a hostile, harsh, and cold world, they must set fire to their branches to give each other warmth. The warmth fights the cold that surrounds them, transforming that icy world into water that nourishes them to regenerate their branches. This process of fire and regeneration must be in balance. If for some reason it fails, it's best for one of the trees to take its roots and leave. Whether it's for not receiving warmth from the one you love. Whether it's for not making the one you loved suffer in vain. The balance of his process was broken. An unknown force burst in like an earthquake, splitting his world in two, separating his roots from those of his beloved, making it impossible to share their flames.
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After thinking, the young man hadn't changed his stance much. Where he saw lack of love, the old man saw wet wood. Why hadn't he seriously considered that maybe he just needed time to regenerate his branches?
No one can predict when the wood will heal. And in his situation, it was impossible to ask for more patience. Of course, that's what he thought. Maybe he was wrong. He was still confused. He still felt a warm glow from the embers of the shared fire. He still felt a slight warmth in his branches. Love, some called it. He among them. That idea he had clear. Maybe he was there because internally he was a wet log with no hope of healing. He didn't believe the embers could ignite again.
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The old man was not unaware of the young man's agitated thoughts. He watched him closely as he rowed. It wasn't the first time he had seen that expression on a person. He had seen many people fleeing, many cowardly souls. He thought he had come across a poet who didn't quite understand the ups and downs of love. So he rowed towards a beach not far from there. It didn't take long to arrive.
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The old man said, looking at the beach: The wet line that the shore draws in the sand is the line that separates love and true friendship: the water is love, and friendship is the sand. It's hard to know whether to immerse yourself in love. You can drown. But it's easy to know you can't immerse yourself in the sand. The line that love draws in the sand is never fixed; it varies with the tide. If you stay still, sometimes you're in the water, other times you're out, and sometimes, the least, you're in and out. It's hard to know where to be when you're in a relationship. You have to find the right distance where you don't drown when the tide rises, but so that when the tide goes down, which it will, love still covers.
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The old man continued speaking on the beach: There is a line drawn in the sand for every person in your life. Some also say there is a beach, with its sea and sand, for every person you know and can love in the world. It's hard to share the same line, to be on the same beach, to be with the loved one right at the same point in the water. It's hard to achieve the most beautiful moment of love. These are the rules of love. They are very simple to understand, although we then complicate them by going around and around. But these are the rules. The color of the sea or the sand may change, the wind and the waves may change, but in the end, it's about being in or out, you're in the sea and/or on the sand.
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The boat approached the shore enough to stand. The old man got off and tied the boat to a post sticking out of the water. He continued saying: Look how the tide fluctuates. It's easy to get scared by the ups and downs of love. The water can sometimes leave you out. In those cases, it's best not to force yourself into the water. It's also not good to force anyone to enter. Both actions have the same result that comes from forced things: disgust. The pushed person will be afraid or disgusted by the water and will soon get out. The young man, moved by the new metaphor of love, jumped from the boat into the water. He wanted the same water he was going to immerse himself in to be the sea of love from which his heart had emerged.
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The young man and the old man walked through the water until they reached the shore. I like beaches - said the young man. You can always find the meaning of the word peace in them. Both sat on the sand. They admired the vastness of the sea and the ebb and flow of the waves and tide. Why do you want to help me? asked the young man. I've heard many travelers. From them, I've learned that there are five or six basic types of love stories from which, with nuances, the rest derive. I've also learned from nature. All the phenomena of love have their metaphor in nature. The poet young man couldn't agree more with the latter. He felt so in tune with the old man's thoughts that he interrupted him: It's always easier to think of love in metaphorical terms. Love is infinite, and that's why it escapes the human mind. The good metaphor, however, is easy to understand. Poetry is, many times, the demonstration that the truth of love, its instructions, are written before our eyes. It's so beautiful to find some of the truths of love written in the world. That's right, continued the old boatman. Answering your question, it could be said that it's part of my job to help my passengers find the truth. In my boat, they will know many places, they will find a new destination. They must also understand the truth of their path.
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The young man remained silent again. He thought about what the truth of his path would be. What conclusion should he draw from his journey? The old man seemed to read his mind. Your truth, the one you haven't found, is also written in the world. It seems incredible that being a poet, you haven't found it.
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The old man picked up sand in his hand and said: Look at this sand I hold in my hand. It's earth that can flow freely through my fingers. But if I squeeze it hard enough, I'll get a stone. Love is the freedom of the earth. If you obstruct its freedom, you will only petrify it. Time must pass, and the wind must blow to erode the stone, to recover the lost freedom. The stone always perishes with the wind. You just have to be patient.
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The young man was offended by the comparison. Are you implying that I petrified my love by fighting against the lack of love? There's a mistake. Lack of love doesn't exist. That word insults love, whether own or others'. Love is free and flows the way it wants, even when sometimes we don't agree with its decision. I can't choose through which fingers the sand that flows through my hand slips. I could try to stop it, but I would only end up petrifying it. You didn't let love flow, you petrified yourself.
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But why would my love flee when I loved her? You didn't stop loving her. If that had been the case, your love would have flowed in search of another girl. And that didn't happen. Love, like the wind, takes a thousand forms. Sometimes it blows strong. Sometimes it blows gently. Your love was blowing gently when you made a mistake. You confused it with lack of love. You thought the wind would stop blowing towards her just because it was blowing softer. Then you wanted to force your love. And you petrified yourself. To break the stone, you need the wind to blow, but you must wait for it to blow strong again. Now you need the wind to come, the same wind that supports the freedom to fly of the birds, to erode you and return the fluidity to the earth, to return the freedom you took from yourself.
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The poet young man was shy. Adding the recent events to that, it was not surprising to find that the young man only wanted to remain silent. The old man understood that the young man needed silence. And so he let him meditate for a while.
//------------------------------------------------------- The boatman surprised the young man when he said: There's very little left to reach your final destination. Before you go, I want you to take this seashell I picked up from the beach. The old man stopped rowing for a moment, took the seashell out of a pocket, and gave it to the young man. If you put it to your ear, what will you hear? The young man smiled. The echo of the sea, he said. The old man, who had heard what he wanted, told him some words that the young man could no longer forget: Your heart is also a seashell. Conversations of pure love escape oblivion. They resonate forever in the head of the one who hears them, as if by magic. It's pure magic, the infinite echo of love. The young man didn't believe an inner echo could go unnoticed just like that. Maybe he had gotten used to it, and that's why he didn't hear it. However, he closed his eyes and concentrated on listening.
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Suddenly, he knew the old man was telling the truth. Tears began to flow from his eyes. He didn't know where they came from, but he suspected they came from deep inside. They were the echoes of his first "I love you." As if it were a whirlwind dragging pure words of love, he found that his echo kept many things he had forgotten. He found the words before the first kiss, words of seduction he had buried, conversations making love, the day he proposed. There were the words for his beloved, spinning forcefully in the whirlwind. The whirlwind of love words gave him all the wind he needed. He felt his petrified heart eroding suddenly. The earth of the freedom of love flowed again. The wind dried the moisture from his wood, revived the embers, and the fire caught. The whirlwind stirred the tide, the sea level rose to flood the beach. Everything was love in his heart.
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The young man's tears made the old man understand that he had learned the lesson. He could now take him to his destination. Thank you, the young man said. I would like to know the name of the one who has helped me so much. The old man smiled with some irony. You should know, because you came to see me. Besides, I don't know why that matters. A name is a container that doesn't serve, only what it carries inside matters. However, I will answer you. Some call me Peter. There were those who called me Charon. I have many other names. Some believe I'm the first dead they see, or the last living they know, but I'm only the one who leads them to their vital horizon.
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The poet's face was a poem. Now he understood all the old man's wisdom. Desperation grew in him thinking that despite rediscovering his love, he couldn't return to his, now yes, beloved. The old man had seen that expression many times before. Remember, I told you that you could get on or go back. You chose to get on. I want to go back, said the young man. You need the soul of a hero to get out of here. You need the soul of a God to resurrect. And you, you've shown to have the soul of a coward.
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The old man wasn't wrong. He had done what he had done and couldn't hide it. He had become obsessed thinking about the death of love and decided to escape, forever. To get out of that place, you needed the soul of a hero. And they had already told him he wasn't one. The time to react was running out. Two hundred meters away, the end of the journey could be seen. There was a port where people were waiting. There was some familiar silhouette, but it wasn't the time to focus on it. He couldn't think of anything to say to the boatman. And he continued with his impassive rowing. He couldn't think of what to say to become a new Orpheus, a poet who went and returned alive from the underworld. Then it occurred to him. It's heroic to resurrect for true love, he thought. Maybe he was a hero or a fool, but he had to do something. He jumped into the water.
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The young man bravely jumped into the water, swimming with strength because he wanted to return. He needed to return to the shore, now he knew he had unfinished business. The old man watched him with a smile. Now he didn't see a coward, but a hero, but a hero for whom it might be too late to resurrect. How difficult it is to swim having gone so far. It was difficult for him to breathe. Maybe he took too long to find his hero in his soul. That's what he thought as he sank deeper and deeper. He ended up sinking into the water, using his last gasp with rage to come out of the water.
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And he came out. He was in his bathtub at home. The water, tinged with red, recalled the end of a coward. From the water, drawing strength from his courage, emerged a wounded hero. He bandaged his wounds and rested. He recovered. He called her. How beautiful life is, he thought, when you know how to give it meaning, when you discover that love never dies.