Mourning

Why hide it? Two catastrophes, one strategic, the other seismic, nearly overwhelmed our capacity to endure and placed us before a third: examining the rubble in search of any trace of life. How will the victims look at us, and will it be worth our while to survive?

The Stoics preach that we should disregard things beyond our control and concern ourselves only with those we can master. What they do not dispense with is the scrutiny needed to distinguish between the two. The Stoic advises against being moved by the irreparable, but no precept can silence Dylan Thomas's agonizing verse: "Rage, rage, at the dying of the light!" Anger at the agony of what we love is the only proof that we are still alive.

We know full well that there are not one, but several theories about catastrophes. Physics maintains that when opposing forces accumulate, at some point a violent rupture occurs—an earthquake or social explosion—that establishes a new struggle of opposites.
Every examination of defeat is, first and foremost, a self-examination. Are we what we thought we were? Did we let ourselves be led by those who couldn't even get to the corner? Did we build fortresses or ostentatious, carnival-like structures? Are we liberating ourselves or burying ourselves in the rubble? Does everyone feel what I feel, or am I the only one? Only you can give the answer.

Sociopolitical theory deals with the use of catastrophes for the purpose of gaining power. Whenever they suffered a crisis, the populist movements of the last century developed intensive campaigns to blame the people and convince them of their inability to manage the disaster, which led to increasingly worse cataclysms, until the last one turned against the very power structure.

The astute Naomi Klein observed that imperialism's strategies consistently employ shock and awe tactics, applying overwhelming and unrestrained violence to shock populations and reduce them to a state of helplessness and terror, rendering them unable to react. Examples include the Nakba against the Palestinians, the coup against Allende in Chile, the destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage following the US invasion, and countless other cases the reader might recall. In none of these instances did submission lead to anything positive.

Only absence reveals the true value of what matters to us. The most devastating of catastrophes is the loss of the beloved. It is experienced as a profound pain, which neither witchcraft nor therapy can alleviate. Throughout life, we sacrifice soul, life, and heart on altars that perhaps were only worthwhile because of the fervor with which we invested them. The intensity of our passions is the measure of our soul. Perhaps the only proof of its existence is the courage to sacrifice it by gambling it against the roulette wheel of indifference. Every reciprocated passion is suspect of being self-serving. No cataclysm is definitive, except the loss of the capacity to love.

Grief, like all human experiences, unfolds in stages. Every psychologist has devised their own system; most share similarities with the one proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression/sadness, acceptance. Variations of this model are postulated as valid for the death of a loved one, for the loss of a romantic relationship, for the diagnosis of an incurable illness, for all kinds of catastrophes. The discerning reader will have noticed its flaw. True grief neither accepts nor bargains: it intensifies its pain until it forges something greater than itself. And if loving you is a sin, / let them condemn me to death, declares the heart-wrenching Mexican folk song.
There's no point in asking if we'll ever return to normal when normality itself is a catastrophe. "That which does not destroy me makes me stronger," said Nietzsche. To face zero is to plan for infinity. To know that we can lose everything is to multiply our attachment a hundredfold. We all once harbored some high hope. Now we know that giving it up is also a cataclysm.

An irreversible loss defined the existence of Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Palacios y Blanco. Orphaned, estranged from intractable uncles, and discriminated against as a mere Venezuelan in a hostile, peninsular metropolis, he found solace in falling in love with María Teresa Toro, whom he called “daughter of a countryman and a relative.” The young Simón adored her without being deterred by the possible distance: “My soul’s sweet enchantment: in my last letter I wrote to you about the happy success of my importunate impertinence, in which they asked you for something, the effects of which you will surely learn with pleasure, for I believe that, even if there is no love involved, at least there is still humanity in your benevolent heart (…)”.

The newlywed dies of yellow fever; it seems the end of everything for her young husband. Two decades later, he confides to his aide-de-camp, Luis Perú La Croix: “Look at how things turn out: if I hadn't been widowed, not even twenty years old, perhaps my life would have been different; I wouldn't be General Bolívar, nor the Liberator, although I admit my genius wasn't suited to being mayor of San Mateo.” Continental freedom is the titanic response to an irreparable loss.

We never know if disaster is a pit that buries us or an anvil that forges us for the unavoidable task.