Dialogues And Silences E-Book

Mariano Velasco Lizcano

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 91

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

I believe I am one of those people addicted to self-help literature. Or at least I was. And I acknowledge that the many books I read on the subject helped me to think. Also to reflect. But they helped me little, because in reality I didn't know how—or didn't want—to change. So I thought it wouldn't be bad to write my own opinions on those transcendental themes that this type of literature addresses. Because demystifying is good. And because deep down, I consider that knowing the problems and their solutions will always help; even those who refuse to be helped.

Leseprobe

DIALOGUESANDSILENCES

Mariano Velasco Lizcano

With my deepest gratitude to Isabel Pacheco and Héctor Campos. With their photographs, they have filled with color pages that would otherwise have been written in gray.

Table of Contents

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

LOST YOUTH

REACHING ONE'S DREAMS

LONELINESS AND SADNESS

YOU NEVER WIN AN ARGUMENT

THE VALUE OF TIME

LIFE IN GRAY

BECOMING ILL WITH WORRY

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING

WHY SO MUCH STRESS

PATIENCE VERSUS EXASPERATION

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING

HATRED DESTROYS

THE ART OF WRITING

THE FEELING OF SHAME

THOSE EVERYDAY WORRIES

GOING BACK TO FAME

C O R R E C T I N G

SETTING PRIORITIES

CRITICISM AND OPINION

HELLO, DAD!

IS FRIENDSHIP POSSIBLE?

APPRECIATING SINCERELY

INFLUENCING TO REACH ONE'S DREAMS

FEAR OF "FEAR"

WE ARE NOT FREE FROM FLAWS

AS FAREWELL AND EPILOGUE

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

By Mariano Velasco Lizcano

I believe I am one of those people addicted to self-help literature. Or at least I was. And I acknowledge that the many books I read on the subject helped me to think. Also to reflect. But they helped me little, because in reality I didn't know how—or didn't want—to change. So I thought it wouldn't be bad to write my own opinions on those transcendental themes that this type of literature addresses. Because demystifying is good. And because deep down, I consider that knowing the problems and their solutions will always help; even those who refuse to be helped.

The themes or problems addressed are the ancestral ones, those that have prompted over time thousands, perhaps millions of reflections. That's why I believe I cannot offer much novelty. But on the other hand, I can convey "effects" and "results." Because I am convinced that the number of people who, after having read this type of literature, find themselves incapable of adopting any kind of solution would be counted in the millions.

With airs of immensity

And the fact is, one thing is to preach, and another to deliver. Knowing the problem and the solutions is one thing; knowing how to apply them or being able to apply them, that's quite another.

But even so, this type of literature carries a value: It is capable of helping us reflect! And therefore it predisposes us to the encounter with truth. The truth of our own lives.

Knowing the problems will always help

I don't know if the hypothetical reader of these lines will be able to find something of value in them. Whether they will serve them or not. What I do know is that, for me, personally, they have made me return to many moments of indecision; to reassess them, and to think that writing them down to communicate them could have some value.

In any case, this task is something I wanted and needed to do.

I hope that for you, dear reader, they will also serve, even if only to enjoy some moments of personal encounter. With that alone, this small publication will have found all its meaning and value.

One thing is to preach; another to deliver

LOST YOUTH

Many are the times I have asked myself what I can expect from life now that I left my youth behind years ago. Perhaps life stops being interesting for this reason? —I wonder—. And I think that the answer stems from a single question: Am I happy? Do I still have reasons to be? That is the question. And about it I no longer want to deceive myself. Because I know I am a wounded and precarious person, a man who has carried wounds inside from the very beginning. That's why I am spending my entire adult life pouring words like blood onto paper. Because I no longer find other rewards, distant from those small pleasures that food, travel, amusements, or alcohol could provide me.

So I write because these letters serve me as crutches to keep myself upright and able to move through the world. I know, then, what I need to be happy in my current moment. And I am even aware of having it. I no longer crave applause or external approval, I only wish to make use of time to do the things I want to do. And furthermore, I am capable of appreciating what I have near me; the beauty of any moment and any place. It is no small thing. So I am not overly concerned with justifying the reason for writing these reflections. They simply make me happy! And everything else seems superfluous. Because I have spent too many moments of my life frightened, afraid, almost sick with worry, my stomach and belly destroyed by such a puerile situation.

What can one expect from life when youth is left behind

That's why now that I am approaching that stage in which I will have to inexorably pay tribute to old age, in which I will see worse, hear with more difficulty, be clumsier at learning and more forgetful with everything I learned, I can no longer continue living off fatuous vanity. My only objective must be to try to convey or leave record of those things I learned in the hope that they may serve at least as a topic for meditation, if not as advice or guidance. In any case, they are life lessons: "Life stories" is what sociological science calls them; in any case, an interesting way to leave record of the passage of time, the uses, ways and customs of a particular society in a particular historical moment, and the reflections and lessons that all of this prompted in me: It is not a bad aspiration!

Traditions and customs of each society

What a beautiful moment to stop and think

REACHING ONE'S DREAMS

I believe that one of the most enriching and relevant occupations of every human being is that which is directed toward making dreams come true. Because we all forge dreams that we would like to achieve throughout our lives. Although reality shows us that few human beings manage to accomplish them. Why? That is the question.

My dream was to write. I mean that my dream was to become a writer. And I remember it was a passion that awakened in me from a very early age. It began during those early school years when for all texts we used the Enciclopedia Álvarez, that compendium of subjects that made up all the knowledge that the educational model in use understood we should learn.

I remember that in grammar and spelling it was a common practice for teachers to resort to both "dictation" and "composition" exercises. And I especially liked that business of composing. Because I had a great facility for capturing on paper the things that had happened to me and telling them, moreover, with a certain air of interest. Without realizing it, the use of recreation of facts was already innate in me, resorting to tricks that I didn't even know then were writer's techniques. I refer to the use of synopses, metaphors and even the world of "like" which, of course, I had no idea were literary devices, but which came to me with the greatest ease.

And in this way, dreams are reached

Of course, back then I also didn't know that my taste for writing would forge itself as a vocation with the passage of time. First it was like a kind of desire; then it became a necessity, and later it would come to constitute my greatest dream of personal fulfillment. Although this, like all things in life, emerged and grew little by little, just as plants do in nature, which are first seeds and then grow to become lush trees. Although, in this case, its growth, unlike in nature, was not a linear constant.

Flaubert, at nine years of age, told his friend Ernest Chevalier that "... since there is a lady who comes to our house and always tells us nonsense, I will write it down." At seventeen he doubted: "Before I thought, meditated, wrote, put on paper, whether well or poorly, the inspiration that was in my heart. Now I no longer think, I don't meditate, I write even less [...] I doubt. My thoughts are disordered, I cannot accomplish any work of imagination, everything I write is dry, it is painful, forced, it has been torn out with pain." At twenty, when he had already given up writing and was studying at law school, convinced of his total incapacity, he still acknowledged that "... what takes the pen from my hands if I take notes, what hides the book from me if I read, is my old love, it is the same obsessive idea: To write!"

He then made a decision: to turn back and try again. And no one doubts that he succeeded. With tenacity, tremendous effort and pain—sometimes it took him several days to elevate a single line to its final form—and above all with an imperishable constancy and obstinacy.

Here is the key to reaching one's dreams: willpower, effort, and a tenacity bordering on obstinacy, not to mention a blind confidence in being able to achieve it.

The beginning of reverie

Does this mean that by being obstinate and trusting in it, we will always reach our dreams?

It is here when I must return to my own particular experience. Because as early as the vocation arose, I did not take long to discover my lack of talent for its realization. The first readings were enough for me to understand that I didn't know, that I was not prepared to write. I lacked everything: training, culture, but above all talent and imagination. So for many years I abandoned the idea of writing to dedicate myself entirely to a single matter: training myself sufficiently for it. And thus, with more than thirty years behind me then, I embarked on a university journey that led me to a degree, a doctorate and countless university courses that among other things allowed me to discover the land in which I lived, its multiple problems, and the great historiographical neglect that characterized it. That is, it opened the horizon of a void to fill. And so I began to write in all forms and in almost all genres; passionately and with little literary value at first. Despite this I wrote constantly; and I also published. So much so that today I can say that in the end I reached my dream: I write and publish, therefore, I can feel like a writer. And this is independent of the success, triumph, or recognition I obtain from others. It doesn't matter if I write well or poorly, if my works are liked or not. The only important thing is that I finally reached my dream: To write! And little else matters.