As
I wrote in my post On
the Eve of the U.S. Elections,
we are today living in desperate times. This has become even more
evident with the election results. Given this reality – here in the
U.S. and in many other places globally - how are we to respond? I
believe that one important step is to become clear about the
kind of world we desire; the kind of world we dream of, that we
en-vision.
The
writings of the great Uruguayan journalist and writer, Eduardo
Galeano, are one of the places I find this vision powerfully
articulated. And so in this post I share, for all of us to consider,
the words of his poem: “El
Derecho al Soñar”
(“The Right to Dream"):
"How about if, for a moment, we
rave?
Let's set our sights beyond the
abominations of today to divine another possible world?
The
air shall be cleansed of all poisons except those born of human fears
and human passions.
In
the streets, cars shall be run over by dogs.
People
shall not be driven by cars, or programmed by computers, or bought by
supermarkets, or watched by televisions.
The
TV set shall no longer be the most important member of the family and
shall be treated like an iron or a washing machine.
People
shall work for a living instead of living for work.
Written
into law shall be the crime of stupidity, committed by those who live
to have or to win, instead of living just to live like the bird
that sings without knowing it and the child who plays unaware that he
or she is playing.
In
no country shall young men who refuse to go to war go to jail, rather
only those who want to make war.
Economists
shall not measure living standards by consumption levels or the
quality of life by the quantity of things.
Cooks
shall not believe that lobsters love to be boiled alive.
Historians
shall not believe that countries love to be invaded.
Politicians
shall not believe that the poor love to eat promises.
Solemnity
shall no longer be a virtue, and no-one shall be taken seriously who
can’t make fun of him or herself.
Death
and money shall lose their magical powers, and neither demise nor
fortune shall make a virtuous gentleman of a rat.
No-one
shall be considered a hero or a fool for doing what he believes is
right instead of what serves him best.
Rather
than wage war on the poor, the world will wage war on poverty.
The
arms industry shall have no alternative but to declare bankruptcy.
No
one will die of hunger because no one will die of indigestion.
Street
children will no longer be treated as though they were garbage,
because there will no longer be street children; rich children
will not be treated as though they were gold, because there will be
no rich children.
Education
shall not be the privilege of those who can pay and the police shall
not be the curse of those who cannot pay.
Justice
and liberty, Siamese twins condemned to live apart, shall meet again
and be reunited and inextricably connected once again.
A
woman, a black woman, shall be president of Brazil, and another black
woman shall be president of the United States; an Indian woman shall
govern Guatemala and another Peru.
In
Argentina, the crazy women of the Plaza de Mayo
shall be held up as examples of mental health because they refused to
forget in a time of obligatory amnesia.
Holy
Mother Church shall correct the typos on the tablet of Moses and the
Sixth Commandment shall dictate the celebration of the body.
The
Church shall also proclaim another commandment, the one God forgot:
“You shall love nature, of which you are a part.”
The
deserts of the world and of the soul shall be reforested.
The
despairing ones shall be awaited and the lost shall be found, for
they are the ones who despaired from so much waiting and who were
lost through so much seeking.
We
shall be compatriots and contemporaries of all who have a yearning
for justice and beauty, no matter where they were born or where they
lived, because the borders of geography and time shall cease to
exist.
We
shall be the imperfect ones because perfection shall remain the
boring privilege of the gods.
However,
in our bungling and fucked up world we will live every night as if
it were the last and every day as if it were the first.
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