Examination of the senseless young man

Let me make a confession. You see, I have always wanted to be a good person. You know, to help others, to fulfill my obligations, to live committed to the noblest causes of our time. I have wanted it so much that I almost became the worst of them all. It only takes a glance to see how a feeling of laziness and idleness in the face of things seems to have settled in our days, infecting us like a virus that does not stop spreading and whose diagnosis is none other than that of a mediocrity that prides itself on being mediocre. This was not my case. I sincerely wanted to make my life something important and original. Unlike what I saw around me, I could not settle for the comfort of the herd, but longed to go my own way. I felt I was called to be a hero, to do something special. I wanted to change the world to leave it a better place than it had been given to me. That desire to do good consumed me, driving me from one front to another in a battle from which, for some reason, I always marched in retreat.

I made a great effort to fulfill my purpose, only to realize that behind that desire for goodness, there was only that: desire... I began to analyze my whole life and I quickly understood that there was nothing good in it that could stand out, nothing to be proud of, but quite the opposite. It was true that I traveled a lot, but it was even more true that I left places just as I had entered them. I read as much as I could, but never to change my mind but to reaffirm my prejudices about things. I met great people, but I escaped the demands of true friendship. I fell in love as often as I quickly tired of love, for it was not love that guided me, but self-interest. Thus, believing myself to be a hero, I passed for the greatest of cowards. No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to materialize my good intentions into palpable and indisputable deeds and actions. When the moment of truth came, I would run away, retreating again, some excuse knocking at my door at the last moment to free me from the commitment I had got myself into and from which, deep down, I feared I would not be able to get out. A perverse logic kept me blind, mute and deaf to my true pathology. I struggled to achieve the impossible just to be able to ignore what I could really do, I was worried but never busy, I proclaimed what I rejected so much, and I did not hesitate to criticize the speck in someone else's eye, ignoring the log in my own. And it is that, in reality, I did not really want to do the well, but my well, a small detail that keeps us anesthetized to the real disease of our time: emptiness and inner anguish.

As you can understand, admitting something like this is not easy. And rather than get angry with myself, I decided to get angry with the world. At that time, the scream of my pride drowned out the numb voice of my conscience, thinking that it was only a matter of time before reality would eventually come around to my way of thinking. The frustration I felt inside me could never be my responsibility, but that cruel reality that prevented me again and again to reach what was finally within my reach: happiness. I was the victim here, no one seemed to understand me, because in spite of the sweat and tears donated with every effort to be "good", nothing profitable came out of it all. The more I wanted it, the farther I felt from reaching my goal. I felt like a madman imprisoned in his straitjacket: the more I resisted to escape from the meaninglessness and banality of the world, the tighter I was squeezed by its suffocating straps. 

Who would have thought that this was my problem: wanting to be happy at all costs, putting my happiness above everything else. Without realizing it, I let myself be captivated by the mantra that our world has elevated to the category of "summum bonum". At last we have the "right to be happy", there is nothing left to prevent us from achieving the longed-for happiness, at last all our problems will be solved. And yet, it is curious to see how a world that never stops talking about happiness, at the same time laments its unhappiness as never before. The paradox is as obvious as it is elusive. Modern man has forgotten that any right that is not accompanied like a coin by its corresponding duty is a fraud, which leaves the person completely sold out and at the service of the corresponding authority. To Caesar we must give only what is Caesar's, nothing more. Now I realize that what I believed to be authentic happiness, in reality was nothing more than that filtered, lukewarm and dirty water that is detached from the true substance. I took for happiness what were mere excuses to justify my behavior, so I wouldn't have to do anything about it. I made the world a place to protect myself from the world. I judged things not by how they were, but by how I would like them to be. It was a perfect trap, whose deception was perfected the more I was convinced that I had overcome it.

It is curious how man is capable of sabotaging himself without even realizing it. This is exactly what happens to his happiness. C. S. Lewis reminded us that "if our aim is heaven, earth will be given to us in addition, but if we focus only on earth, we will lose both". It took me a long time to understand that in order to be happy I had to forget about happiness itself. First I had to earn it and then put it at risk again and again, in order to achieve that which is greater than happiness itself, and with it the fullest happiness. But back then, I was more afraid of losing than wanting to win. I lived a relaxed and distracted life, it is true, but in my heart I felt more and more the feeling that my life was slipping away. I started to look for evidence to support my poor convictions and I ran into another problem: everything I could prove by my own means was totally irrelevant and meaningless; on the other hand, everything that could give meaning to my life lacked any proof to hold on to and, therefore, I had to give it up. In time I came to understand that this dilemma was nothing more than the difference between certainty and truth. The former requires no effort on our part and therefore, like everything that is free, always leaves us unsatisfied; Truth, on the other hand, asks us to change, to the point of separating us from ourselves, to the point of demanding a "leap of faith". That is why the world has renounced Truth in order to conform, once again, to something very inferior. Let us take as an example the most real and essential of our existence, that which no one can question, but which no one can prove either: love. Only when we trust it, it becomes the most certain and indestructible thing we have, as soon as we try to confirm it, it disappears. For it is not the knowledge that holds the truth, but the love that comes from it that makes it worthwhile. Therefore, to know oneself and to surrender oneself are, in the end, the same thing, because Truth does not exist to be known, but to be lived.

I, on the other hand, have lived many years believing that to find meaning in my life I could only believe in myself, paying for it the highest price, the same price paid by the modern young man today, a young man who has everything but who is absolutely nothing; a young man distracted by how much he possesses on the outside, and eaten away by the anguish of his inner emptiness; a young man who seeks to cash in on his fortune by selling the noblest values of his youth. But happiness cannot be bought, for it is "the consequence of giving the best of ourselves for the truth". For the truth! Any other ambition is nothing but the triumph of the ego and the failure of man's real freedom, for he who lives for himself does not live, but agonizes.

This is the test to which I have subjected myself and which I now propose to you in this bookA review of these good intentions lacking in goodness; a journey from our truth and its terrible consequences, to the Truth and the Love that can only be born from it; an awakening from nonsense to the reason of our lives, from reason to the heart and its reasons, from the transient to the eternal, from the contingent to the absolute, from this life to the only Life. So let all these mistakes that I have been making and that you will find in these pages serve to make us realize that it is not good intentions that save us, no matter how good they may be. With this manuscript I only aspire that you, young man with no senseI am afraid that none of this is possible without a first confession, the one that I bring you and that changed my life forever, as it may well change yours. But I am afraid that none of this is possible without a first confession, just the one I bring you and that changed my life forever, as it may well change yours: For Truth is of no use if I am not the one who serves Her. Let us set out, then, to serve Her in whatever way we can. Let us love that which surpasses us in order, at last, to surpass ourselves.....