Читать книгу The satisfaction of having achieved my aims - Miguel Bornaschella - Страница 5

Before the holes of my memory go on increasing and finish breaking down the initial idea, I have decided to give my testimony. I have had this intention since long ago, but I have decided to rush into it because of different reasons and now it has become imperative follow this interior order.

Whenever this idea had hardly happened to appear, it seemed to be an accumulation of experiences which got lost and then turned up once again along the long way made. By those days they were just a collection of anecdotes which I told whenever I thought it was appropriate or whenever some events occurred and brought to the surface a useful message of the anecdote. The daily events carried and brought back my memories from one side to the other in such an easy way that it was no effort for me to retell them, repeat them, and sometimes do all this to even the same people once again – though they interrupted me to make me aware of it … and thus pass my experience with the corresponding moral, even picturing it, to my children, grandchildren, friends, old and new employees and their families … Should I be arrogant if I tried to teach? That is not my purpose. Neither do I think I am arrogant whenever I say that I would like to leave my testimony.

The story of my life is simple. So simple and moving like the ones of any other Italian immigrant. But the great desire and will to outdo oneself is what makes the difference between one and other, and I feel I have the satisfaction of having achieved my aims. Neither because I have had some public recognition nor because I got over my fellows, but because I overcame myself. I will feel actually satisfied if I can make people understand that I overcame myself because this is how I feel like every morning and every night. And I still go on trying to do so day after day.

By coming back to the little particles that were the seeds of this story, the anecdotes have been appearing and accumulating in time with the same speed and the same unconsciousness as the years have gathered. My father used to tell me a lot of stories: of his, of his relatives and friends. I would listen to him, paid attention when he spoke amazed by the quantity! He always had a new story to tell … Once I told him about my astonishment and he replied that I would myself have a lot of things to tell in the future, he knew that since he had been able to see my personality. He also told me this was going to happen as soon as I was the appropriate age.

At this moment it happens to me that I do not want to gather more anecdotes. Watching everything from here and backwards, I can clearly see the guiding thread and I can imagine the story thoroughly finished. I will do my best to keep the chronological order and be quiet enough at the moment of showing emotions and feelings. But I cannot guarantee this.

Fortunately I have travelled through time connecting the suffering of learning new things with the time of applying the experience. In fact I will be giving myself my own testimony.

I would like to picture the life of the immigrant, but perhaps in a better way the life of the person who immigrated to Argentina as a life cut into two halves. This is a story of circular journeys. My immigration or my migration, depending on the side of the ocean people will read this, is like the story of so many people whose children-sons or daughters-have had to migrate. But even if this did not happen, the life of the immigrant is broken into two. Even still, as it happened in my case, this occurred at a very short age. A piece of your life remains in the other side of the ocean, wondering what would have happened if the exile had not taken place, expecting for the moments of meeting your relatives, and wondering as surely my father did, if that had been the right decision or, as my mother used to say, without being afraid of making a mistake, that had not been the right decision. Or if here or there things would have been easier or more difficult…

In fact, life was and goes on being circular. Growing up, losing, getting recovered, losing again but going on by standing up and suffering from endless tiredness, falling again but never getting depressed, crying enough in order to learn, laughing what was necessary to go on, being optimist by nature accepting the bad taste of hard experiences naturally, as an irremediable circumstance of life.

In this endless adventure, up to now, I have always remained at the sight of everybody, and though the consequences have been many times dreadful, I have never got hidden from anybody, neither to laugh nor to cry, things that have happened almost with the same frequency.

There have been a lot of lookers-on all through these years: faithful friends and others who did not believe in me. Some who have underestimated me, some others who have become glad of my successes and some who were waiting for my new failure. Some who would be ready to help me once more and others who would enjoy my misfortune.

“Doing” is difficult. Proposing your own aims, keeping certain order and shortening times seem to be easy, but soon the obstacles suddenly turn up, grow naturally and seem to be a joke of fate. On a more earthly plane and a bit more ungenerous, the economic policy has always injured with its claws and general policy has broken down most of the plans. Finally we suffer from their consequences, day after day and this makes our participation, the participation of ordinary people become less massive, less natural and less effective. This is also part of my testimony. Participation is necessary, essential to change our fate to end the way we deserve. If other people in other latitudes achieve what they are looking for, why we cannot do it? In those latitudes, with other climates, other grounds and other fortunes, there are equal human beings, with the same blood, the same sweat, the same tears, who have overcome themselves daily naturally, without crying or shouting and most of the times they can do it.

Shall we do it? Each of us will find the answer at the right time, in our interior, in privacy, from our own place, but what we should not do is being insincere with ourselves. From my place I would not be able to oblige anyone to think differently. The only thing, I think I can do is to put into words my own experience and all that I have learnt with it.

I hope to be able to be as clear as possible.