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t the end of the dry season, the Ganges, as it passes through Rishikesh, retains a stained-glass blue color that makes one want to stone it. The first rains will soon make their presence felt. So will the transmuting of the afternoons, which will jump from one sky to another until the hour of the beetles and end up capitulating at sunset. Leaning on the windowsill of a rooftop from where I could observe life spread out over the carved light, I listened to the speaker talk about the three friends who accompany us throughout life: people, money, and breath. People, he says, see us born and grow. We keep each other company. But when we die, we leave and the entourage stays. To refer to the second friend, money, he uses the same simile: we need it until our time comes, then the dead person leaves and the money stays. Only the third friend who guards us also vanishes with us: breath, respiration.
Tension exerts such dominance over our behavior that we perpetually limit well-being.Two million years ago, the first long-distance explorers in human history packed their bags and left the cradle of East Africa to move to the north of the same continent and to present-day Europe and Asia. The Sapienswe began to dream about ourselves. We prepared for an uncertain future. An expansion that sought to increase well-being, which we started alone and which, insatiable, we remain determined to complete in the same way. During this process, we have not avoided the destruction of the planet or the extermination of dozens of animal species, among them, that of humans who were not like us. It has been and continues to be the consequence of wanting to exercise control over what surrounds us, above all, control over two of the three friends: people and money. This behavior has led us to fear for our own existence. At all times we feel danger. Tension exerts such dominance over our behavior that we perpetually limit well-being.
With the will to bring hope through that very own method, which consists of abandoning you in the middle of a tunnel and, little by little, accompanying you to the light, Zygmunt Bauman defended that there is a return to what we were two million years ago, just moments before the long journey began (Retrotopia, ed. Paidós). To date, well-being has been justified as a right. Surely we came from times too turbulent to try other ways. But we are beginning to perceive that the concept has been a patch, and patches sooner or later leak.
Again we face an uncertain future, in which younger generations face a more than possible scenario that will worsen well-being conditions. Avoiding it means renouncing progress as we have understood it until nowBerta Roig, in the articleThe middle class loses power(The New Barcelona post, March 13, 2018), pointed out the aftermath of the last economic crisis: excessive in number and, in many cases, insurmountable. Again we face an uncertain future, in which younger generations face a more than possible scenario that will worsen welfare conditions. Avoiding it means giving up progress as we have understood it until now. The formulas of scientific and technological advancement must be replaced by others that are not designed for evolution, but considering stages close to the origins: reduce competitiveness, reduce expectations and let consumerism fall. A colossal challenge that aims to overcome an era. An era marked by the education of up to five senses, with which we have learned to perceive the outside world, the world of others; because in the same way that we observe and judge others, we know that they also observe and judge us. This has led us to be as we think we are perceived from the outside. We possess and are afraid to lose.
A person could endure about three weeks without food and about three days without water. But they would hardly reach three minutes without breathing. We eat about three times a day and breathe twenty-three thousandPablo d'Ors states that man and woman begin to live to the extent that they stop dreaming about themselves and develop consciousness. Consciousness is understanding the interdependence between humans and the planet (or the universe). And to achieve consciousness, it is essential to tune into our interior through breathing.
A person could endure about three weeks without food and about three days without water. But they would hardly reach three minutes without breathing. We eat about three times a day and breathe twenty-three thousand. And, yet, when we are not well, the welfare system prescribes attention to diet instead of attending to breathing. This has been the model until now: do not fear getting sick, welfare -people and money- will cure you. On the contrary, the new way of providing well-being does not involve the security of knowing that you have a hospital on every corner. The new way of well-being involves attending to breathing, from which the quantity and quality of vital energy are derived, and discovering and accepting oneself.
The main difficulty we will encounter in facing this path will be accepting that it is better to surrender. Abandon the belief that well-being is the answers to the questions of science and progress. It is not true, because they are not and never will be better than the answers of the heart.