I reflect today on a beautiful and amazing passage in the
book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores,
by Gabriel GarcÍa Márquez. I am still
reading this the first of his books for me to read. I was drawn to it by the
great title and the fascination to hear the story of a 90 year old man unfold.
The passage reminded of how so often we escape from our inner-self or our
true-self for much of our lives and all the illusions and veils we place over
our lives, we always stand naked to everyone else. A reminder to seek our true
selves with each breath, each day, since we all will not be awarded the luxury
that this fictional character was awarded at the age of 90, the ability to find
the true meaning love.
Reading the passage will provide much greater insight than
anything I can write to introduce it.
“Thanks to her I
confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. I
discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each
subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the
well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a completed system
of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that
I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I
appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as
prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to
succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care
about other people’s time. I leaned, in short, that love is not a condition of
the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
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