I don’t wish you happiness

By Pablo Corral Vega

I don’t wish you a happy new year. How could I? Happiness is just a joyful moment in the midst of other humble moments, which are no less important.

Happiness is a glass of fresh water on a hot day, the breeze on your skin, the evening light that kisses everything with its honey. Happiness is the unexpected meeting with an old friend, gratitude, tenderness, the shared hours in the delicious nothingness of being.

One moment of happiness after another moment of happiness after another moment of happiness would lose its shine.

On nights like this we say Inshallah. If only God or the Universe grant us that. If the cosmos allows it. To tell you the truth, I’m afraid of treacherous misfortune. I’m afraid that wishing you happiness is an arrogance, a naivety.

I don’t  wish you happiness. No. I wish you vitality. A persistent, insistent, stubborn vitality. A vitality in spite of everything. I wish you the magic of the alchemist, the secret knowledge that turns even pain into beauty. I wish you creativity, the playful power to turn clay into response, into raving.

I wish you consciousness. Not the abstract or philosophical consciousness, but the consciousness… of the presence… of those we love.

I wish you tenderness, a proud and convinced tenderness, a tenderness that engages your bones, your entrails. A tenderness that allows you to live what the other feels, with conviction and abandonment.

I wish you a rose to whom you have given the right to tame you. Every person has the obligation to live the delicious complicity of love, the danger of losing the senses to finally find them. I wish you closeness, the soul that is close to another soul until it yields into the mystery of the other.

I wish you time, a lot of time, time that you will not sell to the highest bidder. Time to walk, to breathe, to love, to celebrate. Time in solitude and time to share. I wish you time to listen to the rhythms of nature and the song of the birds, time for wonder.

I wish you the stars, the mystery of getting lost in their mystery. However wise and intelligent we may be, it is enough to look at the sky on a starry night to imagine our ignorance.

Life is short and that makes it precious. Life is cruel, foolish, indifferent. But above all it is short. I wish you the fragrant joy of knowing that you are alive today, now, this moment, this moment that will not return.

Of the future we humans know nothing. We barely manage to babble inshallah, hopefully, if the universe allows it.