Saying goodbye to something or someone is usually an act related to abandonment, the end and, ultimately, the grieving process. I'm sure you would ever, or you'd hear someone, tell them the typical, topical phrase of "I don't like greetings." And I don't want to fool you, not even I've been seduced by greetings.
I believe that this has happened, among other things, to deal with situations that may involve sadness because of the inability we have historically had as a society. We identify certain feelings, like nostalgia, as something negative, and that's why we try to avoid them. Although it is often more painful to resist something than to accept that it is better to let go.
When I was growing up, I was going to spend my vacation to the village of my mother's family, and I was going to curse the tears that I was going to pour out on my return. I suffered when I fell in love with a person who was far from my city, thinking that surely our roads would separate again. When my grandfather was 100 years old, in good shape, he felt compassion for the bad situation that would lead to his inevitable death. Living with those fears was normalized.
All three things happened, and acceptance was not an unimpeded process. But from experiences like this I have learned something: greetings can be radical possibilities of transformation. Above all, when you have the privilege of choosing the time to carry them out and find time to take them on and to take care of the uncertainty they often pose.
The constant connection with current information and the digital sphere has led me to accumulate fatigue and decrease motivation.
That has been my fate in recent months. After fourteen years of involvement in the daily life of the journal, at the end of the month I will shut down the writing computer so that another colleague will turn it on in September. The constant connection with current information and the digital sphere has led me to accumulate tiredness and decrease motivation; it has made me want to rest. This rest will allow me to think about new personal and professional opportunities.
Also, this ARGIA article will be the last of the stage that opened in December 2017. Since then I have published dozens of texts on these estimated pages. In all of them, I have tried to give my vision of the events of recent years in the Catalan countries. And, as on this occasion, I have dared to write some personal thoughts; I hope that I found it interesting.
In the last article I explained to you the hardness of greeting a friend of mine in exile from a station in Switzerland. Fortunately or by chance, today I write these lines, after knowing that the Democratic Tsunami issue has been filed, and knowing that I will not delay embracing it again in our land. He [Jesús Rodríguez] will take the witness in these articles and thus close a circle: it will be the same person who opened the doors of journalism fourteen years ago who will write for you from now on.
Maybe we have to learn and accept that a “hello” will always bring a “goodbye”, and that some goodbye doesn’t have to be definitive if we know how to do it at the right time. Now I prefer to say “until soon” or, better yet, to shout “no goodbye!”, because everything learned will accompany me safely and proudly to an objective that cannot be foreseen. Thank you very much to ARGIA for trusting me and for giving this space. Thanks to all of you who, with your help, make this kind of means possible.