Invisible souls, unhappy happinesses
Two best friends, John and Mark, are at a beach at two o’clock in the morning on the first day of their vacation, trying to find a way to unload the extra burden they carried on behalf of the person each one chose to be during the day that just ended. They have brought it to the store of their self-awareness to cash it in, hoping to find out this way what profit they gained by simultaneously transforming themselves for a few hours into something more than what their logic would like them to be and something less than what their soul could have them become. Using a different technique, each one is struggling again after a long time to remember how one can free himself from the obligation of showing the people around him something different than what he sees when he looks in the mirror his conscience brings him and sets up across from those questions which for years now he’s been afraid to ask her himself. They’ve brought with them only what’s heavier than a conscience that can no longer stand fighting with her truth and what’s lighter than an ego that doesn’t need to defeat the next minute of its owner to feel useful.
Some Quotes from the Book
- A good loneliness is better than a bad friendship., p. 109
- Why did I become so good over the years at building walls on my own, walls I made just high enough so that I'm unable to climb and see which parts of myself I have hidden behind them?, p. 129
- Man is the black hole where nature dumps whatever she can't figure out herself., p. 62
- The good qualities of two people start a relationship and their shortcomings end it., p. 41
- Every time I had a fight in my life, I felt my logic leave after the first angry words were exchanged to go fetch a waste basket so that along with the person I was fighting with we could toss our truths into it as fast as we could., p. 11
- A person in love with himself no longer derives pleasure from simply telling stories from his past and starts telling stories from his future., p. 13
- I can't tell you how many times I've called "random" any outcome in my life that wasn't convenient for me to start explaining to my capabilities., p. 16
- A person who has many kinds of happiness to choose from usually ends up being miserable., p. 18
- I always hated myself when at the end of a dream I realized that my soul was the one that started it and my logic the one that ended it., p. 19
- How is it possible at the beginning of a relationship for me to have already sown the questions its last moment needs to ask?, p. 33
- Many times a love affair between two people develops over time into a relationship between a castaway and a life-saver., p. 36
- When your beauty thinks she's beautiful you have one problem in your hands. When your ugliness thinks she's beautiful you have a hundred., p. 57
- Why are we so afraid to leave our fingerprints on the handle of any door of our soul we must open?, p. 60
- Man sips his shortcomings one by one to get his self-criticism drunk before he starts getting drunk himself., p. 65
- There are times when I think that my soul fits everything except what I want to put in her., p. 70
- If you can't lead the life that you want, break her in half, pick the piece you understand better and start from scratch., p. 77
- Choose your words carefully because the first ears that will hear what you say are your own., p. 89
- Maybe man's greatest enemy are those strengths of his he doesn't know he has., p. 93
- The reason why the older someone gets, the less he laughs, is that today his life's current operating manual has thousands more pages than it had when he was twenty., p. 104
- As you climb higher socially, the character strengths of the people you meet become more impressive but their shortcomings become even more so. It's such a shame that when you start peeling the brightest people you meet in your life you realize that they have in them a kind of darkness that wants so much to be blacker than any other., p. 107
- When a person doesn't know what to fear, he fears everything., p. 111
- Beware of anyone that comes to you bearing only answers., p. 117
- If I can't touch the love I have inside me, I won't feel the love that exists around me., p. 121
- A desert ends where the first flower blooms., p. 82