The writer Carlos Salem sentenced almost more to himself than to others: “If you don’t have money, the last thing you have left is your ego.” He did it in one of the private conversations around BCNegra, a festival that ended a week ago now. He did it in a low voice, as if the maxim were said more to himself than to those of us who were there, but it remained reverberating in the air: what the hell do we do with the ego, with our ego, with the ego of others when we don’t Is there money to pay palmeros?
Before there was less talk about the Ego, but it had better clothes. Self love, pride, respect or any other similar outfit. Sigmund Freud, that imaginative Stakhanovite Hollywood screenwriter, ruined our game by flooding the playing field. And now one can not even decide not to play. Not doing it is also playing and so everything: dreaming, wishing, ritualizing and sleeping with his mother.
One’s Ego is childish, tyrannical, inelegant. Petty, stubborn and also vain. The Ego of others is a thick and ugly tar, especially if it comes with the mask of repair, modesty or skirt tug.
We have never been so alone because we have never been alone with our ego for so long. Because there is something healing in the Us. Something almost supernatural in which a minute passes and one has not wondered what he feels, what he thinks, what hurts him and what the rest of the extras that swarm through the physical and digital world owe him.
We will not be saved by a We wrapped in a flag or around a sacred stone. It is enough that it makes us forget for a while each day that we exist, think and feel. That it is enough for us to take care of, do, pay and greet neighbors, delivery people and strangers in the elevator, especially strangers who do not show their ego to demand your attention, your solidarity or your apologies.
