Doors to the World
HAVANA TIMES – I recently joined a Facebook group where photos of doors are posted. It might seem stupid or pointless, but I have been able to glimpse an entire universe through them.
Huge doors, adorned with meticulously crafted sculptural decorations, like the one at the Milan Cathedral. Simple, sober doors, endowed with an indefinable and seductive personality. Doors of pompous mansions or discreet, even gloomy houses. Doors leading to gardens, chapels, others with iron grilles guarding terraces that overlook the sea…
I’ve lost count of how many I’ve wished I could have in front of my apartment. If only wood, glass, and even the history needed to imitate them weren’t so expensive.
If only it weren’t almost impossible to graft a piece of the past onto these concrete monoblocks where I live—a community conceived as an emergency solution to Cuba’s housing shortage.
Architect: E. Delune, 1902
I have a recent friend with whom I share myriad images of these doors via WhatsApp, like world flags. Each one reveals something about the dwellings they guard, about their inhabitants, and also about human fickleness.
My friend tells me: “How wonderful it would be to travel and admire all these marvels! It would be the greatest luxury.
When Christianity was reformed and reinterpreted through the Protestant vision, the goal man was supposed to strive for was not Catholic austerity but rather a certain abundance, allowing some time to admire creation. That was a key idea.”
I thought about how I’ve read so many novels and biographies about aristocrats or bourgeois individuals with enough resources and time to travel and even to cultivate various forms of art. In the end, they were souls tormented by passions and existential crises. Most succumbed one way or another, never achieving true fulfillment.
So, perhaps the key is to combine travel with service, because if one possesses much and does not share, emptiness inevitably follows. I see this continually among friends and acquaintances. I see it in the lives of celebrities. Many sink into depression and substance abuse in a recurring spiral of self-destruction.
If one possesses any kind of power, they should generate projects that improve the world, whatever their nature. Compassion and selfless service are the foundation of human behavior.
Nothing forced, of course, but education can foster empathy and the practice of sharing rather than competing. Not as an imposition or dogma, and never as a representation of political ideology, but simply as what it truly is: a source of joy.
Capitalism has failed by excessively promoting individualism and hedonism. Traveling outwardly but not inwardly is a huge waste. Everything that exists outside also exists inside.
Cities from every era, worlds where time does not rule, and indescribable states accessible through meditation. It is commendable to value architecture and culture, but without losing awareness of their transience. Even the most magnificent and coveted monuments are at the mercy of natural disasters and human conflicts.
If the engine of this false civilization we suffer weren’t selfishness, perhaps there would be foundations helping people without resources to travel…
Tourism shouldn’t exist merely to exploit the curiosity of frivolous travelers who only seek to consume cultural differences and take selfies to show off on social media.
I once watched a Spanish program dedicated to Venice, and a man expressed his repulsion toward tourists, whom he viewed as a true plague. Tourism took away the peace of Venetians and the sacredness of their city.
There is a film that narrates the journey of a young US man, disillusioned with his family’s adherence to conventional social structures. After graduating with honors, his father expects him to pursue a professional career, but instead, he escapes on a journey of self-discovery, aiming to reach Alaska to live in the wild. It’s an external journey in search of an internal one—of identity and existential answers. It’s a heart-wrenching film based on real events. Its title is Into the Wild.
The final words written in the young man’s diary, after he dies from poisoning after ingesting wild plants, are devastating: “Happiness is only real when shared.” That was the final balance of his journey, and the great lesson of his chosen solitude.