By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – You can live in Cuba and want to be happy. It’s of course difficult when essentials which are needed to live a relatively comfortable life are hard to find. It’s also hard when I’m forced to live with the stress of thinking what I’m going to eat, how I’m going to get a pair of shoes for my little girl or how I’m going to repair my roof which might collapse on top of me at any moment now, as well as so many other worries.
Yep, it’s indeed difficult, but it’s not impossible. At the end of the day, happiness is just a journey, we never really reach it. It’s all in our heads. That’s where we can build a world, with a lot of effort or not, that allows us to live with a basic minimum of peace of mind and freedom.
Everything would be a lot easier if I had had the chance to leave this country I love and hate at the same time. But as I don’t have any relatives abroad supporting me, or have it in me to be a jinetero (prostitute), or have enough saved up to embark on an adventure through Central and North America and risk losing my life or my little belongings… in short, as I see no way of this happening in the short or mid-term, I have no other choice but to create my own reality to ease the situation.
Nor is it a matter of thinking happiness can be found elsewhere. You need to build up this asset on your own, with a lot of struggle, pain and blood, just like you do for freedom. Nobody gives you happiness, just like nobody makes you free.
But the reality is that things would be a lot easier somewhere where you don’t have to suffer so much to live a dignified life, where you only have to deal with existential problems.
That’s why I have no empathy for certain people living in normal countries, even though I admit it can be a painful experience, because they have almost everything yet still surrender themselves to alcohol or other vices to avoid emotional adversity.
Right now, I have to live in Cuba, this prehistoric country, where you have to go out and hunt every morning to get your food like a wild animal, which is just our everyday routine nowadays. A country where it’s just normal to be punished for something as simple and basic as speaking your mind.
But because I have to be here, I’m building up my happiness by writing. Writing allows me to feel like I’m worth a lot as a human being, that I’m not squandering my life away amidst this disaster that they’ve turned this small island in the middle of the sea into, which used to be called the “Pearl of the Caribbean” a long time ago.
Writing is where I seek the universe, and I also do this by taking care of my body. I take care of it, train it, pamper it, everything I can to resist what lies on the horizon, so I can enjoy the consolation of a still distant future, that will become the present soon enough because Time is merciless.
Wherever I am, a future where despite being an elderly man, I can take care of myself and don’t have to show a sickly and abused body and can continue to shout my motto out loud: “I’m a bag of balls.”
Right now, my happiness can be summarized in a few small things, the kind that are really worth the same here or there. Being healthy, having a roof over my head and food in my stomach and somebody who loves me.
And life in my body. At least this is possible.
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