Saint Martin’s Day is celebrated in Germany these days. It is one of those rituals that equally fascinates and frightens a foreigner. Paper lanterns are fascinating, hand-made by children who will go out in the dark carrying lights hidden by the shades of their lamps. It is a terrible night that falls at 5 p.m., the helplessness of being outdoors in the icy darkness of autumn on the threshold of winter, surrounded by strange people (one never stops being a stranger).

This weekend, St. Martin’s processions move through the streets and forests of Germany. The children sing: “I go with my lantern and my lantern with me; The stars shine above, and down here I am the one who shines.” They are lights in a sea of ​​darkness, floating, surviving against the current.

The lights we carry and become. Immersed in the darkness, but trying to be a light, I think about what it means to be a light in the midst of so much war, among the darkness that seems to hang over the world, in the face of winds that threaten to extinguish even the brightest hope. I’m thinking about that war against drug trafficking that is staining Latin America with blood. In the silent victims of that horror without borders, which for decades has done nothing but penetrate deeply into the roots of our country. I wonder why we continue to support and implement solutions that have failed us time and time again. The machinery of power has rusted, and our ability to perceive, reflect and react is stuck in a pessimistic and simple automatism.

We should be like those little lanterns that dare to go out in the dark and cold. Who dance, sing and believe that it is possible to shine, shine and continue. An Israeli friend told me: I don’t want to see anyone because I don’t want to talk about the war, but I can’t talk about anything else because I’m embarrassed to chat in front of so many horrors. Today I would like to suggest to her that we go out together with a lantern to sing with the children in San Martín, to tell her that it is no use for us to be darkness in the midst of darkness, to blend in; We have the duty and the right to continue to be light: to laugh and sing, to feel and think, to think. Because the good-natured and ignorant choirs who shout “Free Palestine, Boycott Israel” are not right, nor those who support a civil massacre in order to defeat the monstrous terrorists. The light is somewhere in between, trapped between two darknesses. I wonder why we have become unable to hold in our minds and hearts the many perspectives that qualify each other and make it impossible to reduce reality to a slogan. Why have we become accustomed to “thinking” or being influenced by 280 character pamphlets. Or less. A world of formulas and slogans, dominated by blind and blinding fanaticism. But light is an infinite current that moves, fluctuates, breaks into fans of colors. Being light sometimes just means finding a place of peace and quiet in the darkness. It is dreaming about dreaming, about the possibility of dreaming; let’s get rid of the demon that makes us always want to be right within the four walls of thought. (OR)