You’ll know, they said,
when things feel right,
you’ll know without a shadow of doubt
that destiny has come knocking on your door.
But how, the young man said,
how do you know?
Not content with the simple phrase.
Which he deemed to lack all the things he valued
– his reason, his happiness, his ego –
he scoffed – I´ll find out on my own,
as if his life were an experiment,
as if he understood anything at all,
he set out with a singular purpose:
make his own fate,
make things feel right on a whim,
he thought to himself,
my life would be better with this,
it would be worse off if I stopped that,
and this young man,
blinded from how fate gave him space to play around,
to satisfy maxims he learned and unlearned and learned again,
could never find the feeling evange…
Between each mirage, he’d get a glimpse of reality,
moments where things were exactly as they seemed,
each subsequent mirage having to justify its existence even more,
becoming flimsier early on,
he couldn’t see it just yet,
but life started seeping in,
and he unconsciously started seeking that which sought him,
and one day,
like a roof that has outlived years of storms
only for it to collapse with a light rain,
as the sun caressed his skin,
the waves tore down the structures he insisted on rebuilding,
but this time, instead of rebuilding the illusions,
he thought to himself,
and instead of giving in to another bout of intransigence,
this time, “right” felt different,
“right” felt real,
it felt like “silly me, it was always worth waiting for”,
it felt like finding out that Santa was really always Dad with a pillow under the costume,
it felt like “you’ll know, you’ll always know”.
And once he knew,
he thanked the universe,
for not treating him with the stubbornness he treated himself with,
for letting him know,
without a shadow of doubt,
no turning back now,
because you’ll never want to be elsewhere,
because this feeling is unequivocal,
because destiny comes knocking
not like a gentle traveler
who does not want to disturb the host’s sleep,
but like a Carnaval band,
with all the instruments,
with all the “let the good times roll”.
