Every day, the same echo. People talking, talking, talking. Saying nothing. Thinking nothing. Repeating scripts memorized by heart, borrowed slogans, fears bought at the supermarket.
They are millions, a stunned wave of desperate people who believe they are alive because they make noise. And meanwhile, those who listen, who observe, who no longer feel like raising their voice to be heard, learn a lesson that no communication manual teaches: sometimes the most powerful response is no response at all.
I stopped retorting. Because retorting means granting the interlocutor the right to exist in your head, and I no longer want anyone in my head. Not out of hate, not out of pride, but for the pure and simple survival of my own peace.
Salvation, the kind they sell you from gurus and motivators, does not exist. At least, not as they tell you. Salvation is not a goal, not a medal, not a LinkedIn post with a cliché phrase. Salvation is a moment of silence when everyone outside is screaming. It is watching the world agitate and feeling zero. It is a conscious choice to withdraw from the circus, to understand that most of the urgencies fed to us are just bait to keep you hooked to the machine of perpetual rage and indignation.
I do not need to be anything, prove anything, or even save myself, because perhaps there is nothing to save. There is only a body breathing, a mind that has learned to not care, and a limited time that has no intention of wasting itself behind conversations that lead nowhere.
Does the next person sometimes inspire disgust in me? Yes, I confess. But that is not, in the end, the point. The point is that the opinion of others, their words, their deeds, all of it has ceased to touch me. I am not responsible for it, nor does it belong to me.
The slightest sensation, and perhaps the sweetest, is that of dissolving from the bond of having to respond, reply, amend, persuade. It is like freeing oneself from a coat too heavy on a sunny morning, when the air is already warm and the skin regains its lightness.
If this is cynicism, then so be it. At least cynicism does not demand affection. It does not ask for participation. It is not offended if you remain silent. Cynicism, in the end, is just honesty without embellishments. It is saying: I owe you nothing, and you owe me nothing. We can meet, exchange a few words, and then each go their own way without the obligation to stay in touch, without the weight of having to prove that we truly listened.
I have learned to float in nonsense. To stay in the void without needing to fill it. To not reply, not explain, not convince. And this, I swear, is the only true freedom I have ever felt.
I seek nothing anymore, I wait for nothing anymore, I hope for no one anymore. Not because I am disillusioned or embittered. Simply because I have discovered that happiness lies not in obtaining something, but in removing the need to obtain something. It lies in watching the carousel of opinions, controversies, daily crusades, and choosing not to mount any horse.
I am doing just fine like this. And it is not just a figure of speech. It is a state of the body, a quietude of the nerves, a liquidity of thought that has no price.
I do not need someone to be right with me. I do not need to convert anyone to my vision. In fact, if someone gets too close with the intention of “understanding” me, they are already too tight. Because there is nothing to understand. There is only to be.
Perhaps this is true maturity: realizing that most battles are not even worth starting. That behind every shouted opinion there is often a person who has never learned to stay silent with themselves. And that the greatest luxury, saturated as we are with noise, is granting oneself the right not to participate. To turn off the phone, close the chat, leave the message pending. To watch the world burn and say, without malice: “It is none of my business.”
It is not selfishness. It is a form of mental hygiene. And if someone calls it indifference, they are wrong. It is simply the awareness that one’s energy is a limited and precious asset, and that wasting it on those who do not listen is the only true sin.
Better to spend it in silence, in breath, in the concrete gesture that does not need to be explained. Better to spend it in not answering.
And in the end, when everyone has finished screaming, I will already be elsewhere. At peace.
And it will be beautiful.
RVSCB
