Sometimes we are taken by surprise by some accident of life, some unforeseen curve in the path of our vital experience, a loss, etc. Or simply the passing time, which forces us to close stages to make some room for new directions, new destinations, new ideas and intentions. Sooner rather than later, we find ourselves making a review of the past and planning the future.
Also, because of the inexorable chronological function of time, which names our biological ages, a review and new order is simply imposed on the lot of things we have inside our heads...
I have always admired the innate capacity that the great majority of women have to turn around the furniture in their homes, or in their life or job-offices, every time a crisis forces them to change... There are some, too, who need to be the exclive protagonists of discarding or handing over the furniture of their places of life, as a necessary process to establish and start new stages...
Well, in these journeys of revision and order, sometimes we find ourselves physically or spiritually. Most of the times, without even realizing it, and other enjoying them in full awareness.
Today I threw away old leaves...
Those that spoke me of the past...
But I feel that I did not discard them; they simply remained without validity in the present time, no longer speaking to me of the past... They belong today to the luxurious group of images, experiences, tastes, smells, presences, facts and anecdotes that for sometime I contemplate with gentleness and affection, but that no longer speak to me...
They remain then, in a lock that no longer interact with our presents and projects for the future, because we took away their hability for dialogue with our daily realities. Much less do they influence our current decisions that are projected into the future, nor the plans we wish to carry out.
But not by losing this capacity to speak to us about the past, to dialogue, have they lost their importance, transcendence and usefulness.
No.
We always learn from them because they nourish our current identity, our greater or not life experience ... the maturity with which we face each step of the rest of our paths.
And so it is then when, contrary to what the first impression of "throwing away" leaves us with, we surprise ourselves by loving them in their true magnitude and splendor..., because we care, love and admire every story on every leaf, every love, every friend, every experience, every mistake....
Moreover, in this path of revision and order, we are astonished to realize that the silence in which we place those memories has actually transformed them into jewels of our past, that we contemplate and love every time we decide to look back, to see where we came from, with whom, how and in what way.
The slow process of alchemy that is generated in this way, transforms those old pages of the book of our lifes into pieces of reference; into milestones that we love every time we contemplate them. Even the ugliest and most unpleasant ones, because we understand at this stage of our lives that they also had -always- their purpose: they have taught us, corrected us, told us how to be where we are, and to be who we are today...
When this inner process is carried out with peace, the pleasure of contemplating those milestones, those old leaves that we gradually remove from our active emotional baggage, is very intense and personal.
I believe that this emotional conversion is felt in all its magnitude when we realize that these "old leaves" became then a part of our personality, a part of the way we see all things today, a part of the way we take care of ourselves and our relationships; that is to say, we operate, in short, in the outside world.
The emotional melody we experience in this way is as sweet as Nito Mestre knew in his famous song that is mentioned in the title of this lines.
I invite you to think on our old leaves, appreciating the depth and richness of each life story.
Our own, and that of those we keep in the book of our existence, too.