Cordova ravine, El Tabo, Chile.
The comeback
It's too late to come back. The threatening water reaches my chest. The shadows climb over the steep mountains and we try to overcome the stream that takes us deeper to the sea. We follow a trail off by the river's bank. Through old trees, we cross gullies covered with leafy bushes. Behind the thorny branches, we are observed by stealthy snakes, foxes, hares, squirrels and other inhabitants of these places. After a couple of hours being in the icy waters, I can barely feel my bloody legs full of mud. We are lost, at the edge of the abyss. I'm close to be seized by panic, but suddenly it starts to drizzle over us, a magnificent rainbow rises then, between the sun and the moon, and both stars lighten the sky at the same time.
Seagulls and pelicans fly over the sea, they get together on the top of the tress in this summer sunset. The mouth of the river is welcomed by the imposing sea waves of the Pacific ocean. Chocolate, my dog, looks up to me, deeply and constantly, reaching my soul. My silence answers him, it is the voice of tenderness. I'm moved, my fear disappears. I let fantasy, dreams and thoughts flow freely until I fix my eyes on a bright Venus, that lights the horizon. Suddenly I'm surrounded by peace.
Everything smells so good! I would like to stay for a long time, bu the path is revealed in front of us, we have found a new way home.
Jacko, my hound.
This story describes something that happened when I was 12 years old. A dramatic fact, but that, at the same time, produces a comforting inner experience. In those circumstances I created the required conditions to get over fear and focus on searching my way back. Probably, this extreme experience provided me with the needed tools to face up similar situations, in a future characterized by different kinds of difficulties.
According to Gestalt theory, we understand the world as a mosaic maid up of different experiences, people and events. Many aspects of perception, memory and learning processes, are a whole and can't be analyzed only from the small pieces of which they are made.
Like all the other living creatures, we live nourishing ourselves with the food around us. It can be nutritious, but it also can harm us. Usually, we understand our surroundings as a background where the special events or experiences take place, reaching to set themselves on the first plane. Once solved, a problem set by these experiences, is absorbed, then followed by a new one. If, by some reason, we don't solve the problem, it will get in the way to solve coming problems.
To live in the past, or the future, is a distortion of the Gestalt. At the same time, both what we want, and how we manage to get it, is important. In other words, it is important to focus on the essential things so we can develop ourselves and grow up.
