Blank sheet

One of the most difficult moments in the life of a journalist or writer is the blank page. It is true that, sometimes, writing is an impulse, an uncontrollable instinct that makes words and ideas gush out, making the search for an instrument to fix them a relief; but these are the fewest.

The usual thing is to have more or less imposed deadlines that force the author, not to look for a topic but, what is worse, to choose from one of the thousands of topics that are going around in his head.

They all want their chance, they all want to get off the bench, but one is perhaps still too green and needs to mature, another is thorny and requires too much effort or time that one does not have, another would not be understood in the current social context...

All subjects have their pros and cons, but in the end it is one that, in the end, pushes its way through with its insistent raised hand and ends up, like this one you hold in your hands, black on white.

But I am going to confess something. This is not the article I had started writing for you today. I had chosen another topic. It seemed topical, not too thorny and I had the idea matured and ready. I was enjoying the ease with which the ideas came to my mind, thinking about how you would confirm or reject them, and how it would work in social networks. But, halfway through the page, the phrases seemed strangely familiar. So much so, that a terrible doubt assailed me: Haven't I already written this?

I ran to consult my archive and it immediately appeared: an article on the same subject, developing almost the same ideas, with almost identical phrases and dated exactly one year ago.

I was immediately reminded of that terrifying scene in the movie "The Shining" in which Wendy (Shelley Duvall) discovers that the pile of pages of the novel her husband Jack (Jack Nicholson) has been writing for months contains the same phrase repeated over and over again, confirming her suspicion that madness had taken hold of him.

Those who know me, know of my tremendous absent-mindedness and my lack of memory, so this repeated article is just one more anecdote to add to the list. Of course, when I told my wife about it, she hurried to hide the axe that we keep in the shed, just in case I might start to attack the doors, like Jack.

Out of jokes -I have no shed, no axe-, the case makes me reflect on the lack of memory, which makes us have to repeat the important things over and over again so that we do not forget them.

In a few days, with the feast of Christ the King, the liturgical year will come to an end and we will begin a new cycle in which, once again, we will delve into the main mysteries of the life of Jesus, beginning with the expectation of his coming: Advent.

Making a cyclical memorial of the Lord's life keeps us always alert, helps our spirit not to become drowsy, to be in a continuous disposition of conversion; that is to say, to correct the course of our existence that our natural weakness makes us lose again and again, over and over again.

On second thought, lack of memory is not such a bad thing, perhaps more than a defect it can even become a virtue, because even God has that capacity.

It is said that when St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, told her confessor about the visions of Jesus that she had experienced, the holy priest (Claude de la Colombiere) proposed a test of veracity. He asked him to ask the vision what was the last sin of which he had confessed. The next day, Jesus answered him: "I do not remember it, I have forgotten it".

Such is God's mercy toward us. So forgetful is He of our faults when, repentant, we confess them.

With him we can always break that ugly story we had awkwardly started to write and start from scratch.

Today, once again, we can be, for Him, a blank sheet of paper.

Don't forget.