Hour 374 020 – Mateas Pares

Not a trauma.
Not a dramatic loss. Not a revelation.
Only the impossibility of continuing to pretend that it is enough.

Enough what, in any case, is not clear.

Enough to go on.
Enough to do.
Enough to achieve.

For years it works.
It really works.
You move, you grow, you desire, you conquer, you lose, you begin again.
Life seems to answer. Or at least to make enough noise to cover the rest.
Then, slowly, the noise no longer covers it.

It is not that things get worse. It is that they no longer hold.

The same actions.
The same goals.
The same gestures repeated with discipline.

But the centre is not there.
Or perhaps it never was.

Suffering does not arrive. It reveals itself.

It was beneath every surge, every expectation, every promise made without
thinking. Not as continuous pain, but as a permanent possibility.
The possibility that nothing is guaranteed.
That nothing lasts.
That nothing truly justifies itself.

At first you react. You tighten.
You speed up.
You correct.
You look for an error.
A cause.
A flaw to fix.

But it is not a flaw.
It is a threshold.

There comes a precise moment when it becomes clear that it is not about “feeling
better”. It is about staying.

And staying is unbearable, if you have never learnt how.

Staying without filling it.
Staying without telling yourself stories.
Staying without turning everything into a project. Staying while something hurts and does not promise to stop.

Suffering does not ask for compassion. It does not ask for attention.
It does not ask for words.
It asks for presence.

Not heroic. Not intense. Simple.

But simplicity is what frightens most.
Because in simplicity there is no escape. No ornament.
No distance.
You are there.

With what is missing.
With what does not return.
With what cannot be said.

And then the greatest temptation emerges: to make suffering useful.

To turn it into fuel.
Into identity.
Into proof.
To make something of it.

But the moment you use it, it stops speaking.
Only the gesture remains. The performance.
The result.
And the void returns, quieter.

There is a subtle violence in always wanting to extract something from experience.

As though nothing could exist without justification.
As though even pain must prove its value.

And yet some things simply exist.

They are not useful.
They do not teach.
They do not redeem.

They stay.

Hour 449 488 – Mateas Pares

Suffering stays.

It does not improve with time.
It does not necessarily worsen.

It changes form.
It becomes more internal. Less dramatic. More precise.
It no longer occupies everything.

But it does not leave.

It becomes a background tone. A gravity.
It holds you down.

Without that gravity you fly too easily.

Towards ideas too clean.
Towards solutions too quick.
Towards promises that do not hold.

There is something inhuman about constant happiness.

Not because it is false, but because it is fragile.

It depends on too many conditions.
It breaks easily.

Sobriety does not.
Sobriety does not ask for much. It only asks not to lie.

Not to lie about the fact that everything can end.
Not to lie about the fact that even what you love can leave you. Not to lie about the
fact that you can fail without having done anything wrong.

When this is accepted — not understood, accepted — something shifts.

You do not become better. You do not become stronger. You become less rigid.
Less hungry for confirmation. Less dependent on outcome. Less violent towards
yourself.

Suffering stops being an enemy to be defeated.

It does not become a friend.
It becomes a mute companion.
It walks alongside. It does not lead.
It does not push.
It remembers.
It reminds you that nothing is final. That nothing is owed.
That nothing is safe.

And paradoxically, precisely for this, something acquires weight.

A gesture.
A word.
A choice made without noise.

Not because it will last. But because it happens now.

The art that is born here has no urgency. No need to explain itself.
It does not want to convince.
It exists as necessary things exist: without asking permission.
It does not console. It does not elevate. It does not resolve.
It stays.
And in staying, it allows whoever watches, reads, listens, to stay as well.

A moment longer.
Without fleeing.
Without judging.

There is no catharsis.
There is recognition.
A silent yes to what is fragile.
To what trembles.
To what has no final form.

We live surrounded by ideals that promise fullness. But fullness is a geometric
fantasy.

Real life is irregular.
Interrupted.
Asymmetrical.

To ask life to be coherent is to ask it not to be alive.

Suffering is the point where this incoherence becomes visible.

Not as tragedy.
As fact.

And fact is not debated. It is traversed.

Whoever traverses does not emerge unscathed.

Hour 210 014 – Mateas Pares

They emerge reduced.
With fewer certainties.
But also with less need for them.
With less enthusiasm. But more attention.
With fewer promises.
But more respect for what happens.

Perhaps this is the most we can hope for.

Not salvation.
Not healing.
A posture.

A way of being in the world without demanding that the world justify us.

Accept that something hurts and has no why.
Accept that some questions remain open.
Accept that meaning does not precede life, but emerges in fragments, and then
disappears.

It is not little.
It is exactly enough not to live in flight.

Stay.
When everything pushes you to run.

Stay.
When nothing promises to improve.

Stay.
Not out of heroism. Not out of wisdom.
Because there is nothing else left.

And in this remainder — fragile, imperfect, human —
life finally stops being a performance and returns to what it has always been:
something that happens, that wounds,
that passes,
and that, despite everything, is worth inhabiting.

Lorenzo Ilari