We are in the middle of summer, a time of fun and reading. On this occasion I recommend the latest book by Simon Coen entitled "Waiting for happiness."
The young philosopher Simon Coen presents his book to us in this beautiful foreword:
ALWAYS THAT I GO A FEW DAYS FROM HOME, I leave the children a small drawing on a notepad sheet or on their blackboard. With a few strokes I sketch a train or a car from whose window a character appears waving and who is supposed to be me. It replaces the written text that I used to leave my wife before we had children.
One morning, just as I was about to leave the house to be away longer than usual, I remembered the drawing. I put my briefcase in front of the sliding kitchen door that is coated in a layer of chalkboard paint and took a chalk from the box above the refrigerator.
We planned to meet a week later at my mother-in-law's house in Amsterdam, where they would drive in our blue Citroën Berlingo.
I started by painting my mother-in-law's house too big, but since I was in a hurry I opted to draw faster instead of picking up the eraser and starting over. In a few strokes I sketched the adjoining houses, and I drew myself leaning out of the second-floor window, smiling and greeting a rather rudimentary Berlingo.
I was afraid that, due to the lack of depth in the drawing, they would not capture what it represented, so I took all the chalk from the refrigerator and began to color the car blue and the house light orange. With yellow chalk I drew a moon shaped like a fingernail and I still had time to add a sidewalk with four amsterdammertjes, those typical brown bollards of the city, before running away. Of course, these drawn greetings are for those staying at home, just as the words "see you soon" should take my place until they see me again. However, the farewell drawings are also a ritual with which I try to repress my nostalgia.
That drawing on the door is still there and since then we have written down the items on the shopping list above, in the space that was left free next to the moon.
One night, as I was looking for a place to add "detergent" to the list, my gaze fell on the drawing and I remembered the year before, when I had sketched the image.
Suddenly it occurred to me why past desires always seem so outdated, not because we no longer have them, but because no image, no representation is capable of encompassing all desire. The fault is not the imperfection of the representation, but the inexhaustible nature of all desire. Although the representations of our desires are imperfect, each wish requires an image, for that is what we are waiting for.
The chalk drawing, which represented the rather banal desire to be a reunited family, preserved the memory of what we were like. Thanks to this, it allowed me to peek into my feelings at that time, and I saw that my wishes had not been fulfilled. Not because we had not met again after a long week at my mother-in-law's house in Amsterdam. On the contrary, everything went according to plan. But because the feeling that a reunion produces in us can never coincide with what we expected from it.
This book is about the nature of that desire. Of the images that replace what we want, but cannot embrace.
You can buy it here http://www.planetadelibros.com/esperando-la-felicidad-libro-93038.html Or wait for a contest that I will publish shortly in which the guys from Planeta Libros will give a copy to the winner.