Too much or too good?

There is an unwritten law that tends to rule over human desire, that of excess. Because of its power, it becomes necessary to give more and more space to certain products until they become harmful: love becomes pornography, police work becomes gratuitous violence, parliamentary discussion becomes a fight, difference becomes polarisation, protest becomes insult, polemic becomes personal aggression, freedom becomes abuse, management becomes corruption and so on…

In the face of this, the wisdom of life teaches that every person grows to the extent that he or she acts like a sculptor: he or she takes away and does not add. The genius of the artist knows how to remove from the rough block of marble everything that is useless in order to bring to light his work of art. He has the ability to see in advance the image that was hidden in the stone he carves. What gives value to his work is not to economise on stone but to reduce it to what is essential to reveal its beauty.

A famous aphorism, attributed to Baltasar Gracián, begins by saying that “what is good, if brief, is twice as good” and ends with this sharp nuance “and even what is bad, if little, is not so bad”. This wise intuition relates brevity with quality. Too much of a good thing is bad, it ends up boring or can be harmful; just as bad things, in a small dose, can even be beneficial; as happens with drugs, which used in small doses, are effective medicines. Who hasn’t ended up hating a funny person after several hours with them, who hasn’t learned something after spending a few minutes with someone unpleasant?

All this can help us to live if it becomes a criterion and orientation in our choices: Let us not choose what is showy and attractive, but what is valuable. Let us take this into account especially in the selection and cultivation of friendships. Friends are like books; their greatness is not measured by their size but by their content. It is not the volume but the quality that counts. What makes them great is not their appearance, but their friendship and loyalty. Just as what makes a thinker great is not his erudition, but the wisdom with which he guides and enlightens others.

But, to be honest, we have to recognise that what prevails today is excess. We envy those who possess too much, those who deceive in word and deed, those who diminish and humiliate others with their success, those who impose themselves by force and not by virtue, those who seek applause and are not grateful for help.

Juan Carlos cmf

(PHOTO: macrovector by Freepik)