From certain recurring thoughts I've had in the last few months that I haven't been able to get out of my head, I've thought about when desires become harmful, what obsessions consist of. How many of us spend hours thinking about something, over and over again, until that something almost becomes an obsession for us? We want something so much that we focus so much on getting it that any other result is a real frustration, especially when the result is the opposite of what we wanted.

Let's exercise quickly: think of a desire you've had recently. Do you remember your degree of expectation? Did you get what you wanted? And if it didn't, how did you feel? It would seem that when we long for something we face that problem: we only admit to one result and if it doesn't happen, we experience it as a tragedy. In other words, the problem is not when we want something, but when what we want can do us harm, when what we want becomes our prison, a way of being prisoners in oneself. An obsession is a style of thinking in which the person is trapped in a fixed idea that he needs to achieve, to obtain, to do, to achieve to feel good.

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On this subject, there is a very famous story entitled La valla (The Fence) by Venezuelan writer Eduardo Liendo. This story, written in the first person, tells the story of an inmate whose only desire is to jump the prison fence in order to escape and be free. This short story, with two important characters, the narrator who is the inmate and the prison guard nicknamed El puma is a perfect example to talk about obsessions.

From the beginning of the story, the narrator tells us how jumping the fence becomes an obsession for him:

From the afternoon I was suspended from incommunicado detention and left the dungeon to receive a little sunshine and a salty breeze in the courtyard, the fence acquired its dimension of challenge. When I returned to the dungeon, the obsession with escape had already penetrated me. My heart was not resigned to endure the servitude of time at a standstill.

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The idea of escaping, and therefore of jumping the fence, becomes a challenge for the inmate, who sees in this action the only possible way to be free. So he thinks about the manoeuvres he must perform to achieve his mission:

Every time I went out into the courtyard during that evening hour, my intention was to try to specify which could be the most vulnerable point of the fence, according to the placement of the guard (the puma) and the most propitious moment to jump it. It was a move that required three elements to be perfect: ingenuity, speed and testicles.

But as the narrator mentions it well, his desire had an obstacle: The puma guarded the metal fence and was attentive to any escape:

Between my intention to escape (and surely that of other companions who walked thoughtfully through the courtyard) and its happy consummation, stood the hard and attentive gaze of the puma who always kept the submachine gun without an insurer. He was a man in whom one could easily appreciate the fierceness and speed of decision.

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Faced with this difficulty and impediment, the inmate's life takes place inside the prison, without being able to make his wish come true. Thus, five years go by in which the prisoner behaves well and is released. Outside, our narrator and ex-con tries to lead a normal life, but the idea of jumping the fence pursues him, has become his obsession. So he goes back to jail and befriends El Puma. It is he who confesses his desire and asks him to allow him to jump over the obstacle.

The guard agrees to his request, but we are surprised at the unexpected end:

When we entered the courtyard, his hand rested affectionately on my shoulder. Then he placed himself in his usual place of surveillance, while I (exactly as I had thought for years) climbed the metal fence and jumped to the other side of time. As I fell, I felt a sudden liberation. I turned to say goodbye, and I barely had time to see the terrible look of the puma pointing the gun at me.
-I'm sorry," he said before he fired, "I also waited a long time for this opportunity.

Source

In an unpredictable or predictable way this end is offered to us: just as for the inmate jumping over the fence had become an obsession or desire; for the guard, it had also become an aspiration to shoot and kill the one who escaped from prison, so he shoots and kills the man. In this way we can specify that the problem of desires is when they become obsessions.

There are ideas that dawn in your head and spend the day spinning around in it. Those ideas that you can't put aside, forget or ignore can become a problem. Obsessions are quite common nowadays and especially in adults, because I believe that children do not suffer from this evil.

As I asked at the beginning of this post: Who hasn't on occasion felt "trapped" by some thought that torments him, sometimes absurdly and sometimes justifiably? The detail is when these insistent thoughts become a problem, generating a lot of anxiety and even the trigger of depressions. We must know when a thought hurts us and when we must cancel it or pull it out at the root. We cannot feed our monsters.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

http://ficcionbreve.org/la-valla-de-eduardo-liendo/

Written by: @nancybriti

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