IN PRAISE OF THE SAFE HARBOUR

When Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived on the American coast, he found no better name than Porto Seguro (meaning Safe Harbour) to identify the place that seemed to embody all hopes. Before him, Bartolomeu Dias had been more pessimistic by choosing the name Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Tempests), a decision that would later be revoked by D. João II, who changed it to Cabo da Boa Esperança (Cape of Good Hope).

We all need two things: a safe harbour and hope. Only then will the pier be the beginning of dreams instead of a deposit for the scrap of dead want.

Crises are like a ruthless hurricane. On land the tempests leave the rubble, rise the hostile tides and breakwaters, and knock down the harbours.

What they cannot do is annihilate hope: that mission the gods granted solely to men.

A harbour can be rebuilt. And that effort may even be beneficial, motivating, or even originate a new vigour. There is nothing like building to incite hope itself. But when hope is hurt, damaged, mutilated, no pier will remedy it, no boat will sail, and the horizon, which should mean freedom, imprisons, smothers, stifles and kills.

Our context can generate perplexities, anguish and uncertainties. A human action can cause dissociating tensions where if we want to be strong, we will always be strong. No one changes what we are, if we are what we must. Our Safe Harbour is our will. If we need to sail, no one can old those who want and do go.

Photo credits: Flickr