Statues.

The thing with statues is that they are perfect, but they fall.

We admire, idealize and immortalize them. We look over every single flaw, o even worst, translate it into a virtue. If they are scratched we say it´s a scar telling us a story, if it´s in ruins we treat it with the solemnity we´d treat a martyr. We interpret every turn as a sublime cadence, every gesture as a message shouting to be deciphered, every chisel as the lair of a truth which is bigger than us. Amidst this urge to worship it we forget it´s made of stone. It cracks like every floor tile we´ve ever stepped on, collapses like the asphalt on our streets. It doesn´t matter how much we wish for it, we can´t rise them above other stones, we can´t make them the exception.

I'm not really talking about statues, or stones, or even less perfection, but movies have taught me to talk in metaphors whenever it´s possible. I'm actually talking about your boyfriend. I'm talking about your dad. I'm talking about that English teacher you had in highschool, about Gandalf as well as Dumbledore, about Albert Einstein, about the Knights of the Round Table, about that musician that seemed to write all of his lyrics in your name and you do nothing but watch how they grow like forests in your soul. You will be tempted to love without return, to obey without questioning, to believe in all the answers they give you, to follow a wizard into the battle as if he was a banner, to obey a moral code because the one who enforces it is noble, to rise your heart into the air with your fist hoping that it will fuse to that man who sings over the crowd, wishing that the wind could rip out your voice and take it wherever he goes.

Don´t.

None of them is incorruptible, nor as special as we wish they were. They weren´t with Dante when he visited hell, nor had a chat with Saint Peter at the doors of heaven. They are so alike us that we are afraid to even think about it. So far from being rustless, so close to being made of plaster, so perfect but crackable. But words… words never rust. We fall for them without even realizing it. We feel enlightened when we let the lyric of that song trespass our defenses and fit so easily on our insides, it´s chorus finding shelter in our folds; when we listen to a Gandalf´s speech under the gates of our castle which is about to fall, bending already upon the blows of those who are coming for us, and we believe there's a reason worth dying for wielding a sword; when we read a sentence, a single sentence that shakes us so deeply that we can´t rest until we spray paint it over every gray wall on this word, until we shout it onto the ears of every man leaving their lives behind on office cubicles, if only to go to sleep knowing that at least we tried to wake them up.

It´s okay to believe blindly, but believe in the concept, not in the man. If you are going to love without return, love an ideal, and not someone made of flesh and bone. If you are willing to give up your life, to jump into battle without thinking it twice, let it be for the cause, for the words written on that frayed banner waving in the wind, but never for the king that holds it up from his throne. Not because the king was corrupt, or a tyrant, but because he´s a man and nothing more.

As every other man who seemed indispensable for the earth to keep spinning and taught that the earth keeps spinning without them; as every other who owned the world but let it slip between his fingers, simply because they couldn´t with it´s weight; as every gargoyle that protected the gloomy cathedrals from imaginary enemies than only the could see, making their sacrifice even more noble; he will fall one day. He´ll fall because just like statues, it´s a matter of time before we become ashes again, regardless of how high we get.

But the words we say… they are perfect, and they never fall.