THE WORST SITUATION. Por: Carlos Mario Zapata

It’s raining again! I hate raining…my life is very sad when the rain comes and blows the
stream. Thousands of bubbles appear in the water, like a giant soda. A brown spot grows up
from the shore and the bottom of the river, while all the inhabitants of the water start to run
for safety. Leaves and entire branches violently fall down, and then they struggle for
survival against the troubled waters. Even for them, sometimes big and strong, it’s really
hard to be secure… now look at me in my actual condition: weak and small, hopelessly
rolling down the stream!


After a while, the river usually returns to serenity. Hooray! It’s wonderful! Through the
clear water, a shapeless sunlight joyfully plays with a myriad of living colors and generates
a stained-glass rainbow. The underwater world looks very different than before. Small
plankton particles can be recognized, gracefully swimming around the sunlight. At least for
a moment, my eternal trip is over and I can see my slow-motion surroundings. Tiny quartz
crystals rise from the river bed and start to dance, while charophytes shake their steams in
approval of such beauty. I can enjoy the quietness of the water in my body…
I remember a couple of times in my trip a very strange situation. I don’t know how, but a
strange force took me out of the water and threw me away to a new waterless place. The
look of the river was completely different from this place: the fierce water running down
the mountain, eventually drilling round holes; some foamy waterfalls resembling frothy
beer; zigzagging meanders with quiet waters, like s-shaped mirrors reflecting the blue sky. I
saw my home from a totally different perspective. And once again, the storm remembered
me the place where I belong and took me there…

I often think about my life as a long chain of strange situations. From time to time,
unknown forces make me change my state, and there’s nothing I can do to escape from this
reality. It’s very sad, because I never know where I’m going until I get there; and I never
know how much I will stay in some place… What if I just want to go somewhere? Nothing
happens. I neither have the strength nor the power to simply escape from here. I don’t have

freedom of choice and I believe this is the worst aspect of my current life: I’m not the
master of my own destiny and I feel depressed by myself.

I was thinking about these feelings when I discovered, in the distance, some silver
creatures. They were amazing, because they were moving by themselves! I couldn’t believe
what I saw. They were big, beauty, autonomous creatures freely swimming up and down
the stream. How could this wonder take place? I couldn’t imagine the sophisticated, strange
device they used for acting this way. I was delighted to see the smooth movements of such
creatures, their awareness in selecting either one path or another, the agile steering of their
tails… It seems like they were the owners of the entire world, making conscious decisions
regarding what they like to do. Aww! I wanted to be like them! I would change half of my
life to share this beauty!

The silver creatures start to sway and shake their bodies, trying to gain some impulse…
they were trying to go beyond the quiet waters and reach some known place. It seems like
they were following a known path, searching for a place to be comfortable. Something in
their history left them there. They were struggling to overcome a giant waterfall. All of
them were trying to jump over the water, but most of them were dying by striking the
waterfall. The fittest ones reached the upper water, but they were surprised in their final
flight by a bigger, black, shaggy creature… And when I saw one beautiful fish in the jaws
of the black bear, I discovered the best reason to remain as a pebble, instead of wishing I
was a salmon.