An important gift to place in our children’s hands is the ability to think. Perhaps lesser than unconditional love, but whoever loves unconditionally will stimulate the other’s thinking. Whoever loves is not afraid to share the other’s view of reality, nor will they keep the other from flying across wide, bright horizons.

Thinking presupposes examining possibilities, perceptions and points of view and making decisions. Therefore, this thinking that operationalizes life, learned by the child in her different relationships, may be the border between living lucidly or not. Thoughts that sprout from shrunken, paralyzed frames of reference will reproduce shrunken, paralyzed mindsets.

Attuned dialogues, balanced and mediated by profound respect (a sublime delivery of unconditional love), present the child with a journey, or several, toward different horizons, as well as the instruments this person on the move will need to unveil paths and arrivals.

It happens that uncontaminated thinking, which leads to lucidity, depends on repertoires. Building repertoires, a fundamental item in the expansion and decontamination of the frame of reference, requires acquiring knowledge, from different sources, that allows expansion. This acquisition takes place in dialogues with people and can be mediated by books, theater, film, music and learning programs.

Attuned to the pace of a person’s development, the world and its characters can be introduced and, the broader the vision of the host of this special moment, the more relevant and powerful the repertoires of the child, the young person, the emerging adult and the mature adult will be. We can stay in permanent movement of expansion and evolution. We can and must, because the more developed the one who teaches, the more development they will facilitate in the one who learns.

Fear, hidden in the cruel layers of prejudice, restricts this acquisition of repertoire, and Brazilians, in their unreflective shadow, are moving to edit a confused version of the Index.

The original Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books) was launched in 1559 by Pope Paul IV and abolished by Pope Paul VI in 1966. It removed from circulation works considered threatening. Management of the list fell to the Holy Office, the Inquisition, which sowed terror and spread darkness in the deepest sense of the word. The last version of the Index, from 1948, listed 4,000 titles. Among the banned were scientists, thinkers, writers and poets, some well known: Galileo Galilei, Copernicus, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre. Were it not for the strong resistance that kept many of these works circulating clandestinely, a good part of the knowledge that underpins today’s science would be locked inside the beautiful walls of the Vatican.

And here in our country, which needs lucidity so much, which urgently needs expansion of the frame of reference, of awareness, of education and of good decision-making processes, ordinary people put on the inquisitors’ tunic and hurl a Brazilian work onto the bonfire.

O avesso da pele (roughly, “the skin inside out”), by Jeferson Tenório, sheds light on racism through real scenes, in well-built prose that honors our language and the historical context of the account. It is almost a compendium, since it lets us understand, step by step, this horrible stain that still corrodes our social fabric. It was considered dangerous for bringing to the surface racism, the failed educational system and the complicated relationship between parents and children. Real life.

The people who adopt this 16th-century fashion certainly did not learn to think and are trapped in a narrow, dark, small and fearful frame of reference; trained to see demons, they identify them even in the wings of angels.

My late father used to say now and then: “Thinking hurts.” And it really does. It happens that not thinking does not hurt, but causes extensive damage to people and systems. Our children, young people, emerging adults and mature adults need to look beyond. It is urgent to expand awareness and horizons! It is urgent to activate the respectful signals of unconditional and unequivocal love.