Today, here in my little corner, missing people of great importance in my life, I followed the thread in my mental condominium. I realized I have a long internal list and went about rescuing them one by one to share here. From inside out. From people to customs. From sensations to indignation.

Saudade (longing, a word with no exact English equivalent). A sonorous word of our language. It synthesizes a tangle of emotions, sensations, thoughts and, at times, movements in search of connections lost in time. Saudade cements feeling (a word that sounds so musical in Portuguese) and structures the base of feeling. It puts perceptions in perspective. It arranges, with small jolts, misunderstandings. It gives time for understanding what was not said, the small cracks of living together.

The sweetness that absence produces makes reunion a magic that expands in colorful choreographies. There are those who, far away, make themselves present in music, those who make themselves present in poetry, those who make themselves present in the memory of the skin.

Saudade hurts. It sets up conflict in thought, an almost useless clash between respecting time and invading, with arms and baggage, the precious territory of another’s life and demanding presence. Saudade disturbs, because it sets up a strong awareness of time’s passing, of moments that passed and were not enjoyed, that blend into the mist of the past. It recalls the end, recalls death. Saudade irritates when healing it is not within the cone of control, when nothing can be done, when there is a stretch of the road to be traveled by the other.

Longing for what was not lived, for places and moments carefully fantasized and detached from reality, like the dreams our treacherous brain brings onstage in such rich detail that the emotions, abducted by competence, envelop, ravish and defeat the dreamer. Places, people, sensations, moments, aromas, flavors, music, colors. A sequence of triggers to carry us, like a feather in flight, here and there, alter the melody of heartbeats, tighten the throat, make us want to cry.

And there are more complex, serious longings. For a world in which lying did not pay and truth was recognized as a quality. In general, truth was part of the combo of self-respect, and it was shameful to be caught in a lie, in falseness, in deviation. Even in the world of shady deals and manipulations, the correct, upright person was respected for their integrity and vouched for their word “by the hair of the mustache,” as the old Brazilian pledge of honor goes.

After I had lived a good while, I realized that, in reality, the relationship between reality and truth was not so direct. I met many people who had difficulty dealing with the truth and I met others who made lying a life choice and a profession. Of those I do not miss even a little.

I miss a time, or an idea, in which respect for life did not even draw so much attention, since it was a resistant pillar of humanity: it was noticed when violated, and a collective empathic connection happened, bigger than morbid curiosity. Since longing often numbs the senses, I may be lamenting something that really did not happen. Even so, I do not give up.

I want a world of loving, respectful encounters, in which true gestures of respect and loyalty happen, in which one can recognize, value, validate and collaborate in building and maintaining safe environments for living together among beings. I want a world in which violence is an absurdity and scandalized voices unite to keep barbarity from happening. May they make such a noise, with such indignation, that the numbed people here and there wake up and leave the moral sedation, which is the deadly one.