It was already lost: for centuries horses, millions of horses, were saddled, but now horses are increasingly on screens and less in lives. So the vast majority of us have never saddled, never used that verb. Until the verb forged another meaning. That’s how words and people are: some let themselves be overwhelmed by so much change, others find something new to say. Only, active, she became passive; Now guys like me don’t saddle anymore: we’re saddled.
They saddled me: life saddled me. I, who believed I was a kind of untrained mare, am now tied to an almost electric chair, four wheels that became my only way of moving forward—and going back: learning to live saddled.
Life seems strange to us. The world is not for us: it is made for people who continue to use their legs to move, a primitive, clearly animal system that, like so many others, seems reasonable. And, at a certain point, it is: walking, after the age of two, does not deserve attention. A child learns—it’s a rite of passage: “Is he walking?”—and then he forgets. People think without thinking that they should put one foot forward and they put it forward, then the other, and then the other. They do it as if they didn’t do it: with the ease of the unthinkable.
We saddled riders, on the other hand, for different reasons, do not do it: we no longer know how to do it. Or, perhaps: we know it with a knowledge that has become obsolete. I know what to do, what orders to give, what attitude to adopt so that my legs walk—only, when I do it, they don’t walk: my knowledge no longer knows how to do what it knew. It doesn’t take me.
It’s weird when you lose something you didn’t know you had: when that thing you took for granted is no longer there. And, of course, you begin to realize the complex privilege of being able to get around—when you no longer have it. The metaphor is easy and cheap.
Then you surrender to the machines: another fourth-rate metaphor. The body is no longer enough: devices replace it. Thus, we change categories: we become incomplete people. It’s hard to be incomplete people. We are, clearly, losers, in a world that hates defeat. We have lost one of the basic privileges of our culture: we are no longer self-sufficient. We depend, for many things, on others, on each other.
Life looks different from below, from the compassion of others. So many want to help us. It’s endearing that they want to help us. It is unbearable that they want to help us: that they assume that we are not capable of doing practically anything alone—and they offer, attentive, generous, to do it with us, for us. They know what is best for us. Losing the movement of two or three legs or arms is equivalent, in the general consensus, to losing the ability to decide. If only they knew how desperate, how humiliating it is that they don’t let you do even those things that you still manage to do. I would like to walk around with a sign that says “Thank you very, very much. When I need help, I ask you for it.”
But I know I shouldn’t. And, in any case, we are victims, the most respected condition: we arouse true sympathies. We saddled are many and few: about 500,000 throughout Spain. There are, of course, differences, richer and poorer saddles. My chair is a display of technique: it moves on its own – with a motor and a joy stick -, it folds, goes up, runs, almost flies; The only thing he doesn’t do is walk. But so many don’t have them. Walking in a manual chair with the strength of your arms is not the same as in a manual chair with someone pushing you or in an electric chair: these are three forms of disability.
Although we all come together in something more decisive: we are saddled. That phrase from the great Monterroso resonates with me: “Dwarves have a sixth sense that allows them to recognize each other.” We, the saddled ones, have it. We recognize each other at first sight, we form a secret brotherhood. When you come across another person you don’t know why they are there, why they are like that, but you feel solidarity, part of the same thing. We are not united by causes but by consequences.
In times of essential identities, this is not a natural identity but an acquired one: no one is born saddled, it is something that time, bad luck, good luck, that ignorance that we call destiny, brings. But yes, we greet each other, we smile, we know that we know and that the others, poor walkers, ignore almost everything. The sects, the sectarians, are that vain.
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