“Times change, desires change”, wrote Camões. More than four centuries later, Bob Dylon observed that “The times they are a-changing”.And if the lyrics of our greatest poet are neutral regarding change – it can be good or bad -, the troubadour poet’s verses reflect a positive image of it.
The alternative to changing is simply not changing, I would say the obvious Mr. la Palisse. It is neither better nor worse than changing.
But the truth is that time has reinforced the positive meaning of change, which has almost always become desirable, relevant, necessary, if not even inevitable: nowadays change is always good, or even great. And, of course, always better, much better, than not changing!
Woe to the election candidate who says he intends to be elected to ensure that nothing, or little, changes! The predictable disaster at the polls will befall him, preceded by the massacre in the media!
Instead, the candidate who announces that he wants to change “everything” will be applauded and will probably be on his way to a successful election. No one will truly believe him, but the criticism directed at him, denouncing the idea of total change – as it is, in addition to being an impossibility, foolish – would be engraved with the sting of conservatism, immobility or reactionism and prudently silenced.
Those who fight for change rarely clarify what they want to change, what the meaning of the change is and what they believe should be done to make it happen. So much better. The more vague and less explicit they are, the greater support they get from those who don’t know where they want to go, but know that they don’t want to “go there”, as Régio wrote, and also don’t want – or say they don’t want – to stay where they are, as Variações sang.
Against the often disturbing, uncomfortable, disquieting certainty of the present, a chorus arises, almost always out of tune, of possibilities, mirages, fantasies, dreams, uncertain and unstable, but, for that very reason, seductive. When what we experience leaves us bitter in our souls, we run after uncertainty, which runs away in front of us, transformed into a chimera. What can be good is better than what is bad!
It will be? What we consider bad today, this present full of bitterness, disappointments and failures was in the past, how often recently, a bright future, full of hope. Not all of them came to fruition, but a few became reality.
Some things have changed, for the better. Others marked the pace, under the weight of our lack of initiative, courage, commitment or persistence. Still others regressed.
The insistent call for change, without saying anything more, is a fable. With a slight adaptation of the well-known story of the old man, the boy and the donkey, we will all end up with the donkey on our backs!
Former President of the Constitutional Court
and subscriber to the 50+50 Manifesto for Justice Reform.
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