The Decalogue Nobody Knows About
The ten rules that you must follow for your well being, not for everybody’s sake.
It can happen that you encounter a book you cannot forget. A sacred one that keeps a secret recipe. A saving path for anyone who seeks through the cracks of existence and beyond the desert of death. It’s a story about the ordinary man, the sum of qualities and defects, passions and weaknesses, doubts and anxieties, and the ten rules that we should follow for ourselves, not for everybody.
The book that I’m talking about is “Life on a Train Station” by Octavian Paler. A book that remarkably portraits the life and love story of a man and a woman. They meet on the platform of a deserted train station. He is a teacher and fled the city where he lived, terrified by copper tamers. She left her city for fear of dog trainers. The station where the two are waiting seems disconnected from the world: the clock does not work, and on a panel are written the times of arrivals and departures, but not the train destinations. There is only a swamp nearby and beyond it — the desert. They believe that they can start a new life here. Until the day when the copper tamers appear from the desert, circling their refuge.
At a certain point in the book, talking through his character, the writer presents us The Decalogue — ten commandments that are supposed to help us in finding our salvation road.
“First commandment: Wait as long as possible.
Second commandment: Expect anything.
Third commandment: Do not remember everything. Only memories that help you live in the present are good.
“Only memories that help you live in the present are good.”
Forth commandment: Don’t count the days.
Fifth commandment: Don’t forget that any expectation is temporary, even if it lasts a lifetime.
Sixth commandment: Repeat to yourself that there is no desert. There is only our inability to fill the void in which we live.
There is only our inability to fill the void in which we live.
Seventh commandment: Don’t put prayer in the same pot with God. Prayer is sometimes a form of hope of the one who does not dare to hope alone.
Eight commandment: If this thought helps you, don’t try to admit that you hope because you have nothing better to do or even to avoid the consequences of doing nothing.
Ninth commandment: Bless the opportunity that you belong to yourself entirely. Loneliness is a b**ch who does not accuse you of being selfish.
Tenth commandment: Remember that paradise was almost certainly in a cave.”
Because not only he is on that platform, we are too.
