themarginalian.org · 10 days ago

Do Not Spare Yourself – the Marginalian

Sometimes the most dangerous impulse is not recklessness but self-protection -- the instinct to stand motionless by the side of the road rather than risk the full collision of being alive. Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti understood that we break our hearts most often "on the hard edges of our own fear of living, on the parts of us so petrified that they have become brittle to the touch of life, the touch of love." His urgent poem "No Te Salves" is both indictment and invitation: "Don't petrify your joy / don't desire with reserve / do not spare yourself now or ever." The poem builds to a quietly devastating ultimatum -- if you choose safety over aliveness, tranquility over dreams, then "do not stay with me" -- reminding us that love itself requires we show up unguarded, willing to be broken open by the world.