Eis um clássico na vida. Há pessoas que, quando chegam a um sítio e têm funções de decisão, pensam, e pensam mesmo!, que vão refazer o mundo, que vão corrigir todas as falhas, que tudo vão recriar. E que vão inventar a perfeição. Não vão, claro. Eis um erro básico, cometido com mais frequência do que se acredita.
Nessa tentação de fazer e refazer as coisas, só me lembro do excerto de Três homens num bote, de Jerome K. Jerome, em que um dos personagens faz e refaz uma mala. E se esquece sempre de qualquer coisa de fora...
(não consegui arranjar uma tradução, sorry...)
I rather
pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I
feel I know more about than any other person living. (It surprises me
myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I impressed the
fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole
matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness
that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread
himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit a
cigar.
This was
hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should
boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my
directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you—!”
“Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!”—really teaching
them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated
me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people
sitting about doing nothing when I’m working.
I lived with
a man once who used to make me mad that way. He would loll on the sofa
and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me round the room
with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look on
at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that life was not an idle
dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern
work. He said he often wondered now how he could have gone on before he
met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.
Now, I’m not
like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and
working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands
in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature.
I can’t help it.
However, I
did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job
than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and
I sat on it and strapped it.
“Ain’t you
going to put the boots in?” said Harris.
And I looked
round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like Harris. He
couldn’t have said a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of
course. And George laughed—one of those irritating, senseless,
chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.
I opened the
bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a
horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t
know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.
My
tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a
misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold
perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I
pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is
always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it,
and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway
station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
Of course I
had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not find
it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have
been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I
found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find my
own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything up and shook
it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.
When I had
finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said I didn’t care a hang
whether the soap was in or whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and
strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and had to
re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5 p.m., and then there remained
the hampers to do. Harris said that we should be wanting to start in less
than twelve hours’ time, and thought that he and George had better do the rest;
and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.
