Useless Things  

December 15, 2008

There are so many useless things in life. And I'm afraid we are going to get some of them for Christmas. Here's my list of pet peeves.
The most useless thing in the world is the necktie. I hate them. Maybe my antipathy has grown because I have to wear one every week day to anchor a TV news program. Could it be that people would trust me less if I didn't wear a tie? I hope not. But most of those guys appearing on TV to speak about serious matters have a tie hanging from their necks (or is the tie hanging them?)
More than a few days a week I feel the silk of the necktie slowly strangling me. There was a time when a tie had its use: It kept the shirt closed. After that, though, buttons were invented and the stubborn neckties kept hanging from our necks.
The wristwatch. That's another useless thing. I have never in my life worn a watch. I feel oppressed by it, inside and out. Once, my father gave me one as a present, and after thanking him effusively, I put it away in my closet. It is still there. The idea of my having to carry the hour bothers me, or worse, that the hour carries me.
   If I want to know what time it is, I ask. It is not really necessary, though, because nowadays everything seems to have a clock in it or on it: cars, cell phones, computers, microwaves ovens and, well, even clothes washers.
Perhaps because of my long accustomed habit of going around watch-free, I think people who wear ostentatious watches are ridiculous. As if the price of the watch were a reflection of that person's worth. Their self-esteem seems to be indirectly proportional to the price of the watch.
With the explosion of cellular phones in today's society, watches are now a relic of the past. You only have to look at the wrists of the teen-agers born at the same time as the Internet to understand that wearing a watch is not even "cool."
Besides, for me, living without a watch bestows a certain sense of freedom.
And while I wouldn't shed a tear if we set alight, revolution-style, to a bonfire of every watch and necktie in the world, I confess a certain nostalgia at the demise of the letter, another useless thing.
   It's been years since I got one. And I do not mean the invoices and bills that still arrive by mail. I mean the letters one used to send to friends, family or those who used to love you, letters in which you spilled everything you were keeping inside.
Franz Kafka used to say that "writing letters means undressing." For decades I used to get letters that I still keep and that, when I reread them, affect me again. How can I forget that exquisite anxiety of waiting for a letter to arrive from London or Madrid or Mexico? I close my eyes and see myself again impatiently tearing open the envelope, remaining motionless after reading my name, handwritten on the upper left side of the page, my heart ready to burst.
Letters, much to my sorrow, have become obsolete. It has been years since I wrote one. We have replaced them with e-mails and text messages. In his wonderful novel, "Canon," Mexican writer Federico Reyes Heroles is absolutely right when he says that profundity is out of fashion.
We have exchanged the ancient art of letter writing for a series of speed texts on our cellphones and cryptic code letters on the Internet that serve as an attempt at reflecting the state of our inner selves. To express laughter in the English language nowadays, one only needs to write LOL (laugh out loud), and to say I love you a lot, in Spanish ("te quiero mucho") is reduced to three letters: TQM.
The Japanese, who have managed to incorporate the new technology more than most people into their daily life, read best seller books on their cell phones. If that is happening in the world of literature, what can we expect of a love letter? I am sure that office computers are crammed with marvelous secrets of the heart. Even though techies tell us that whatever we write on a computer leaves a "track" -- you've seen what happened with FARC leader Raul Reyes' computers -- and that sending an e-mail over the Internet is the modern equivalent planting yourself in the middle of a square and yelling out the contents of your message, people still write the most personal (and humiliating) things when they are in front of a computer screen. The Internet gives a false sense of anonymity and intimacy, in spite of being the most public and universal medium we have.
I appreciate the speed, efficiency and omnipresence of e-mails and text messages. But I do miss the emotions wrapped in the handwritten words of an old-fashioned letter. What in the past was the biggest pain -- ink-stained fingers -- today is the equivalent of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Yes, letters, watches and neckties are useless things. But, as I am finishing this, I think of one more thing: There is nothing more useless than writing about useless things!