Levantarse de la silla

From the window by my desk, the city looked tiny, active, alive. The cars, one behind another, resembled those ants that, with determination and order, kept their line as they headed toward some unknown place.

Whenever my back demanded a break or my eyes grew tired, I went straight to my window, that small square fixed on the wall which, like a television, showed me the distant lives of those who moved through the streets while I, still, watched them pass by.

Thousands of people of all ages became part of the stories I invented each time I looked out the window: the couple in love who found an excuse for a kiss on a street corner, or the father carrying his child on his shoulders, pretending to be a great horse.

Small fragments of other people’s lives that I made my own, but that over time revealed to me that, at that little desk, my own life was on pause, limited to the ticking of a clock and to watching in others the life that wasn’t happening in mine.

Today, I am the one who looks from the street at all those little windows, imagining the stories unfolding inside them, not with the melancholy of wanting to return, but with the certainty that real life is outside of them. Because if I had to choose again, I wouldn’t hesitate to stand up from that chair and start living.