Dijo Rabí Ioshúa ben Janania: «Una vez un niño me superó». «Estaba viajando y me encontré con un niño en una encrucijada. Le pregunté, ‘¿cuál es el camino a la ciudad?’ y me contestó: ‘Este camino es corto y largo, y éste es largo y corto’.»
«Tomé el camino ‘corto y largo’. Rápidamente vi la ciudad, pero la entrada estaba obstruida por jardines y plantaciones. Entonces volví sobre mis pasos y le dije al niño: ‘Mi hijo, ¿acaso no me dijiste que ese era el camino corto?’. El niño contestó: ‘¿Acaso no te dije que también es largo?’ (Talmud Eiruvín 53b).
This story is the basis of the book Tanya, written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813), founder of the Chabad Lubavitch Movement, whose release from prison in Tsarist Russia we celebrate this Sunday.
Now, there are many ways and lessons to be drawn from the story itself and the entire book, of course, but I think it is appropriate to think about something that certainly has relevance in our community, in La Plata.
There are two aspects to everything: the internal and the external. The internal is its very essence, its reason for being, the driving force of its existence, while the external aspect is its expression to others, its interface with the world, as if they were the necessary tools to achieve the realization of the internal aspect.
For example, when someone wants a house, that desire drives countless secondary actions necessary to achieve the goal, such as buying land, hiring an architect, deciding on plans, layout, quality of materials, and so on. Only when the house is finished and complete has the person's initial and deepest desire truly been fulfilled.
The same is true in a community. There is an internal and an external aspect. To reach the internal aspect, one must travel a long and a short path. Long in terms of effort, time, work, and other things, while short in terms of achieving the desired and initially sought results.
Sin embargo, cuando se transita el camino corto y largo, parece como que se llega a resultados satisfactorios rápidamente, sin demasiada inversión de ningún tipo. Pero, en realidad, es un camino largo, donde nunca se llega al objetivo y uno se pierde en «jardines y plantaciones».
We must clearly and honestly consider what the objectives are and what the long and short paths are to take, what the truly important internal issues are and what the external, secondary and circumstantial, non-fundamental ones are.
Se habla en La Plata de dos escuelas, una para solventar a la otra, pero nadie se pregunta si se podría mejorar lo que ya existe… Si la cantidad de alumnos viene decreciendo hace muchos años, ¿será que se transita por un camino corto y largo?