ONE

Piety is a word little understood by some and abused by many, but complicated. And like many other words today, it sounds old. it is replaced by others that feel closer, that we believe more modern. Such as solidarity, that is modern and fashionable. It's perfect. But piety sounds close to religion and as with other words close to religion, seems outdated (many other things of religion are outdated). Take the fight between morality and ethics. But I like the word piety and some of its synonyms: compassion and pity. People don't like these words, and they are hidden again and again behind solidarity. Although it is the same. The fact is that I like piety more because it is closer to the heart, more deeply buried in our genes. Piety cannot be rationalised as solidarity is. You feel pity or don’t, it is not just or unjust, as solidarity is. I have nothing against solidarity, or what it represents, but it seems emptier, although the feelings of those who practice it are not.

But, why am I talking so much of this word? its meanings and synonyms? why are you reading something that seems closer to a language lesson? We are talking about piety because this is a story about a man who feels piety, a story about humans. Piety is what this person felt and piety is what makes us human. Together with speech. Piety and pity and sympathy and, of course, solidarity. Piety and pity for other people, for everyone, piety that makes him human. So here you have more than half of the story. Now, we need to discover the still substantial minority; which produces piety, who is that man and what happens to him, how his story begins and how it ends, if it ends at all. And yes, this is a good time to stop reading this book, because if anyone asks what the story is about, you will be right to say its about piety. True and legitimate. We all know what loads of books are about and we have not read them. We talk about them, their characters, we discuss the story, even about how it ends, but we have not read them. Don Quixote, the Bible, the Constitution, and many others. But we have not read them. No, this book is not a Don Quixote, I wish (by the way I have read neither the Bible nor the Constitution nor Don Quixote) but I can talk about them, even with some kind of knowledge.

Piety again. Piety makes us human, it doesn't lessen us. Piety is not just the alms given at the entrance of church or in any street, although they are too. Piety is feeling pity for the suffering of others. And I know that this feeling nowadays it doesn't sound great. Feeling pity for someone else. But I can assure you, it is one of the feelings that make us human. We feel piety or pity when we see someone suffering, even if that person is not close to us. We feel piety of course when we see someone lying in the street asking for money, although for many of us it will pass through our heads that "he could be working." Sure, maybe he could, but somewhere inside us we feel piety for that person, if we believe that he is suffering. We feel piety for those who are hungry, for those who are suffering because of war or natural disasters, for someone we know who is suffering because someone they love has died, and we even feel piety for ourselves, even if in all these cases we do nothing, wanting to or not. That doesn't matter now, the important thing is we feel something and that something is the piety. Bravo for the piety.

This is the story of a man who feels piety and feels he is human. And that's how the story goes, from start to... well, wherever it goes.