You only need to listen to the captivating music of a few tangos, Carlos Gardel, of course, Astor Piazzolla too, and others, who have thus sung of exile, of the distant, of the inaccessible, to chase away their waves of soul, their melancholy and to live for the time of a song in the combined happiness of their memories and their hopes, to feel the distress of the one who believes he has lost his country forever.
This combination is called hope. It's where the soul vibrates with the feeling of being alive. Pope Francis, a true Argentinian, feels in his veins the migration of his ancestors to that Eldorado, Argentina. That this alters his vision of the migrant, whose overly generic term indicates from the outset the difficulty of discussing them, is undeniable and proves to be a key to understanding his erratic pronouncements on the subject.
Exile forces the soul to reveal itself, and to conceal itself. To unveil certain things within oneself that one didn't know, that one ignored, that one kept hidden for fear of what they might contain. Faced with exile, they emerge from within as if by magic, become what they have always been, and dominate us. What merit is forged within us by exile, often despite ourselves, because we resisted it! Exile brings down a barrier often erected in haste and without true reflection. Man is a reactive animal. When he evolves in his usual environment, he most often reacts to his own demons, resentments, and mood swings. When he leaves his cocoon, he reacts to survive, relying on what he believes in, often the product of his culture, but his nature is not unrelated either. This rootedness mostly protects him from self-disappointment, but not from melancholy, homesickness.
The expression, "travel broadens the mind ," stems from this experience. Exile forces the heart, mind, and body to communicate differently with the soul, which is thus revealed, but which also requires the veiling of aspects of our personality that it took for granted. Sometimes, it is these revealed aspects that come to veil other aspects. What we believe turns out to be overestimated.
In exile, certainties are reborn, new.
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