Today I went out for my usual walk, this time after the sun had finally softened its immeasurable fury. I headed south along Red Road, that border street between Coral Gables and South Miami that eventually carries me toward Ponce de Leon Boulevard and allows me to walk beneath the patches of shadow cast across the pavement by the concrete columns of the Miami Metrorail.
I walk through a university city that was never designed with generous sidewalks for people like us who walk everywhere. That border road bears little resemblance to “The City Beautiful,” the slogan of my beloved Coral Gables. And yet, it remains one of the places where I think best.
Like almost every day, I found myself navigating that narrow sidewalk, often invaded by overgrown garden plants that slowly devour the little concrete left for walking, especially when it must also be shared with people moving around the University of Miami on scooters, bicycles, rollerblades, or sometimes in loud waves of young runners moving together like a migrating current.
As I walked, I found myself reflecting on my life as a writer, on my anxieties, the themes I pursue, the endless accumulation of tasks, and the demanding schedule I impose on myself so that whatever I write may retain the coherence readers deserve.
Sometimes I feel that everything required to sustain the fragile illusion of being an independent writer resembles carrying a small twenty-person publishing house on my shoulders while still somehow having to sit down and write at the end of the day.
But I suppose I should expect nothing else.
Everything I am, I have built myself.
And although the craft eventually saturates the mind and wears down the body, there is also something profoundly playful about it, perhaps because it is never only the body doing the work, but also the soul, or more precisely, consciousness itself.
Still, none of that was the most important thing that happened during the walk. Many things unfolded instead as small perceptions.
Whenever I notice something curious lying on the ground, I pick it up and slip it into the back pocket of my shorts. Usually they are tiny remnants abandoned by the city, a pacifier dropped by a baby before the nanny noticed, a lost little shoe, some strange object left behind by unknown hands, or even the small artifacts left behind by people wandering through their own forms of disorientation.
I collect them because for some time now I have been entertaining a somewhat extravagant idea for the day I eventually publish my best Three Miles Chronicles. I imagine designing, with the help of some visual artist, a collage-like cover, perhaps a caricature of my own face surrounded by all those tiny residues the city leaves behind. Maybe painted in oils or acrylics.
For now, it remains only an idea.
At home, a small collection of sentimental debris has already begun to accumulate, things that may someday, perhaps, become art.
In any case, among many other thoughts, that afternoon I found myself reflecting on the strange experience of sharing space, presence, and fleeting sensations with other human beings while walking.
I noticed it almost instantly when I saw a young woman jogging toward me along the same narrow sidewalk. The moment she saw me, she crossed to the opposite side of the street.
Perhaps the sidewalk simply felt too narrow.
Perhaps the solitude of the landscape made her uneasy.
Fear is contagious.
That was when I unexpectedly found myself returning to my thoughts with greater intensity. A strange uneasiness emerged in the middle of the calmness with which I had been walking. Uneasiness at the possibility of appearing threatening without intending to be. Uneasiness at the idea of becoming, even briefly, an uncomfortable presence within the imagination of another person.
I am an older man, physically unremarkable, a solitary walker, perhaps not too far removed from resembling one of those men whose mere presence unsettles people who do not know them.
And although I understand perfectly well that human instinct for self-preservation — that silent mechanism that forces us to move cautiously, to avoid whatever might disrupt our sense of safety — I nevertheless found myself extrapolating that tiny moment into something much larger.
I sensed that she might be afraid of me.
And in realizing it, I began to fear what I myself might represent to her.
The thought saddened me.
But what could I possibly do?
I remained caught inside that thought. For the next three and a half miles, those ideas walked beside me beneath the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.
And although I had already written about fear in one of my earlier walks, Fear as a Tool for Social Mutation, that afternoon I found myself returning once again to its nature, and to the way certain forms of power seem sustained by the fear they are capable of administering.
I still could not find a precise way to embody the idea.
Yet that tiny encounter ended up revealing something deeply unsettling. Human beings often instill fear in one another without ever intending to.
Then another thought emerged, perhaps an even more uncomfortable one.
Those who turn fear into an instrument of domination often fear, more than anyone else, the moment they cease being feared themselves.
Perhaps that is why cruelty rarely descends upon those who possess real power to respond. Brutality tends instead to fall upon the most vulnerable, upon those with the least capacity for resistance, the fewest mechanisms of defense, and the smallest possibility of altering the balance of power.
And perhaps that is how the cycle of cruelty quietly completes itself.
I kept walking.
I kept chewing on thoughts like a stray cow wandering through shadows and open fields.
And as I gradually left behind the concrete structure of the Miami Metrorail, heading toward Coral Gables Hospital along the northern edge of the university campus, I began to suspect that few forces are as efficient at sustaining power as the fear of losing what one possesses — material wealth, accumulated privilege, influence, impunity, or control.
Perhaps that is why so many systems eventually devote more energy to protecting themselves than to genuinely protecting the people they claim to serve.
Power, more often than not, seems primarily concerned with preserving itself.
And it was then that I began to suspect something even sadder. The social contract within our societies may have been slowly abandoned to the point where true fortune now seems to belong only to those still capable of saying, “I live happily,” even if they do not have a single dollar in their pocket.
At times I think that the social contract within the world’s great economies no longer resembles an agreement with the human collective, but rather a silent pact devoted to the preservation of power itself.
And as I walked, I found myself thinking that one of the great contemporary tragedies may be that so many forms of power no longer govern from the calm authority of institutions, but from the fear of losing what they have accumulated.
The authority of a boss, a politician, a ruler, a father, a police officer, a competitor, even a criminal, can slowly transform into cruelty once it discovers that fear often proves more effective than empathy in imposing itself upon others.
My thoughts then drifted toward the times we live in.
At times, it feels as though certain political, economic, and even military structures throughout the world have become trapped within their own historical contradictions. As if the fear of losing influence, control, legitimacy, or impunity had slowly begun replacing the very notion of collective service.
And when power itself begins to fear, it rarely becomes more humane.
Its cruelty hardens, and it gradually loses sight of the very people who once made its existence possible.
Instead, it tends to become defensive.
It fortifies itself.
It surrounds itself with propaganda, absolute rhetoric, imaginary enemies, and exaggerated threats. It needs distraction. Polarization. Manufactured urgency. Societies kept in a constant state of emotional tension.
Perhaps because collective fear is far easier to administer than collective reflection.
That was when I understood something deeply unsettling. Some of the contemporary leaders who project the greatest strength may, underneath it all, conceal an overwhelming fear of losing control of their own narrative.
And perhaps that is precisely where cruelty begins.
Because once power becomes accustomed to surviving through fear, it slowly distances itself from empathy.
It no longer listens.
It no longer represents.
It no longer protects.
It exists only to preserve itself.
What remained with me after that walk was the feeling that fear not only conditions human decisions, but also the very possibility of happiness itself. Fear interrupts serenity, erodes trust, and eventually turns into a quiet form of inner captivity.
Perhaps that is why, at some point, even within one of my novels, I imagined the possibility of something like a Life Amendment — a simple idea, perhaps an impossible one, the fundamental right of every human being to exist without the constant weight of fear imposed by others.