I know I am bad, but I feel that I am good

I know I am bad, 
but I feel that I am good

There is something in me that I know, and something in me that deceives me.
I know, rationally, existentially, that the human being is not good. I know about the inclination, the distortion, the ease with which we justify what should not be justified. Still, when I look inside, I feel good. Not because I am, but because feeling builds this sensation with enormous skill. This distance between what I know and what I feel does not condemn me; it unsettles me. And it is exactly in this unsettlement that something important begins to appear.

This perception, however, does not hold. It arises with clarity, almost like a flash, and then it weakens. For a few moments, everything seems evident: the fragility of my nature, the ease of self-deception, the dependence on something that is not born in me. But, once the initial impact has passed, the feeling takes up space again. The lucidity fades. Not because the truth has changed, but because I cannot remain in it. And perhaps this impermanence says more about me than any well-formulated conclusion.

When I noticed this, I remembered Solomon. In the midst of his intense search for wisdom, he sought to become wise, and realized that wisdom was far from him. It was not a lack of effort, nor of intelligence, nor of experience; it was a human limit. Perhaps what he saw was not the absence of truth, but the impossibility of holding it as a possession. Something very similar happens here: understanding presents itself, illuminates, and then slips away. Not because it is false, but because it does not fit entirely in us.

What intrigues me most in all this is the role of feeling. Even when conscience has already seen clearly, it insists on telling another story. It does not deny the truth head on; it only dilutes it. It softens, accommodates, rebuilds the self-image. It does not explicitly say “you are good,” it just makes it seem that we are. And this sensation is powerful, because it is comfortable, familiar and hard to contest. Feeling does not need to be right to convince; it only needs to be constant.

That is where the tension settles in. On one side, what I saw with clarity; on the other, what I keep feeling. It is not a noisy or dramatic struggle, but something silent, almost polite. Conscience points in one direction; feeling pulls in another. And the most disconcerting thing is to realize that this tension is not resolved by effort, nor by repetition, nor by good will. The more I try to sustain lucidity, the more evident the limit becomes. It is not a lack of understanding; it is an inability to remain.

Perhaps it is precisely there that lucidity finds its most honest point. Not as something that sustains itself alone, but as something that requires dependence. Understanding does not seem to have been made to be managed by us, like someone keeping a valuable object in a pocket. It lasts only while there is attention and vigilance, and even then, not by merit. I begin to suspect that the lucidity life needs is not born of inner strength, but of the awareness that, left to ourselves, we quickly return to the comfortable place of self-deception.

From there, a perception begins to impose itself with a certain uncomfortable clarity: if something does not stop me, I lose myself. Not necessarily in great errors or scandalous acts, but in small daily distortions, subtle justifications, self-indulgence, convenient narratives. It is not pessimism, nor self-deprecation. It is observation. When lucidity weakens, the way back to comfort is quick and almost automatic. This makes me suspect that the problem is not only in making mistakes, but in trusting myself too much when nothing restrains me.

Curiously, when I tell people that I am bad, I almost always meet resistance. They disagree with me, relativize, try to correct me. They say I am exaggerating, too hard on myself, that it is not really like that. This always catches my attention. Not only because they do not see what I see, but because there is a collective discomfort in admitting this point. It seems we need to sustain the idea that we are good, or at least reasonable, in order to keep functioning. Perhaps feeling does not deceive us only from within; perhaps it is also a silent agreement among us.

Faced with this, what I am left with is not a conclusion, but attention. Not the tense attention of someone trying to correct himself, but the simple vigilance of someone who already knows what he is capable of when he gets distracted. Perhaps living with some lucidity is just this: noticing when it draws near, recognizing when it moves away, and not trusting myself too much in the intervals. I do not know how to sustain this clarity. I only know that, when I lose it, I lose something essential with it. And that, by itself, is reason enough to stay attentive.