How to season a salad

My father (*01) was a peasant, semi-literate, from Orense, in Galicia, Spain, who emigrated in 1932, at almost 21 years of age.

He left (and arrived) illegally, like so many others, trying not to get involved in the then already foreseeable Spanish civil war. The troops, both the Falangists and the communists, passed through the rural villages recruiting people of military-service age. The news would run ahead, the families would gather the “little money” they could, and the young man would go to the nearest port (Vigo), trying to board whatever ship he could. The one my father managed to get on seems to have been going to Buenos Aires, but the “little money” was only enough to get to Rio, or he preferred to disembark here and keep a “little remainder” (imagine, pesetas, here at that time!), I never really knew.

Like other countrymen of his, with similar stories, they were tough, rough people, very hardworking, persistent and, although with very little formal education, of extreme common sense and lucidity. Even because whoever was not like that, I think, did not survive for us to know.

My maternal grandmother was another Galician here in similar circumstances, practically illiterate, but she had come around 1915 looking for opportunities that Europe did not offer.

Although with little instruction, or perhaps because of that, they were people who greatly admired “wisdom”! The “wisdom” possible for them was aphorisms (“popular sayings”, “popular phrases”, examples), short phrases transmitted orally. For them, and for many, it was and is the possible culture.

How many “phrases” I heard repeatedly throughout my childhood:

· “There is no evil that lasts forever nor good that does not end”,

· “whoever speaks one language is worth one, whoever speaks two is worth two, whoever speaks three is worth three...”

· “he always lied, the day the matter was serious, no one believed him...”

· “whoever talks a lot says a lot of nonsense”

· “one word is worth one gold, one silence two golds”

· “secrecy is the soul of business”

· “loyalty is fundamental”

· “he who does not get in the way helps a lot”

· “God helps those who rise early...”

· “good accounts make good friends”

In short, they are more or less common phrases, simplifiers, taken as “wise”, much used in “sermons”, in speeches, in indoctrinations, in political or religious catechisms.

But there is one “aphorism” that Dad told me a few times, always fitting wonderfully with what he wanted to say, which I have never heard from any other source and which I want here to share because it seems brilliant to me:

_ “TO SEASON A SALAD, THREE PEOPLE ARE NECESSARY”.

And he would fall silent. He would wait for me to ask “_why?”. Then he would explain:

_ One to put the vinegar, another for the olive oil and finally another for the salt.

And I would ask again:

_ Why can’t one single person do the three things?

And he:

_ For the salad to be well seasoned, three people are necessary because:

· one must be economical (miserly, tight-fisted, authoritarian?) to put the vinegar,

· one must be generous (open-handed, wasteful?) to put the olive oil and

· one must be balanced (fair, non-factional?) to put the salt.

And, concluding with a sly “got you” look:

_ Since no one has even two of these characteristics at the same time, three people are necessary.

In how many episodes do we want complex matters, or matters that require distinct skills, to be well resolved by one single person or one single group? Most of them ourselves. We do not realize this detail.

It is a lesson in wisdom. Conscious that the world, both on the macro level and on the micro, personal or professional, is always a salad that, to be well seasoned, one should not act alone nor accompanied only by one type of person or by one single point of view or posture.

And do not come to me with political correctness: for things to happen, it is necessary to be kind, democratic, diplomatic, but without the rough ones (some even rude), the objective ones, the focused ones, those who think of future generations and not only of immediacy, without these one also goes nowhere. Wisdom is to seek the “mix” that is needed, impossible to achieve with one single faction or person.

(*1) 1911april, Joaquin Noé Fernández Enríquez, SanPedro do Burgo, Castro Caldelas, Ourense

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written on Jun 10, 2019 R2026 Jan, 3,635 characters.