Juan Villoro
Certain hypotheses about human behavior begin as fantasies and, over the years (or centuries), become anthropologists’ theses. I will address a minor topic, but one that perhaps holds the key to the times to come. I am referring to our capacity to be wet.
Let us pause to let the idea settle as if it were towel-dried.
Water defines our life, and the intelligences of outer space will recognize us (or already recognize us) as the blue planet. Not for nothing did futurist tycoon Jeff Bezos christen his space project Blue Origin: when the species move to another suburb of the galaxy, it will have to remember where it came from.
We depend on water, but we’re sick of leaks, shoes softened by puddles, newspaper that arrives soggy and bursts if we put it in the microwave. Obviously, this is nothing compared to the recent flooding in places like Germany, which we don’t usually associate with natural disasters.
Why does it rain so much? The issue is so obvious that it has brought together contrasting forms of knowledge. Scientists explain – not necessarily in these words – that global warming is causing the Earth to have to shower more often. For their part, astrologers point out that in 2020 Jupiter and Saturn entered into conjunction, which happens every twenty years, but only every eight centuries that occurs under the sign of Aquarius, which favors change and immaterial life (whether it is the Renaissance or living in the web). The element that rules Aquarius is air, but depending on how it blows, it affects water: it can lead to spiritual evaporation or a hurricane.
We depend on the “vital liquid,” as radio announcers say, so as not to repeat the word “water.” Poets turned rain into a symbol of longing for love. The young García Márquez tried his hand as a poet and, naturally, spoke of clouds. His poem “Canción” (Song) bears an epigraph by the great Colombian poet Eduardo Carranza: “It rains in this poem”; a few lines below, the debutant poet writes: “Sometimes the water comes/ to look at the window/ and you are not there.” For centuries, rain has served to remember or long for love. Octavio Paz finds in the falling water the distracted attention he requires from his beloved: “Listen to me as one who hears it rain, / neither attentive nor distracted.”
But I have the impression that as the rains matter more in reality, they lose force in the imagination. In 2009 I stayed for a few days at Trinity College in Ireland. Through my window, I watched students playing rugby on a field with more mud than grass; after getting wet outdoors, they went to a pub to get wet inside. I didn’t know anyone who used an umbrella, and yet it rained every day. I asked writer Bruce Swansey, who has lived on the green island for decades, about this, and he replied, “They don’t mind; they live soggily.”
I filed the anecdote away as a travel oddity until my daughter started acting Irish. When she leaves the house, I offer her something that seems to not only make her uncomfortable but embarrassing: an umbrella. Should she accept it, she does so with the face of one who receives a ration card to eat that day.
I thought it was a personal peculiarity until I discovered that it was a generalized behavior. It took me a while to understand that the times had changed. Since the rains started, I have studied the behavior of generation Z. I have seen them get soaked in the most diverse ways without it being a problem for them. Sometimes I go out in the drizzle just to perfect my field study. I am in a position to say that the umbrella is a prosthesis that comes with age. But there is no guarantee that this trend will continue. Many of those who now brandish an umbrella also did so when they were young. I advance a hypothesis that will only be proven in 200 years: Generation Z heralds the humans of the future, who will accept getting wet.
The adaptability of the human species is legendary, as confirmed by those who, during the pandemic, worked in slippers and cannot bear the thought of going back to wearing shoes.
Centuries from now, when the climate changes again, it will be remembered with melancholy the ally of those who preferred to stay dry: the umbrella.
This column was published in Spanish on July 20, 2021 by Reforma