María Belón (Madrid, 1966) graduated in Medicine, built a life, and a trip to Thailand almost took her away. She is one of the survivors, along with her entire family, of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and involuntarily became the protagonist of The Impossible, the film by Juan Antonio Bayona about that event. She has just published a story, Kokoro and the Sea, to collaborate with Doctors Without Borders and is also one of the speakers at The Time of Women, organized by EL MUNDO.
"Every time a psychiatrist talked to me about survivor guilt, I would get up and leave"
"I find life much more tiresome than death. I have such a desire for death that you can't even imagine"
Q: What is the most impertinent question you have been asked? And how did you respond?
A: In Galicia, I gave an interview in which, within a context, I said that my children would repeat the tsunami. It became the headline even though I asked for it not to be, and many journalists have asked me again. Some with respect and others not. When they did it without respect, I told them to go to hell.
21 years have passed since the Indian Ocean tsunami, how has it changed your life?
The change in my life has been gradual, not like magic dust as everyone thinks happens to us. I know that the change in my life will not end until the day I close my eyes and die. Now I value everything that happens to me, nothing is good or bad for me anymore. I try to always learn something. This has been given to me by visiting death and coming back.
What has been your great awakening?
Oh, how difficult! I'm going to get cheesy, everything in life has a purpose of love, to help us get closer to the essence of who we are. And we are just love.
There must be something else inside.
There are things that distance and distract us, but we are a spark of universal love. I had that experience under the sea and then I read to understand it. All mystical traditions tell you the same thing, that we are a bundle of love. Before, almost everything I did was out of fear, now I try to do it out of love.
You and your entire family survived a tsunami with over 230,000 people dead. What feeling does that fact generate in you?
Psychologists and people who have been through this transform it into a horrible word, very much from the Judeo-Christian culture, which is survivor guilt. I struggled a lot with that concept, I would get up and leave every time a psychiatrist told me that. For me, guilt transcends, it is a difficult feeling to digest. My youngest son, Simón, who was six years old at the time, solved it for me.
How did he solve it for you?
One day he saw me crying, asked me what was wrong, and I told him that I didn't understand why we were all alive. Do you know what he told me? He told me to think about why we were alive. So now there are many things that I don't know why they happen, but I try to understand their purpose. And it is to learn, to create community, to help each other... Every day when I go to sleep, I think that if I have been a little useful to others and have made this garden a bit more beautiful, then it's okay for me.
That garden is not in its best moment.
No, it is going through complicated times, with humanitarian drought and lots of weeds. It's okay, I believe that together we can create a paradise, and no one can take away that hope from me.
You have experienced various depressions, I will appeal to the medical María. What is happening with mental health, doctor?
We are looking outside too much and not inside. We are not respecting the time our soul needs, and we are exhausting ourselves. We are demanding more from our body and brain than they can give. I have learned a lot from my depressions, I believe that in many cases they are there to help you change course. That's my perspective, I think our way of life is incompatible with the limited body we have. We are bombarding the brain, and we almost have the same brain as those who only hunted mammoths. Now mammoths come into our phones in a minute.
How do we get out of there? Because it's not a personal thing, it's a societal issue.
But we have to say no many times to many things. As Mandela's poem says, be the captain of your soul. Many people say they can't because they would earn less money or have fewer friends. Everything has consequences, but...
What have you found in spirituality?
I have found the essence of who I am and who you are too. Of who we all are, it unifies us and fills us with peace. And I'm talking about sitting to meditate for an hour every day, which I also do. Finding your way to spirituality is finding your way to peace. Tell me, who doesn't want to live in peace?
I can think of a few world leaders.
I would like to have a coffee with them and for them to truly open up because I am convinced that they are very lost, very confused, and at war with themselves. Deep down, we all have a bit of Trump or Putin, it's just that they are loudspeakers. I am sure that world peace will be achieved when we all find our personal peace because if we all had it, no one would vote for Putin or Trump.
I have serious doubts about that.
I believe it because we are in a moment of great confusion, where war and confrontation are being promoted. But, I insist, humans are all a bundle of love.
After what you have been through, do you still fear death?
I experienced three near-death processes, and I ask you not to make this the headline, but I am really looking forward to death. I find life much more tiresome than death.
But after being on the brink of death and surviving, are you going to tell me that you are not interested in continuing to live?
I already know what death is like, and it's amazing. That's why I am so eager for it. It's like if I told you that you are going on the most amazing trip of your life. Would you want to go or not?
It depends on where it would be, but initially I would say yes.
I think what we are afraid of is life in general, and we need to start breaking the lies we have been told. Those of us on a spiritual path cannot believe that life has given us another chance. The only hard part about dying is resisting it, when it's time, it's time.
I have read you say several times that in Spain we could experience a tsunami like the one you went through.
It's not a matter of it possibly happening, it will happen. There will be more and more floods, and the tsunami will reach the south of Spain. I don't know if I will live to see it in my short life, but it will come. So let's prepare, like they do in Japan, because it will cause pain. We have to move away from this culture of shouting and lamenting and be prepared.
Some may say that you are exaggerating with that prediction.
It's a reality, I find it funny when people say 'when climate change comes'. But it's already here, how can people deny it. Denying climate change is like denying the existence of the sun. Some say that this will scare off tourism, but Thailand tripled its tourism rate after the tsunami. It's absurd.
THE LAST ONE...
Q. What is the most impertinent question you have been asked? And how did you respond?
A. In Galicia, I gave an interview where, within a context, I said that my children would experience the tsunami again. It became the headline even though I asked for it not to be, and many journalists have asked me about it again. Some with respect and some not. When they did it without respect, I told them to go to hell.