On this day, 1st March, we commemorate 2 years since we’ve lost Boško, our dear teacher and friend, and yet, in a day like this, one finds it difficult to think of being “without” him, because hardly I can imagine how anyone who has come to contact with this noble man can ever be the same again.
Because all what he told, wrote in his books and said seems to be realizing itself right now, here, as if he knew better than us who we are and were, and where we were heading to. And so he jumps back abruptly into the present, or better said it is we who find him over and over again in our path in the future, and the passages written in his rainbow-colored books seem to only confirm, like a friendly wink, that he in fact never left us, and so his words and life-long achievements resonate in the space left by the silence, incessantly, without ever missing to reflect the reality and actuality of life.
How couldn’t he be part of us, when I think again of how he changed forever the lives of so many with his presence?
He took an existence that before appeared random and confused, and gave it purpose, he brought the colors back in the grey-looking everyday life, as the waking from a long, disturbing and unpleasant dream; he reconciled science and spirituality, adding new unexplored dimensions to the former, and a systematic method to the latter.
He took a rough and uphill road, full of obstacles, hazards, crossroads, false ends and traps hiding behind every corner, to arrive at the truth. There, he straightened that road for us, he paved the way so we could have a direction and wouldn’t have to stumble upon the so very many traps laid along the way: like in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, he handed us a ball of thread, so that we could find our way out of the Labyrinth.
And even after walking, through great effort and suffering, every step of the way to the destination, he turned back to us and offered us his hand from the other side, so that we could walk along the path following the certainty of his tracks and directions, a path which now looks still uphill not just because it’s exhausting but because it takes us to a higher place than we were before.
He gave us the means and the way to take our destinies into our own hands and the ones of the people near to us, guaranteeing us the certainty of success if we ever wanted to invest ourselves on this path. It is indeed only this that he left up to us, the only thing that no one else can assume for another: application and tireless hard work.
And yet even here he doesn’t cease to amaze: like a true teacher and leader he is the first one to roll up his sleeves, to sweat shirt upon shirt, to tackle every challenge and give the example to show us what heights a man can reach with his own hard work and an iron-determination, what heights of genius and endless possibilities awaits someone, without having to copy or bow to the knowledge of others, proudly and yet with humility, he shows us how each and every one of us can realistically yearn for these heights regardless of privileges of birth and material or social status but entirely with determination, effort and hard work.
And like it wasn’t enough, it is him again who tirelessly assumes upon himself the responsibility and the weight of the whole world, like the mythical Atlas, to resolve the problems and discomforts of each patient, and to guide and resolve the incomprehension and obstacles of candidate therapists.
He, who could have kept his genius and discoveries to himself and live a long and serenely profitable life, decides instead to share with us his discoveries and set a method to put them at our disposal, consciously exposing himself to every kind and sort of risk and danger, becomes instead the highest example of honor and altruism, a hero.
A hero, a man (čovjek), like his Montenegrin countrymen before him, who for hundreds of years had to fight in desperate conditions not only for bare existence, but to maintain intact their integrity as just and good people, like Njegoš, who was so very dear to him and to the Montenegrin people.
Boško, almost 2 centuries after Njegoš, is a hero in times of peace, and yet not struggle-free times: the struggle for existence and integrity translates into the effort that he spends in guidance and counseling, in the successful cure of his patients, and in providing to the people the means and a method that guarantees to each one of us the possibility to aim to the biggest fortune in this life, that is, health, a life without illness, a happy life.
From the sweat he has poured we can drink and refresh ourselves, from the directions he left us and his footprints we can protect ourselves from our own ignorance and unexpected traps along the path, from his example and his memory we can find the strength and determination to follow him without having to turn back in doubt.
And even now that he’s not physically with us anymore, we are not left to ourselves: we are left with the guidance of someone who maintains his flame alive, just when we thought that our days were becoming darkest. Another person to whom one cannot even begin to express his or her gratitude, who has lost perhaps the most out of all of us (Boško himself spoke about the bond between “twin souls”), takes upon her shoulders all the weight and responsibility of this work, continuing this noble venture of healing and guidance despite the hardship, the danger and the unimaginable loss.
And given all of this I find more than appropriate on this day to reaffirm that Boško’s effort was not in vain, that he has not been forgotten, that the pioneer work he started continues, that his presence is felt concretely and that more than ever the determination and the support to this great and noble work are confirmed and underlined, as well as the willingness to take part in it and the conviction to invest in this wonderful path of growth and self-realization.
At a first glance “Little Montenegro”, as F. Scott Fitzgerald refers to it in the “Great Gatsby”, seems to be composed of two eternal landscapes, the mountains and the coast. Each seem to be inhabited by a type of Montenegrin person, who under the same nation are equal and yet (slightly) different: the “race of mightier mountaineers”, as Lord Tennyson refers to them in his poem, inhabiting the latter, and the friendly sailors of the coast, whose spirit the great poet Stjepan Mitrov Ljubiša wrote about, in the former. If the great Njegoš, like a mighty eagle, guards his country from the heights of Mount Lovčen, I find it more than adequate that the spirit of all that Boško has been, this great man, teacher, friend and human, shall echo in tune with the gentle murmur of the waves and the gentle sea breeze of Boka Kotorska, where he rests. The Montenegro of Mountain and Sea is finally reunited under its two immortal heroes.
And to personally remember and commemorate Boško, the words of a great philosopher from the past, Aristotle, come to mind, when he honors his teacher to whom he was profoundly devoted and attached, Plato, another great thinker and human being of antiquity, as of a “man whom the wicked aren’t even allowed to praise”, underlining his purity of thought, greatness and height of spirit.
Boško, in your work and spirit you truly do remain eternal.
– Student from Italy
