One thing I've learned in my life, approaching 45, is precisely the fact that we need to give ourselves time, something that humans often don't apply to their natural rationality. We don't give ourselves time.
We don't give ourselves time when expressing judgment, when taking sides without knowing, we don't give ourselves time to offend, we don't give ourselves time for an unnatural instinct that has perhaps become an integral part of a society that runs so fast that, inevitably, it seems important to make a mark to prove we exist.
Time shows us that a song, listened to twenty years ago, gave us certain emotions, and twenty years later, it gives us different ones. We hear words in the lyrics we never heard before; we've changed, but above all, we're listening with a different awareness.
I strongly believe, it's true, that things happen as they're meant to, there's no alternative of “if I had done things differently”, but applying this to violence would be a groundless justification.
Give yourselves time, everything ends, everything changes, we are not what we were yesterday, not even a little, but we can and must do it by metabolizing experiences, we are here to learn, that's life.
Violence kills people, kills dreams, kills history, kills time, no one wins.
Give yourselves time.
In my life, I've also encountered the other monster, the silent one that lives inside us... and I want to tell you about it...
I lost my aunt Annalisa, a 46-year-old smile extinguished by a tumor that started in her breast and spread to her brain.
I remember every steps in the parking lot, in the corridors of the oncology hospital; If I close my eyes I remember the route to that room by heart.
But I don't remember the pain; I've focused the memory imprinted on my soul and memory, of my aunt who, to the doctor's therapeutic proposals, when we said “Aunt, we have to try”, replied “yes, dear, let's try”, with a smile as big as the world.
Over the years, I've been a guest at events where women who had won their battle were present, I've heard them speak, sometimes parade in clothes among the people, I've seen giants who bore the scars of the battle, proud to have won the war.
Each of them, without knowing it, with every word and every step while parading, gave me a bit of victory even where there was apparently a tragic defeat.
I will always be a silent fan of those who fought their battle, those who lost and those who won bear the same mark, in the commitment to look to a future where the great evil will be defeated by human beings.