Translator: Silvia De Paolis Reviewer: Michele Gianella
Good evening.
Do you know this place?
The Como Lake.
I was born near Como, several year ago.
Through the Lariani Mountain Trail
I started what I will call, "meetings with myself".
When I needed to relax, I used to go up to the mountain,
and said everyon I have a meeting with myself.
And I went to the Lariani Mountain Trail.
No matter the weather or the season.
This meeting with myself used to...
I was 13, 14 years old...
Sometimes I skipped school to see black grouses flying away.
During this meeting I exercised my creativity, fantasy,
I felt like to do everything.
A meeting with myself.
I liked it, a lot.
During this meeting,
sometimes I met friends, got to know new people,
and mostly, I met people
who lived up in the mountain.
More than alpinists, I have always been fascinated
by the old men living 10 minutes far from the village.
I liked the idea to live there,
struggling with the mountain to get what you have to.
I liked this way of living.
But soon difficulties began.
I struggled to understand, before sharing with someone else..
what king of job was it...
What kind of job it is,
doing what it entails living up to the mountain.
It is not a well defined job.
So, one day,
more than the equipment-
the equipment was not created to shovel the snow,
later it begane a tool,
but a tool was first created,
to achieve a result in particular conditions.
For example to hunt, to get food,
to reach a town...
Tools were create to be able to live in challenging conditions.
I have always been fascinated by this way of living.
And it also was the phase
of the first questions, as Larian Mountains -
This picture was taken during a critical period of my life.
I was 15, on the Bernina mountain, first time at 4000 meters.
I will get back there several times,
and it is like a standing point for me,
where important decisions stem from.
First arguments began,
because my desire to live up there,
had to face the traditional reality, and my relatives' model of life.
The shtick was, your passions don't get you a living.
First you find a job, than you practise your hobby.
Yes, but I wanted to live there.
Yes, but it's not a job.
Ok, let's make it a job.
But when you're 16, 17, your not so strong
to struggle against the way of thinking
of you parents, friends, society and so on...
So you strive to make people understand - and I haven't succeded yet,
what your point is.
After 20 years, there are still people coming up to the lodge,
and they know everything,
but they still think, I made it because I'm rich.
That's what they think.
Unbelievable.
So you start to think hard.
I was about 20, 25,
I gained experience, I made several choises...
Once, during a meeting with myself,
I put rationality first,
before everything else.
My rationality affected all my decisions, all my ideas,
it was anchorage.
If something was rational, I would have done it,
otherwise I wouldn't.
The question was: what is life?
I have always been taught to create my certainty first.
Because future is uncertain.
Yes, but let me live until tomorrow.
"Future is uncertain",
or "make sure you don't miss anything".
During one of my meetings with myself,
it dawned on me,
if every moment of your life is uncertain,
I don't know what will happen in 10 minutes, neither in one minute.
If I do all my best to avoid uncertainties,
because it is better to know your future,
this is not living at all.
Because life itself is uncertain.
Life is a sequence of moments.
Instead of fear uncertainties, let's learn how to deal with them.
Learn how to take lessons from it,
not to be afraid of it.
On the contrary, I'll keep on playing safe,
without creating anything worthy.
Unless you work for an insurance company.
Then of course, you keep on saying, "Oh yes, it can happen"
But I want to live, I want to live.
But, what is life?
Getting a family, traveling, documenting?
One day I decided it's not this.
For me, life is living myself.
I want to use 100% of my capabilities.
I want to live completely.
I want to feel, to sweat to walk, to watch, to listen.
I want to live completely.
One day, I was 26,
during a memorable meeting on the Bernina mountain.
Everyone knew me.
I took a important decision on Bernina mountain.
I went from rationality -
I dismissed it.
My irrationality took over, my passions for mountains.
I didn't feel like having a certain future.
I don't want to live in a way I don't like.
When I was around the mountain,
I felt good, I helped people who lived there.
When I came back home, at night, I wasn't doing so bad
because I'd done what I liked -
I did it well, I helped my father.
It was a nice feeling.
When you feel good, everything is better.
On the Bernina mountain,
"Ifs" and "buts" were replaced with "I choose to" or "I choose not to".
Uncertainties does not help you.
I learnt to get rid of uncertainties only later in life.
When I got hurt, and I was alone.
You get hurt and think, "If I paid attention, If this, if that..."
But all those IFs did not heal me.
After pondering everything, you're still sick.
And you still must deal with your problems.
What for?
So I stopped thinking about possibilities,
to do, or not to do.
I do something, I don't do something else.
I didn't care the reason why to do something,
for me was important doing what I wanted.
My passions took the control -
it's like changing an operating system,
you change your way of living, you change everything.
I find a place, and go to live there.
Imagine what the others said: "You went too far away",
"You like the mountaing, but this is too much"
One day...
This is the Grignan mountain,
I was doing, undoing and the like..
You have big problems, it's a big effort,
thirty years ago was completely different.
What do you eat? How do you live?
You live up the mountain because you like it -
ok, but how do you live?
But I felt a subtle feeling.
A feeling of stillness and freedom.
And I said, I won't miss it. I will hold it firmly.
All around me there was a chaos,
but inside I had a feeling of calm and freedom.
It's ok.
I started to live day by day.
I had been living for two years in tent, summer and winter.
I wandered from Courmayeur to Friuli to find a place with:
an hour by feet to get there, breathtaking landscapes,
water sources, isolated - no other lodges around -
and sunny day in winters.
I found my place in Valsesia valley, near the town of Alagna, 6500 feet asl.
When I came back home, I told my brother -
relationships were complicated, back then,
"I have found a beautiful place to live".
He thought about a house just outside the town.
"Finally, you tourmoiled soul"
"I have found an amazing place"
(Laughter).
6500 feet high.
My rationality was torning up. No way.
You can't do it.
I had a meeting.
My rationality told to my passion:
"I can prove now, your desire is totally unrealizable".
Unrealizable.
Thankfully, 20 years ago there were no feasibility studies.
Now I would be in a room and not here.
I said to myself: let's reconsider feasibility.
If I have to cross a gate with the car,
I can ponder if I can do that or not: I measure, and I decide.
But with broader things like life, how can you do it?
How can you decide if it is unrealizable or not?
Too many variables come into play.
I can't say if it's unrealizable or not.
For you too, when you come back from a travel,
you tell your friend:
"Let's meet later, I want to tell you everything"
Why "later"? Let's talk now.
You cant' know it immediately, you have to wait.
You can't immediately know what is realizable.
In this case, at least.
And I experience it firsthand when I applied for a bank loan.
That's how they answered:
"Mr. Pozzi, we don't do that".
I didn't ask you to walk naked by the street.
(Laughter)
The vice director gave me most agreeable answer,
he liked the mountain and told me: "let me know what happen".
(Laughter).
Ok, I'll let you know. Am I asking something strange?
My rationality got stronger thank to these situations,
told me in a meeting:
"I'll tell you something
that will convince you, this is unrealizable".
It was september, still in the same place.
During a meeting, the money spoke for the first time.
Money took part to the meeting.
I had passion, fantasy, creativity...
We were all there - I was also there!
Money said: "You won't do anything without me".
Everyone answered: "What?"
"I make things realizable".
"Get me, and you won't miss anything".
A complete mess.
Some people say, no, I'm not in!
What about anything else in a person?
Is all her fantasy, her standing in life, completely worthless?
I'm not in.
It was an unbelievable meeting.
So I said, to wrap up the meeting:
"From now on, the rationality will be at the passion's disposal".
I said, completely available.
Organize, make yourself - completely available.
Money, you will never be the reason why I'll do or not something.
You're a tool. As crampons when it's snowy.
As a saw when you need to saw the wood.
I respect you.
We will work together.
But you'll never be the reason,
why do or not to do something.
Don't step in never again,
because you're not a natural element.
I don't find you in nature, you're but a widely agreed history.
There's no money plant that is born, grows and die.
There's no money in nature.
When you pretend to use money to manage natural things,
ends can't meet.
How can you price a caress?
How can you assign a worth to a gaze?
You can't.
When you evaluate everything with money
you pervert things' proper nature, and you're doomed to fail.
When you price everything around you, you dry up.
And that's as bad as you can get.
It has never been a challenge, or a reaction, to me.
Not like, I'm through with it, I quit - no, I do what I love to.
Do what you are, what comes natural to you.
It's easy for you.
Troubles are outside you.
The lodge had to be restored.
And I did it.
It was winter, I spent my Christmas there,
For me it was already my home, I bought that ruin.
When I started restoration I lived in tent.
This is my first dog.
This is my tent. It had been very hard.
A director told me. "OK, we take out a loan before Christmas".
I would have paid the raw material and the helicopter.
But on the 18th December they called me and told me:
"We can't do it".
A company near the city of Belluno that is far from Valsesia valley,
was looking for employees.
I went to Belluno, I had been working fo 6 months.
Untill I had enough money to pay.
Then I quitted the job, as I wanted to finish the interiors
Then I worked again when I ran out of money, in January.
A bed and breakfast.
Now you can come up here have a rest and relax.
The bed and breakfast wasn't planned, I had a dislocated shoulder.
I went to the major.
Together, people were asking to stay there to see the sun rising.
I told the major:
"I have a dislocated shoulder, but what if people come?"
"That's fine for me", he said.
I started a bed and breakfast, but was not sure of people coming.
I tried.
This is dealing with life's uncertainties.
I couldn't predict future visitors.
In my life I tend to this goal...
Do you know the magpies?
Here I was blocked by the snow.
Do you know the magpies? They are mountain birds.
Meanwhile I finished the lodge.
It wasn't planned as accomodation.
It was just my passion.
This is the reason why I did it.
After living two years in a tent,
living in a building, even with no windows, was amazing.
I kept on going on.
This is a magpie.
They are incredible flying animals.
When there is a storm they easily rise in the wind.
They see a pray, they go down,
thw wind is blowing strongly, they come back.
I call them air jugglers.
Because is what they are.
My main goal in life,
now, and forever,
being able to act in my life
as smoothly as megpies during a storm.
Thank you.
(Applause).