Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
On the paths of the valleys of life
it is essential to meditate on the meaning
we want to give to life itself.
But this in relation to the life of others,
but with the awareness
that "Every word is a path
when it makes men better than they will be tomorrow.
Everyone carries in the palm of their hands
the keys of this world,
that opens the doors to great destinations.
And on this journey of life,
I am convinced that every human being
holds in the palm of the hand
the keys that open to great destinations.
But these doors will open on condition,
if we can imagine ourselves in the other,
identify with dreams, pains, desires
and the suffering of the other person.
But to do this, we have urgency,
and we have the need as well as the responsibility,
to lay the weight of the ego
to embrace the stoic lightness of us:
but which is an elegant us, a relational us,
a us capable of descending into the depths of humanity.
An empathetic, altruistic, generous, supportive,
because the transformation of despair into hope
goes through sharing our aspirations
in a collective perspective.
But to do this, we need the other side.
To return to sharing
our individual feelings of unhappiness
on a journey of collective happiness.
But at the same time, I wonder and ask you:
we can really say happy,
if the exploitation of man over man
continues to become the rule of our society?
We can really be happy if the economic paradigm,
founded on the spirit of greed and the foundation of our society,
continues to crush millions of human beings
under the compressor roller of browning, invisibility,
exploitation, indifference?
We can really say we are happy
if a part of our community,
of our population, of our society
continues to undergo articulated and disjointed forms,
different, latent and invisible
discrimination, exploitation, inequality
on grounds of sexual orientation,
gender, skin colour, different geographical origin,
to the different manifested religious faiths,
or at different social backgrounds?
We can really say happy,
if new generations continue to live in solitude,
in the labor of the soul,
but at the same time sucked in
in those guts of suffocating silence?
We can really say happy, if the male and female workers
fail to meet their vital needs,
of their creatures, their loved ones, their families,
because of asphyxiating existential precariousness,
of burial, archaic exploitation
in the era of the digital economy,
but through conditions that recall that archaic era?
We can really say happy,
whether the dictatorship of homologating and alienating meritocracy
ended up distorting the creative uniqueness,
generating unhappiness?
We can really say are happy happy
if people living with different forms of disability
continue to be transformed into objects of our society?
We can really say we are happy,
while our young people are forced
to leave their loved ones, their parents
going elsewhere in search of a dignified life
while others find themselves with walls of indifference raised?
Subjects, different people who share the same needs:
the pursuit of happiness.
Then I ask myself and I ask you:
should the answers to these questions make us meditate?
Drawing our attention to the words of Jean-Marie Adiafi,
who was an Ivorian poet, and said these words:
“People who can no longer interpret
their signs, their myths, their symbols,
becomes alien to himself.
He loses faith in his own destiny.
We must question ourselves by asking ourselves,
resisting the bulimia of presentism
and meditating on the reasons
that are the basis of general and generalizing unhappiness,
what meaning we want to give to our life.
To do this, we have to descend radically,
but radicalism lies in the posture of returning to self-identification
in the conditions of those asphyxiated by invisibility,
of those asphyxiated by social inequalities,
of those asphyxiated by latent, visible and invisible forms of inequality.
But to do this, we must not only meditate
but we have to get back to making sense of life,
which for me lies in exalting the beauty of the Human,
transforming despair into hope,
transforming resignation into that path
that allows us to put back at the center that creativity-generating enthusiasm.
But at the same time, this leads us to say
that our happiness,
can only manifest itself through the happiness of others.
That doesn't mean going back to the way we were.
Albert Camus says it in very simple words:
"We don't have time to be ourselves.
But we have time to be happy.
My conviction, my heart, and my soul,
the source of inspiration for my actions,
when I say "my" I mean "my" relational, generous,
that puts itself at the service of a collective aspiration.
And it is not a I that renounces,
but it is an ego that is able to say no to those processes, forms
that are the basis of so many inequalities,
so many invisibilities, so many unhappinesses;
is a no to those models that are actually a yes,
a journey towards happiness, in search of happiness.
Which is not mine, of the way; it is ours, of the way,
which consists in exalting, from the mud of the introduction,
the aesthetic beauty of life, of humanity, of generosity.
And the keys to these doors are in our hands.
It starts by getting rid of the chains in our minds,
those chains of indifference, addiction,
of "we got used to it."
We must never get used to it, because this leads to trivialisation;
and the banality of evil has been the basis of so many processes
that our humanity must in no way return to recall.
The keys to this happiness lie in our hands
if we can interpret this happiness in a collective perspective,
generating a new humanism that is fair, supportive,
based on an economic model at the service of the human person.
Thanks.
(Applause)