Hour 8:00, start time of the lessons. Waiting for the teachers, no one can stand still, everyone has something to do, everyone shouts, makes sounds, plays, jokes, has fun. They talk. Converse. Communicate. For five hours they chat with the teachers, whispering among themselves; when there is a free moment, it certainly must not be wasted: it is used to the fullest to communicate, to tell each other everything that there is to say and even more.
Leaving school, kids sitting on scooters talk with their girlfriends while text messaging on their phones, receiving signal beeps, sending Emails with the latest GPRS, the newest generation of mobile telecommunications, very important, if you don’t have one it’s like missing a limb, you can’t communicate anymore, you are lost.
At home, television on, Talk-Show, Big Brother, Live Life, Men & Women: people talking, discussing, shouting and yelling; no one cares about the neighbor shouting next to them, suppressing the words of the interlocutor and dismissing them. Everyone has something to say, to object, to assert, and, if they were to die, they would still talk, regardless of whether on others’ voices or ignoring others’ ideas, the important thing is to speak, to get a burden off your chest, to talk, COMMUNICATE.
Communicate. Psychologists advise us, they say it is the antidote to survive stress and chaos of modern life. People seem to have taken this advice literally, and, since I was born, I see people who communicate, who try to fill with words the blank page of their own existence. But how many have truly understood the meaning of this term? Each person lives their life on a different level, on a different sensitivity plane compared to others, and, if it’s true that human personalities are like snowflakes, meaning no two are alike, then, despite this being the era of total globalization, where you can have the Italy - NEPAL line with a click, talk to someone a few meters away and understand each other, but what I say, even just listening to each other, still remains very, very difficult.
There are people who know how to listen. They live discreetly, brushing only the lives of their "travel companions"; yet in that moment, in those five minutes you spent with them, perhaps you felt alive. You started reflecting on what you were saying, understanding what you really thought; you tried to weigh your words, choosing them carefully so that the person listening so attentively would not misunderstand what you were saying; for the first time, the code you used, the signals you wanted to send, had a fundamental importance. For the first time, perhaps you listened to your heart, which was telling you how you were and how it was not right for you to be, teaching you something about yourself that you didn’t even believe you were: an individual, and a part of a whole.
27/11/2000
Greet with joy!
