What an effort to live! I will soon turn 28 and it seems to me that I have lived a hundred. When I think about it, it almost feels like my bones are worn out. How many things I have seen in these 28 years, how many people I have known, how many changes I have faced, how many laughs I have had, and how many tears I have shed.
If I look back it seems to me to see myself through a television, as if what was was part of an old faded memory, of an old movie, of an old me. When I look ahead I only see light. A light that makes me close my eyes, a bit like when you look at the sunrise and can’t keep your eyes open because the sun’s rays blind you. I do not see anything and yet I can not manage not to look, because what is to come is calling out loudly and it is impossible to ignore it.
Life is an adventure, a continuous surprise, an almost endless succession of ups and downs that make you feel alive and, at times, not wanting to be. What have I learned from my twenty-eight years? I learned that even if I have lived at least four lives in one, the life we are riding is unique, unrepeatable, magnificent, terrible, severe but also magnanimous, because it always gives us another cheek, a new opportunity, always another chance to see and experience another version of ourselves even when it seems to us that there are no more ways to go. The only thing that really matters is the present moment, being able to not let the moments escape to live them fully, to the full, putting our hands in them until they hurt us. Sometimes the past haunts me and the future scares me. The present, on the other hand, accompanies me, like an old friend who tries to support you and show you the way. And
as you do with an old friend, sometimes you hug him, other times you reject him, screaming everything in his face not to hear what you don’t want to hear. What is important? What really matters? What is it that makes us feel in the right place? After twenty-eight years of running, I still haven’t found my answer. Mine is a restless soul, always in turmoil, never satisfied, constantly looking for something that always escapes me, almost like a slippery glass ball, which as soon as you seem to have grabbed it, it runs away. Where would I like to be? Definitely close to the people I love most, to the people I love, to the bonds that with so much effort I managed not to let go, but to strengthen to make them become something greater. We are nothing more than the memories that we hold closest to, that the people we surround ourselves with, and the strength of our life is measured through the love that we manage to put in the hugs we give. I love my life, I love it all, even when it treated me badly, even when it slapped me and blew me away, even when it made me want to end it. I love her so hard because I love my family, my friends, the few but true sincere relationships that I have built and that I know will not fade after a blink. The most difficult battle we have to face is the one against ourselves, against our reflection in the mirror, against our constant desire for that something we lack, taking for granted what we have. The end is part of the journey, one day it will come and that is the one and only certain thing we know, one day it will all end, we are not given to know when, we are not given to know how, but we can choose what comes first, we can choose how to live everything that comes first, we can decide not how we will die but how we will live. Isn’t this the most important and least obvious thing of all? Live strong Marco, live as strong as you can.
Marco
Taken from “Sanpanews Raccontami – Con parole mie – n.48 September 2020”
