Dynamic balance

"Every step we choose to take can lead us to discover how to feel more alive."

Varanasi or Benares, November 2023, I set foot in India again, a few months after my last trip, choosing one of the most sacred cities, not only in the Hindu world, as my first stop. Lying on the banks of the Ganges, the oldest living city in the world, it goes through its days immersed in the chaos that comes to life in the narrow alleys, transforming it into a market with no beginning or end. Shops that become streets, rags and newspapers as tables, to sell every object imagined or not, human beings who scream, push, crowd, among a thousand colors, smells, temples, cows, dogs and thieving monkeys, while the silence of death, which from the banks of the river, reminds us of its incessant presence. Fires that without interruption complete the journey of those who, from all over India , came here to Benares as the last stop of this life, following an ancient path that indicates this place as the privileged final destination in the journey of the soul.

Travel, in its broadest sense, has always had a special place in my life, guided by the question I have learned to use to orient myself, who am I , it leads by the hand both my personal exploration and my curiosity to discover places, locations, which resonate like an echo inside me.

Learning to give voice to your soul means learning to listen to yourself, among a multitude of processes, thoughts that repeat themselves and words that crowd our daily life, grasping the difference between what is simple habit and what instead has a deep and essential meaning. As if we learned to remove ancient and invisible glasses pulled down over our eyes, discovering only then how they gave us back reality, only certain possible visions, a small portion, while the horizon is much wider. Thus intent, dreams that normally within us took only certain forms, foreseeing only certain roads, manage to find the strength and awareness to head on different paths.

Laura, comes into my office telling me how once again almost without thinking, because of the relationship with a man who lived in a different city from hers, she chose to start all over again, leaving everything she knew, the city where she had lived for six years, a job that satisfied her, a daily life made up of people she called family. When she arrives in the office she is disoriented, angry with herself, her whole world today is represented only by him, who if in the first months was understanding, now begins to postpone the effort of supporting her for every choice or non-choice that she has to make. It took several meetings to understand what, since always, pushes Laura to make choices almost without thinking. In her family history, especially female, the meanings that govern her change quickly before life imposes itself. Laura was 5 years old when her parents divorced, she was 7 years old when her mother responded with an aggressive man, she was 11 years old when her father, changing city, stopped being present. That pain and that fear of finding herself suddenly and without the possibility of deciding within choices made by others, convinced her that it was better to anticipate. So without realizing it she entrusted her sense of protection to the choice, even a sudden one.

Chapter Two

Like butterflies we fly on the surface of the sea without ever being able to land. Massimo Cavalieri

Each of us builds our own self, discovering the way to bring out, give life, pursue, bring to light our dreams, our imagination, through comparison with important and significant relationships, which educate us and show us what is the space of movement, emotional, physical, reflective, within which we train our qualities, our potential. Every human being has two essential needs, that of belonging, being part of the family group, feeling loved, welcomed, protected, included and that of manifesting what in his being are his own characteristics, talents, his uniqueness. Both of these two dimensions belong to the dimension of the soul. The first determines how the second will take shape, will be designed, what colors it can use, what perspectives it can imagine. The way in which we will be loved, welcomed, protected, supported will trace within us those paths made of meanings that will build the foundations on which we will build our home in the world.

There are emotions that have lived inside my life every time I opened new roads. Every time I felt the desire to move towards what I did not know and that attracted me, almost immediately a sense of melancholy arose, nostalgia, for what I was leaving behind, a sense of guilt deriving from abandoning what was familiar to me. Attracting me to look back rather than forward, it was a call coming from some force that kept me still there in the known, often confused with patience or attention. It took me years to understand its nature. It belonged to people in my family, starting with my great-grandparents, who at different times had left, with pain and suffering, their native land, building within their hearts a magical, spectacular place, made of the past, a place that in reality had never existed. A place to return to every time to avert, for an instant, their eyes from the harshness of their present. Making peace with that nostalgia, recovering it, allowed me to recognize their strength in leaving, in not suffering a destiny already written, trying to give themselves and to give those who came after them, another different opportunity without any certainty. I learned to appreciate their courage, tenacity, stubbornness that I find today as parts of me. Today that sadness, and it has not always been like this, I consider it part of my way of loving, I live it as a friend who shows me what has value for me. Today separating even for a trip is no longer a drama, curiosity has colored by opening its wings.

"We are survivors, until the time comes for everyone to learn to live."

Angela and Marco arrive at the studio, they are in crisis, she no longer knows what she wants from this relationship, married, two small sons, they have built their time together dedicating themselves to each other, helping each other to discover what their place was. In life, in work. United, until the birth of their second child, and the decision to buy a house changed everything. Today it seems they hate each other. They both come from families that have made love pass through harsh language, requests to always do more, to excel. People who had their work as their priority, they had no time for anything else. She with an entrepreneur mother, not very available for an emotional relationship, he with a domineering father, where Marco was the only one to defend his mother. For Angela and Marco, everything has transformed back into a known battle, into a test of strength, that alliance has given way to an ancient pain, to a deep anger.

"If you want to know your past, to know what caused you, then look at yourself in your present, which is the effect of the past. If you want to know your future, what it will bring you, then look at yourself in your present, which is the cause of your future." – H. Esse Siddhartha