When it’s over, I don’t want everything to go back to the way it was.
I don’t want to go back to clog the streets.
I don’t want to go back to invading the skies, to plunder the seas, to wear out the earth.
I don’t want to go back to health to breathe sick air.I don’t want to waste time in traffic or waiting for public transport, meeting indifferent glances as if sadness were common life.
I don’t want to go back to a male-sized world that made the rest of humanity “the others, the last, the different”.
I don’t want to go back to a performing society that is afraid to stop in order not to lose an unsustainable record.
I don’t want to go back to a fast time, which no longer dances with the cyclical nature of women and nature.And I don’t want to, I certainly don’t want to go back to a world of grown-ups.
I want to be in a small world for children, where life is an infinite possibility to play without leaving anyone on the sidelines.
Where nobody is another’s game but everyone is played and brings joy and their difference to make us learn.I want a world that changes the rules of being together to keep everyone, absolutely everyone in.
You too who feel ignored. And you, who think you are defeated.I want a shrewd world where things are made for the most sensitive and before making an important gesture, ask themselves: will it bring more love? Will it hurt, especially the most defenseless?
I no longer want to go back to mass society, with mass tourism, mass consumerism, and mass culture.
I want a whole fragmented world.
I want a mosaic, where each one is a slow and precious fragment, and where there is no need for bars or bans to notice the grace of this springtime.
—Giorgia Vezzoli, 21 March 2020
Thanks to Giorgia, the author, for allowing me to translate her work.
2 responses to “I don’t want everything to go back to the way it was.”
Massimo, I think this is your best article in the series you have started. It speaks from your heart and it tells a lot about you that can be very precious for who reads.
I had been sorely missing this part from your previous writings, which leaned on being quite formal and academic.
I’d like to hear your voice, your heart together with the wonderful know-how and insight you have in your head.
The two must synergize together. It is not one or the other.
Finally, I think that if you took to writing the specific recommendations and dreams you have exposed here, starting from yourself, you would need no more to wonder what to write next or come late or empty-handed to your publishing day.
With much appreciation for the work you are doing.
Thanks, Robin, for your words.
My mind dances back and forth among the many things that I think, I love, and I desire. I make a huge struggle to give order to thoughts and each time I sit down to write: I change my mind.
There is one thing that I’ve learnt, I need to trust in the process of maintaining the habit of reflecting and expressing my thoughts. It’s only after a significative amount of work done to express what I think that I will be able to find threads, insights and further inspiration.
So far, despite the striving for a discipline and an organization, I have highs and lows. Moments of great inspiration and moments of great confusion. I need to be more tolerant to myself. And more fluid with my communication.
Well, I was able to reach where I am now thanks to the efforts of writing and publishing. I am proud of me.
I just want to… do better.