On June 21st I arrived at school very early. At 7.30 I was already in front of the gates surrounded by the tense, supportive but also amused looks of all the students who were waiting to enter to take the first test of the State Exam. This time of waiting that, every year, I share with them seems to me a dip in distant memories and I recognize myself in the smiles now uncertain now bold, in the jokes, in the hugs, in the collective hope of making it that you breathe in the air and on the skin.
At 8.00 am, the gates open, the boys run to take the best seats, river that breaks the banks of a five-year period of “passion” … Here we are, now it’s up to them.
I go to download the ministerial evidence and while I quickly read the tracks one hits me immediately. This is the analysis of an article by Marco Belpoliti, published in 2019 entitled “In praise of waiting” in which the author explores the concept of waiting and its “difficult” presence in our daily lives. It strikes me because several times in this blog reflections, thoughts, even complex questions have emerged on the need to take one’s time, in choices, in loves, in separations …
Belpoliti in the article argues that we are in the era of “everything and immediately”, of the daily bombardment of emails, whatsapp messages, posts, stories, likes, a frenetic carousel that forces us to live on the surface, devours emotions, depth, response times … We no longer know how to wait, we can no longer wait. Certainly technological innovations favor speed, immediacy, the seductive illusion of living an eternal present, but are they sufficient to explain the impossibility of enduring the wait? I am not sure of an answer but I know that it is not easy to wait… Because it forces us to deal with ourselves, to look within, sometimes even to suffer but it also gives us the certainty of ourselves, the enchanting thrill of knowing how to swim deep. Does it take courage? Undoubtedly.
I am then reminded of the words of a fifth-year student of my school, Morgana Reale, who in the June editorial of the school newspaper “La Zanzara” writes: <<We live in a painting by Futur Balla, in which we are overwhelmed by the frenetic movements of the world, in which images follow one another and merge, unable to inhabit even a single moment in the present, catapulted into the immediate future. […] Everything is essential but everything is superfluous: one hour is too long but two are few. Time lengthens and shortens like a block of place in the hands of our impatient lives[…] That’s why we chase him, exhausted we put one foot after the other until we finally realize that he has always been behind us and that the speed we seemed to need so desperately, is just another of his deceptions.>>.
You’re right Morgana, maybe that’s the secret, to reject deception, to have the courage to seek, to explore, always… Realizing that you can swim deep, it is on the surface that you drown.
Sara Lazzaro
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