«NoWon’t you eat more meat? Ah, so the lamb prepared by mom nothing in short, ok you’re a vegetarian now ». “Do you see a therapist for anxiety? Well, of course, I didn’t know you needed it even if you have anxiety…». Everything we insert into certain domestic dialogues to update others on our choices and – well that goes – to discuss their meaning and direction is epochal stuff. It is for them – that is, the fathers on one side and the children on the other who actually dialogue – and it is for us, that is for all of society which, at home, is not invited, but in the meantime remains talkative and imaginative.
Comparing fathers and sons, here we are
It often happens at the table, on Sundays, or for a birthday party. We come back from all over the world, we get together, and off we go: between a hug and a story we will find a way to compete – measure that distance that brings us close to our parents – and take a “family memory” with us. It’s just misunderstandings, that’s all: conversations that require courage and study.
Above all: empathy. An exercise of which Gianrico Carofiglio praised in Coffee time (Einaudi), a conversation manual for incompatible generations written together with Giorgia, his daughter.
Fathers and sons who talk, it’s not always easy to understand each other
Carofiglio and Giorgia
“Why with her and not with the other son? The liveliest discussions were with Giorgia. With Alessandro we had much less distant opinions on the topics that ended up in the book. Sure too the difference in sex has given us the opportunity to discuss delicate issues such as the female condition and gender language» says Carofiglio.
So you expect a close dialogue, of which you would like to enjoy the cathartic effect, but instead? Nothing. The chapters are a summary of every father-daughter discussion: a happy landing place (after having left the lamb, cold, on the table) and a bignamino useful also for fathers who perceive the frightening intoxication of proximity from that distant future.
Seeing the world through each other’s eyes
«We wanted a unitary and compact writing that accounted for the dialectical movement that had produced it. It was very educational for me. We had set ourselves the problem of the dialogues to report, but it seemed to us that everything would have lost its effectiveness. Most of the chapters were written by Giorgia in the first draftthen I intervened by adding or modifying, after talking to each other.
The theme, rather than merit, for me is method: understand the reasons for the lack of communication and try to remove them. Something that can only be done by stepping out of one’s own narrow perspective, looking at the world through the eyes of the other» concludes Carofiglio.
Chapters range from “Omnivorous, to Whom?” to “The Age of Anxiety”or the one for which looking for a therapist no longer carries with it any prejudice. From the one about doing politics to “I have many gay friends“.
Far away, but not too far
«The idea was born from one of these comparisons – the one on climate change – which made me think that our differences didn’t just represent the distance between a parent and a daughter, but between two generations consuming different mediahave different life experiences, see the present and the future in a drastically different way» explains Giorgia, the 27-year-old daughter, based in Milan, engaged in the publishing field.
Kids who feel like citizens
«Furthermore, if it is true that the differences are physiological, the political and cultural exclusion of my generation is not. It seemed to me that it might make sense to explore them through a political rather than a personal lens. There is also a bit of bias here on my part, because I studied political science and then political philosophy.
Working on this book brought mine and dad’s positions closer together. It was an experiment to see how far you can understand each other even when you have different perspectives. What mattered was the result.
The central theme for me is the chapter on work and there we mention Elizabeth Anderson, a philosopher for whom the fundamental form of equality is the democratic one, that is the respect accorded to all because they are citizens, from which derives the ability to participate fully in democratic life. For a number of reasons, we young people find it difficult to feel recognized in this sense and I believe that this causes our distance from politics. The hardest chapter to finish? The one about mental healthbecause the topic is delicate and (for me) also very personal» concludes Giorgia.
Almost ten years ago Michael Neri he published with his son Nicola Scazzi Stories of an overwhelming son and an overwhelmed father (Mondadori). Today it is so fashionable to liquidate the question with a synthesis of orderly, as well as ordinary, incompatibility: “Okay, boomer,” the son usually says to the father. Carofiglio, by age, is.
Okay boomer!
“I? I’m a boomer. We are all boomers. We have no escape. Just one wrong emoticon, just move – badly – two dance steps on New Year’s Eve, just ask for help for a piece of music to insert on an Instagram story, just dare to chase them in the rhymes of their favorite trapper. And boomer it is,” he says Yari Selvetella, boomer not for the registry officebecause born in 1976, father of four children (between “inherited” and natural children), author of My lives (Mondadori).
“We’ve been a family for about two decades. The eldest is 29 years old and is an astrophysicist, the youngest is 7 and goes to elementary school».
The minefield of the newspaper
In between are a recent philosophy graduate and a gymnasium student. «In a large family, things happen over the years. I wasn’t very prepared on some: veganism, Buddhism, yellow crest, Mäneskin-style eye pencil, e-cigarettes. I think their way of being and feeling among others is interesting even if I can’t fully understand it. We often degrade so-called fluency to something of an understatement to define the doubts of young people about gender and sexual choices, but I think there is more.
It seems to me that feelings and relationships are experienced in a new way: the couple, the closest friends, the group, the family» he explains Selvetella who admits he’s not good with conflicts. «I know they help to grow, but the truth is that I suffer from them and I always look for solutions, but most of the time they are simple shortcuts. The strongest disagreements occur in the management of daily minutiae: when you ask for the thirteenth time to throw away the rubbish and it is not carried out, you don’t know whether to let your voice go away with insults or book a one-way ticket to an Aegean island. In the end, I often go.
The other theme is the fifteen-year-old’s exit times. I stayed at the stage where teenagers get together in the afternoon. We learn, my mother and I, instead of today, on Saturday evening, make an appointment at 10pm. After which our fellow parents go to pick them up, numb and in the throes of sleep crises, around two in the morning, in the nightlife squares . No way. The negotiation on the timetables is continuous, but I don’t mind.
After all, we are talking about freedom and responsibility, about what relationship there should be between these two things. And that’s not much. I’m lucky enough to have a job that leaves me some time on my hands. The time we can dedicate to our loved ones would be a good topic for public reflection,” adds Selvetella.
Exceptional stories of absent fathers
The raw nerve has been touched and it concerns the conflicts with the absent fathers, the most dramatic: just read the ten biographies of A tailored father (arabAFenice), a book written by Laura Gaetini, a marriage lawyer and Rotal from Turin who re-read exceptional stories of fathers who changed the worldthrough her gaze as an expert on families.
From Einsteincommitted to saving as many Jews as possible while losing interest in his children (the girl abandoned in the care of a nurse who will later die, the boy left to grow up amidst mental disorders and loneliness), to Stalinraised between the beatings and the fumes of his father’s alcohol, up to Coco Chanelthe daughter of an absent man who, when her mother died, left her in an orphanage.
Being present therefore also means sharing “memorable conversations” and it is, let’s face it, a privilege. «Like the one on the relationship with the past and with the future» adds Selvetella. «I have the impression that these kids are all too aware of being “just kids”, a sign of maturity but also an equivocal claim of clemency towards them. The generations of the twentieth century were braggart, dreamers, arrogantstrong-willed and contradictory, they instead seem more reasonable: they live in the present, but it seems to me that the rest, in their eyes, is distant and irrelevant.
If I mention a film by Totò or Tognazzi, their eyes widen and they say: “I don’t know it, it’s not from my times!”. If I answer that Totò died about ten years before I was born but he is still part of my imagination, they don’t understand. For them it is inconceivable. I believe that deep down they would like to broaden their range, transform themselves into a force for change, but they will have to make do with something new, because the world we are leaving is like this, afraid of its own shadow and convinced that it is the best possible» concludes Selvetella .
Fathers and sons: the strategy of the hand on the heart
In any case, the clash – from the most busy topics(vi) to the return times for Saturday evening – welcomes everything. And all. At any age. Twenty-year-olds, but also younger children. “The most urgent issue for me is emotional illiteracy and affects children and young people who often have a heart full of stones. If you don’t know how to name the emotions you feel, the effect is that these stones are thrown towards each other, like the bullying that has exploded again. And it doesn’t just happen in the suburbs.
The stones that are not thrown instead lead the boys to the bottom: and here social withdrawal, self-harm and school abandonment come into play» explains Stefano Rossi, school psychologist, trainer in over six hundred schools and director of the Cooperativa Educational Center. “A quarrel between parents and children concerns not only the what, but also the how. Pointing finger communication ignites the amygdala which leads us to attack. But so that anger doesn’t turn into violence we need to transform this type of communication into what I call “hand on heart”. In other words, after or during the conflict, we should sit next to each other and say: forgive me if I got angry, but behind my anger there is the fact that I didn’t feel understood, seen, etc.
Anyone who educates must know how to stop to laugh, talk, listen. And don’t judge. To help us tell what we carry tiring and beautiful in our hearts. And it’s as if I said: I believe in you, I’m here and, if you want, I’ll be there» adds Rossi, author of My son is a mess (Feltrinelli). But there is one question that concerns us: what would we like the generation of children to save from the generation of fathers? «Trust in the future, which may be liquid and distressing, but which leaves room for hope. Ah, it should also be remembered that happiness, more than an emotion, is a direction: there is always joy on the route of one’s vocation» concludes Rossi.
“The rescue operation” seems to find consensus: everyone hopes to save the same thing. “I would like them to take from some of us the belief that we can change the world. Many of the younger ones seem disheartened to me and it’s really a shame» specifies Carofiglio father who doesn’t know what would save his daughter Giorgia instead. In other words, a «greater optimism that we find it hard to cultivate. Do you know what we risk? Nihilism, and it is dangerous. We have to save ourselves» she says. And maybe we have to save a few conversations, for everyone’s use and consumption.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED