Un day we woke up and suddenly we were 20 years old. The next 25. We wondered where the time and space to realize the great dreams we had as children had run out. Where was the lightheartedness. The very one we had lost somewhere, in some tortuous curve on the road to becoming adults. In its place we had gained worries, a sense of inadequacyfear of disappointing expectations and a nice briefcase of generalized anxietyattached to our hands with thousand-nail glue.
The courage to face anxiety
Anxiety is the word of our time. One in three young people suffers from it. Not one in a million. Not one in a thousand. One in three. It’s a scary number that should make us think. Yet when faced with these data we are used to being told that we are fragile, that we like to magnify the small setbacks of daily life, that compared to previous generations we have lost a bit of courage.
Yet we have the courage to face anxiety day by day. We put it on when we raise our hand and publicly admit that we feel fragile, that we feel lost, that we have great difficulty understanding exactly who we are and who we can be. We put it on when we see the endless successes of others and, despite not being able to keep up, we stay afloat. We wear it when the anxiety of the future and excessive expectations paralyzes us, but we continue to breathe anyway (or at least we try). And we also put it there when, fighting against prejudices and preconceptions, we say that mental health is an absolute priority, that taking care of it cannot and must no longer be a shame, that asking for help is an immense act of self-love.
Admit your fragility
We happen to be fragile, it’s true, but who decided that fragility is a condemnation? By changing perspective, fragilities become sisters of possibilities. Possibility to grow, to make mistakes, to feel human. Possibility to truly embrace and understand those who feel and experience the same things, in a new idea of empathy, which transforms weaknesses into great opportunities. It happens that anxiety holds our hand when we open our eyeswhen we walk, when we go to sleep.
It happens that he tells us that we are wrong, that we will never accomplish anything, that we will always and in any case be less than others. It happens, above all, that it prevents us from giving a specific answer to those who ask us why we feel bad. It often happens that we don’t know it, that we don’t find a precise reason, yet we know his pain well.
Like an old relationship
The anxiety we feel is real. It’s like an old relationship that we can’t say goodbye to and whose aftermath we always carry with us. She accompanies us and pushes us to search for the right path, but we have finally understood that there is not just one right path. There are many, many, perhaps infinite. There are millions of places we can be and millions of people we can become. There are mistakes we can make, risks we can take, falls from which we can get up (and then scraped knees will heal). There are dreams we haven’t dreamed yet, fears we haven’t yet had and sides of us we haven’t yet met. And who knows how many things we will still be.
So come, dear anxiety, because, no matter how much you try to make our lives a big mess and continually trip us up, we assure you that we have no intention of giving up. We are here, alive, and taking the time we need to discover the future. With some setbacks, some tears, some very difficult moments of terror. But we walk, towards an unknown time in which we will finally look at you from afar.
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