The future restarts from the Padua awareness festival

THEThe message is clear in Don’t worry darling, the dystopian thriller by Olivia Wilde just presented at the Venice Film Festival (will be in cinemas from 22 September): we all live in a big bubble that hides something else. It tells of a reality where the refuge in the comfort zone seems to be the only solution to survive in a cynical reality. The film is set in the 1950s, but it is very topical in some ways.

Isn’t that what we are doing? Gripped by expensive bills, by climate disasters, by the health crisis, by the phenomenon of large resignations, with a limping future, we try to resist as we see fit. To the cry of resilience at all costs. And if, instead, we began to become aware that has everything changed to be changed and let us be lulled by the new flow?

In his pamphlet, Let’s wake up !, just released in Italy (Mimesis), the French humanist philosopher, Edgar Morin, explains the question well: ours is not just an economic, social and ecological crisisbut a crisis of thought.

Awareness Festival

Yet something is moving. The first confirmed this “Festival of awareness” which was held last week in Padua, at Palazzo della Ragione, with visionaries and creatives and sold out every night with waiting lists from Rome to Milan.

Andrea Salvetti, co-founder of the event with Miride Bollesan and film producer of documentaries with a spiritual and ecological background, has brought together – among others – characters such as lastrophysicist Francesca Matteucci, a pupil of Margherita Hack, the conductor Beatrice Venezie the first European vegetarian chef to have obtained the Michelin star, Pietro Leemann.

He asked everyone to tell the invisible essence of their personal experience, that “something” that changed and elevated them. To inspire and be inspired. A sort of identikit-manifesto has emerged which Salvetti called the “new human renaissance”. That is, an invitation to go beyond the obvious, beyond beliefs and stereotypes, good and evil, an invitation to practice doubt while raising awareness and knowledge. THEn other words, the prototype of the man of the future has emerged.

The future of man

The founder of the awareness festival, Andrea Salvetti, with PR Alessandra Ferri (left), partner Miride Bollesan (right) and journalist MKBellisario

«We are one step away from inevitable change. For many, the crisis is frightening and understandable. The pandemic has left pain and question marks. And the war in Ukraine has launched others. But in these dark and dark moments, you can only move forward in two ways: with anger, or with wisdom and beauty.

It’s a choice. Maybe, we say, the time has come to unite and not to divide, to connect to your heart and not to pretend not to see, to bring out the courage of consistency, of one’s ideas, even if against the tideand not to follow the mainstream without asking questions »explains Salvetti who also has funded, with DiCaprio and other producers, the Netflix film The Last Shaman.

“This moment is a precious opportunity to look within. If only we could make this thought normal it would create itself an incredible inclination upwards rather than downwards where the risk is unfortunately being manipulated and manipulated even in ideas ».

In this regard Salvetti has organized, in the central Piazza delle Erbe, with the contribution of the municipality of Padua, too the extraordinary concert of the twenty pianos. The sound of the words has left the place for music on a symbolic date for history, September 11th. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven to symbolize hearts with culture and creativity. “United we win and the concert wanted to demonstrate what should happen on a social level”, explained Salvetti, concluding the awareness festival.

One weighted action per day

Grow, change, evolve, then. The acknowledgment appears, therefore, as the first step to decipher the reality and live a more authentic life. “You can’t teach a man anything. One can only help him discover what he already has within himself »said Galileo Galilei.

Alan Schlechter, professor at New York University in his well-known course on happiness, he proposes to make at least one conscious decision a day. “There are studies that reveal how such an action changes the world around within a kilometer and a half” underlines the disruptor coach Patrizio Paoletti, also a guest in Padua at the awareness festival.

«I am even more severe and meticulous: I ask my“ students ”to do five“ thought ”gestures a day, including a minute of meditation in the morning (see box below) and a self-celebration in the evening. Telling ourselves what we have done positively helps to define ourselves ».

Stop, reflect, breathe

They are daily gestures. Yet taken for granted because there is never time to waste, there is the culture of performance that haunts us. The revolution of joy In his book Imagine (Roi) the futurologist Jane McGonigal tells the story of Anshu Bhide, 23, an Indian from Mumbai: one day she screamed as she looked out the window and posted a video online.

He started doing it twice a day, wherever he was, regardless of who was around or what he was doing. In a park, on the train, at the market, in a bar, in her bedroom, in a temple. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes he squatted like an animal. Sometimes she stood still. Sometimes she danced. It made noise. So other people started posting their videos.

The scream of suffering. McGonigal wonders: what if we all started doing this what would happen to the world? “Shouting is easy, but it doesn’t help. Instead, our first step must be to clear the fog with knowledge. If I react, because I don’t see causes and connections, I’m like everyone.

The revolution of joy

If, on the other hand, I choose to answer, that is, to think, I approach the responsibility of my life. Also because if certain events happen it is precisely because we need to be awakened “he adds the Shaolin monk Shi-Héng-Chan. The next step is then to reverse all the paradigms.

The writer and philosopher Stefano Bettera in his new book, The face of the other (Meltemthe) he speaks of the “revolution of joy” and of joy as a choice of freedom. “This modern world of ours that follows the narrative of haste is attracted by the seductive force of violence, threat, fear.

Provided that this too is consumed instantly and then forgotten. But to live well the only way is inner joy. If we go back to using words with depth, we can return to the true sense of things in a dimension of balance and humanity ».

From the festival of awareness a new password: transformation

Joy as a conscious choice, therefore. “I would add, however, also the concept of transformation” observes the spiritual and life coach Elena Garbo. “Because it is a powerful creative force that we all have inside. It is a push that comes from the heart, from the soul. And it is the only key that allows us to feel good. Because from caterpillars it makes us butterflies.

We know that butterflies savor freedom, colors, the breadth of existence, the essence, the lightness. They are the emblem of a cycle that ends and of another that is renewed. A metamorphosis that better than any other example ultimately explains the evolution of the human being ».

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