Serena Dandini (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
M.ai like this year I was irritated by the slightly dull Christmas advertisements. We were all supposed to be better off after the pandemic but there hasn’t been an after…
This new situation never seems to end and it certainly hasn’t made us any better. Seeing Santa Claus bringing panettone filled with brandy cream to good children is a surreal image and it wasn’t enough to sing out loud Jingle bells to appease our restlessness.
Whether you have wished Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas, a bitter aftertaste has marred the family banquet. The fault lies with globalization.
Before, we could pretend not to see that there was a world other than ours and close ourselves in Western selfishness of our superstitious rituals, but the pandemic has uncovered these miserable hypocrisies by showing us that no matter how many walls we are able to erect against others, a small virus can destroy them all in a second.
I believe that at this point instead of continuing to stubbornly remove reality it would be worth opening up to the world e recognize that we are all inhabitants of the same planet either we all save ourselves or we risk becoming extinct together with our panettone.
Climate issue, wars, poverty, pandemics and emigration are closely linked and continuing to ignore it is no longer possible. Not all of us possess the courage of the co-workers who spend their lives around the globe trying to remedy our many mistakes.
They are the protagonists of small “cure” actions in a sea of injustices and despite the eternal and – apparently insurmountable – economic force majeure issues, they trace new virtuous paths.
“The earth seen from here” by Paola Boncompagni (Utet).
But as a positive act for the new year it would already be enough to inform and know. A change of collective consciousness is all the more necessary. “Solidarity” is not just a rhetorical word used in the monologues of the actors to embellish a TV program, but a different mood with which to go through these turbulent years.
To get a new look at the world I suggest you read the book by Paola Boncompagni The earth seen from here: the author, who has always been involved in cooperation, has traveled far and wide in the most forgotten places on Earth and her logbook is the poetic testimony of the dark side of our well-being. His story is exciting and returns that energy of doing that smolders under layers of selfishness in each of us.
All the articles by Serena Dandini
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