Barbara Stefanelli (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
TOwe love the twists and turns. We seriously dream, and still, #laSvoltabuona which Matteo Renzi made – it was 2014, March, almost ten years ago – a national-viral hashtag. We have an imagination that overflows with perceived turning points, imminent radical changes, revolutionary intentions to mark every New Year’s Eve.
The conversion on the road to Damascus, with the fall from a horse that will see a man, Saul, already almost Saint Paul, get up from the ground. Love at first sight in movies (and, perhaps, in life). The villain who, sooner or later, will die in a duel and will finally get what he deserves. The new politicians who are more willingly voted for because they suddenly shinein purity.
Slowness – writes Rebecca Solnithistorian and activist, in a text published at the beginning of January on LIT HUB (lithub.com) – is hard to accept, because it requires commitment and perseverance, because it is not enough to intuit something and say you believe in it very much: becoming one will make the difference.
We, on the other hand, are impatient creaturesdedicated to sweeping away the past to clear the entire field for a future for which we say we are hungry to the point of dying. Only having everything right away will satisfy us, will save us.
This is not how things go, how lives go. Much of the change consists of growth that has nothing dramatic, theatrical or scenographic about it. Which cannot be seen if you don’t know and if you don’t want to see it. Perhaps for this reason, exhilarated and relieved, we applaud time-lapse reconstructions, the technique that reproduces very long-lasting phenomena in just a few seconds, fusing thousands or millions of fragments in the appearance of an instantaneous mutation.
Describing, however, «the slowness of change – again Solnit – is often mistaken for an acceptance of the status quo. In fact, it’s the opposite. Recognizing it is a way of supporting the need to overcome the status quo and at the same time the need for long-term dedication so that the work is completed.”
Change is therefore transformation. And transformation involves setback and fatigue, failure, decline and recovery. Perhaps the leap forward, the only sensible and possible one, is precisely the understanding of slowness, the abandonment to slowness. In the wrong direction, while everyone is running.
It’s not so bad to be “slow horses”., if it means resembling the members of the Jackson Lamb-Gary Oldman team in the television series based on the Mick Herron novels. Men and women who made a mistake in their careers as British spies and ended up in a dumping ground section of MI5 called the Quagmire House.
Nags, nags, derided, marginal, bored, but brilliant and courageous and irresistible when the game gets tough. “Do you think you’re happier than me, there, in the House of the Pantano?”, asks the newly promoted head of services to Jackson Lamb, in the finale of the third season. «I think so, he replies, continuing to devote himself to his black cherry cone, and I’m terribly unhappy».
Do you ever try to detoxify yourself from the urge to “everything right away”? Write to us at [email protected]
All articles by Barbara Stefanelli
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