On the knees of the gods…*

Acceleration by  STEFANO LAVORINI. Noone and nothing can detach themselves from history, and one can’t even declare a phase over merely because it suits one so. Which means we shall continue to dream, well aware that nothing is inescapable and that one needs to find ways of improving ones own present.

In this awareness - well expressed by David Bitussa in the preface to his book “I have a dream” - it appears evident that nothing comes on its own, that we have to pitch in ourselves, or that is not only believe in something but be prepared to risk, ourselves, for that something.

In a certain sense it means taking on the word “tomorrow” as a preliminary and legitimate condition in order to give validity to that dream. Thus the dream is not the future but the condition why, starting from the present, a different tomorrow starts to form: calling us to our responsibilities, in other terms, because it demands an act, the same as not only a content but also an emotion.

At times hence reality forces us to take a sort of step back, despite the fact that we are always urged to look ahead and keep on going. A step back that does not mean giving up, nor resignation, nor cancelling of the past, but an examination of reality that, considering the very now-existing  conditions, avoids the dream turning into illusion, while, on the contrary, it lays the basis for the actual achievement of the same.

And indeed history has only really come about going from the known order, no longer capable of responding to new issues, to the chaos that introduces new values.
Sapere aude - have the courage to use your own understanding - is the motto of the Enlightenment, and it is by accepting this challenge that from precariousness and uncertainty a new (hi)story may come into being.

I am convinced that going back to experiencing it, life will reveal itself to be even more complicated. But there is no alternative.
What do I think and do? My task is not really that of providing answers but posing (and posing myself) questions.
As Niccolò Tommaseo writes:«You can’t say everything: we are prevented from doing so by either pride or by modesty… Because words at best give meaning to our feelings one by one; not in their totality, their contrast: and in that totality lies life, in that contrast the mystery of the soul».

* (But) all that lies on the knees of the gods.
(Homer, Iliad, Book XVII, 514; Odyssey, Book I, 267)