I look at you

We need special relationships with which to face the world

I look at you who, surrounded by giants whose knees you barely reach, move without fear despite the marks and dents, looking for large hands that can hold your little hands, strong arms from which you request a ride on the carousel, friendly faces to disturb with pinches and faces, empty hearts to be filled with smiles and hugs. You don't do it with everyone, in your imperturbable motion you decide to stop only with someone and only with someone. Seeing you grow is looking at yourself in the mirror, getting lost in what we have been and, deep down, we never stop being, because we need elective, special, exclusive relationships throughout our lives and we start from a very young age to fill our emotional universe and affective friends with whom to face the world.

I look at you and I see that they are not the people who do everything to entertain you and have fun, you are very good at doing it even alone, and along your journey you stop with those who are able to respond patiently and sweetly to your needs, to put themselves listening to your unpredictable and unlikely requests, to regulate its beat to the same rhythm as your very small heart. You measure the availability of those around you, because you don't need someone to fill your time and space, but someone who leaves you free to explore the space and spend your time as you like.

I look at you and I seem to see the Little Prince's fox, its need to be tamed so that we can play together, to be unique in the world and not to be the same as a hundred thousand other foxes. I think of those who, without saying or demanding any words, have avoided any type of misunderstanding and have become a little closer to you every day without you realizing it. To those who left you the time you needed to prepare your heart, for that good that you recognize you have received in the form of care and company and now you seek, remembering when it was beautiful.

I look at you and think about the time those people lost for you. To those moments when all you do is let yourself be taken first one way and then the other, running away and getting caught only to be able to run away again and gasp with the pleasure of being caught again. That experience that Daniel Goleman in his text dedicated to emotional intelligence defines as flow: a state of deep concentration, of ecstasy, of pure enjoyment, in which we lose ourselves totally in what we do, managing to overcome our limits and be without make no effort on the highest possible level of learning, where "attention is so concentrated that individuals are aware only of the narrow range of perceptions immediately linked to what they are doing and lose all sense of space and time".

I look at you, happy, serenely immersed in your messes, because the infinite world is made of a mountain of small things starting from those you have in front of your little eyes and in your tiny hands, and it's always time to make a new scatter so that then someone puts everything back in its place. The fox tells the Little Prince that one day he will know a different sound of footsteps: «The other footsteps make me hide underground. Yours will bring me out of the hole, like music." I watch you hear the voice of whoever is arriving, his light or heavy step approaching. Will you continue to mind your own business without even giving us a glance or will it be the magic of those who already loved you enough to have the power to make everything stop?

Marco Grossetti
NP Febbraio 2024