Start again

Dialogue with Don Silvano about life, happiness, fragility and faith

Starting again is the verb that in its transitive version I believe tells the story of the life of all of us, summarizing its essence and enhancing its complexity. Because, how many times have we found ourselves starting from scratch and how many more times will we be called to do so?

Personally it happens to me with a satanic semi-annual cadence, in the most complex moments even quarterly, if not monthly, and I find myself in dialogue with my conscience, it's not that it doesn't happen in the period between these deadlines, but the dialogue I'm talking about is the one that it leads you to experience something truly painful, which slaps you in the face with your shortcomings, and reprimands you for your human beliefs. And it's painful because you only realize in that moment how much you may have lost your way, and what the origin of your choices really was: ego, presumption, lust? Yes, because our everyday life makes us lose listening to ourselves, commitments involuntarily engulf you, completely absorbing the body but mainly the soul. This brings malaise, anger, conceit, and often even revenge, and makes you find yourself a slave to your own actions, the ones you abandoned some time ago, and which had mistakenly convinced you that life was a race that awards the medal to whoever arrived first .

Years ago, when I met (... finally) God, I felt that he was asking me to make precise choices, because in all of my possession or being, the word that gave meaning to life was missing: happiness. Once those were done, she came overwhelming me and took root in me like a perennial weed.

I understood happiness to be the answer to your giving of yourself, but it only comes if you do it totally. Once achieved, and deeply experienced, she asks for constancy, and our every fall does nothing but push her away. Today, losing her disorientates me. That's why now, when I fall, the pain stuns me and starting over is increasingly difficult. When I reach rock bottom, prayer always saves me, and it doesn't matter if I have neglected it in the previous days or weeks, the effects are immediate, I feel strengthened and I start again from where I lost myself, perhaps even with more conviction than before.

Who knows how many of you will have experienced the same emotions as me, or how many will have felt disappointed with the choices they made, the attitudes they put forward; how many are intolerant of life, how many hate it, and how many are disinterested and suffer it, the certain thing is that around me I see many people who fall, make mistakes, and then start again, but I count just as many who remain in suffering without finding, or have the tools to get out of it. Dazzled by nothing, distant from even the desire to try.

Speaking with Don Silvano, my priest-confessor friend, I understood the difficulties that all people distant from the faith face as a result of the normal falls to which we are subject, difficulties that often overturn normal everyday life.

In summary Don Silvano maintains that the great strength of those who abandon themselves to Christ is precisely that of becoming possessors of the necessary tools to always find inner balance. In essence, believing in the presence of God allows you to apply his - suggestions - and this would lead to being able to live a just and, consequently, happy life. Those who, on the other hand, look for the keys to recover from dark moments alone often risk not succeeding.

As a former atheist convert, without absolutely wanting to, but forced by an amazement that overwhelmed me, I can only agree with Don Silvano, and today I suffer when around me I glimpse reticence towards those who apply Christianity as a lifestyle, because having faith is not a spiritual suggestion, and we can have confirmation by simply enjoying the internal results that derive from it.

As you know, my column It starts with 1 wants to tell stories of rebirth, or of people to imitate, but today I wanted to tell you about my weaknesses not because I deserve something, but only because I would like it to be very clear that we all fall , we all suffer, we all make mistakes, and We start from 1 does not mean that that one involves the others around us, that one is mainly us. And if we are not alone, “starting over” is much easier.

Max Laudadio

NP Giugno – Luglio 2023