Enough grumbling

Becoming more and more sensitive to what is happening is a mission to be shared and spread. In fact, the days that affect us do not seem encouraging. Reasons to be concerned are just around the corner. Starting with the price increases. You have to be very shrewd to make ends meet. The soaring costs at the diesel and petrol station tell us that the increase will then spread like wildfire, because the products travel by road. And calls are back on track, sometimes imperceptible, not to waste, to stay away from the superfluous. In short, invitations to a more sober life. Also because the risk is that today's uncertainties and unknowns will last for a long time and become even worse.

We receive a warning from the European Union: in fact for 98% of Italians, now, the most onerous and nagging concern lies in the cost of living. It is precisely the shopping cart that sets everyone in a frenzy, bringing everyone down to earth and with their hand in their wallet, with no escape. On this terrain, politics is expected to play its part. But one gets the impression of a certain impasse, despite the many words about it. The risk is not seeing the results you expect. Also because wages are not adequate for soaring prices. Inflation, then, corrodes purchasing power, adding worry, even in perspective. Meanwhile, attention to the ecological transition is receding, while climate change continues to cause alarm. Just think of the drought, even in winter, which messes up everything: from the tap in the house to agriculture in the fields.

Mother Earth's warning is strong and insistent, but one does not know how to listen to it properly. All in all, it doesn't look good. And it would be interesting to listen today to the new generations who have a far from reassuring future ahead of them.

On the contrary... In this tomorrow, unfortunately and sadly, a tragic appendix must be inserted which was thought to have been resolved: the war with its atrocities, its destructions, its sufferings, its absurdities. Who knows if these thoughts, which do not want to give up hope, rather want to feed it, can solicit deeper awareness, beyond the grumbling (even justified)?


Corrado Avagnina
NP February 2023