A Christmas with a heartfelt touch

After the pandemic that, like a fierce war, has erased “the others”, slowly, we are returning to the looks of the past on the bus, on the stairs, on the sidewalk, in the store, in the library, at the bar. And, then, it is like leafing through the pages of a new life: in the eyes, in the smiles, in the contracted or open eyelashes there are people to console, encourage, appreciate, love in the infinite variety of everyday life. Between the folds of the faces, there is a new beginning or, perhaps, not. But if it exists, it must be seized on the fly, cultivated, strengthened.

It is the “time of faces”, beautiful. It is like finding yourself after the passage of a hurricane; it is the calm after the storm. You raise your eyes beyond the doors and the landings, beyond the roofs. And you discover prairies of solitude that must be contained, complex problems, wounded or broken lives. And we could strengthen the gestures to grasp and eliminate the growing discomfort of the latest generations that then leads to bullying, drugs, violence, gangs; as well as the networks that give hope and increase the welcome of new arrivals but also of our old families, often too isolated in fragility and need.
Faces are inexhaustible encyclopedias. I fixed the first one, alas a long time ago, on a foggy day, in a hillside restaurant. It was that of a man not very tall, deep wrinkles, very lively eyes, skin burned by the sun: the image of sweat and fatigue.

Since then, at bus stops, in the waiting rooms of clinics, many of us have rediscovered the pleasure and beauty of looking beyond the face, of imagining the backstage, life, joys, suffering because from a look a handshake can be born and, sometimes, even a friendship. The road is the key to understanding the "new humanism", it is there in those glances. It is not an easy path. We are all in a hurry, often angry, sometimes sullen, jealous of our privacy; but we are moving towards a society that with robots will manage children, the elderly, houses, hotels but will have less and less heart. Artificial Intelligence will do almost everything but our houses, perhaps, will be increasingly colder. The "faces", on the other hand, have made cities and towns and, now, they build another story.

You can almost always see the signs of time, the traces of passions between the textures of wrinkles: they are hidden diaries of small and large lives. Whether they are on the forehead of a metalworker or on the palms of a farmer, in the frame of a smile or embroidered around the pupils, they are lines of a story, fertile furrows, paths of life. Looking for faces costs nothing.
They are in the sunlight from dawn to dusk. Looking at each other means sharing suffering, worries, fears but also joys, serenity and hope. You look and you understand, you look and you intervene, you look and you build what warms hearts, drives away fears, breaks down walls, at least at Christmas.
 

Gian Mario Ricciardi
NP December 2024