The other half of the story

Before you weren't here and now you're here, I can touch you, feel you, hold you, hope to get to the evening without breaking you. So small and fragile, you do nothing but sleep and eat, scream if you need something, without giving us peace until your wishes are granted. Who knows if one day children will come into the world again like you did, the greatest pain and joy all at once. Or if instead of storks there will be machines ready to obey our commands and the new human beings will choose each other like from a catalogue, unless we are the ones who follow the orders and procedures of creatures who have become more powerful than their creator.
We would like to welcome you into a beautiful world thinking that you will make it even more beautiful, don't tell yourself that instead there is a small war that is fought in almost every family and inside every house, that it is full of people who scream and argue everywhere.
That we all have hearts decorated with traumas and anxieties, like the medals of valor of those who once really went to battle.
Leaving aside the horror of places where bombs still fall and every day you can only pray that you will see the sun the next day.

If you have to suffer harm, at least don't cause it yourself.
Because you can be a prisoner of a lot of things, but as you grow up you will see how good we are at locking ourselves in a cage alone: ​​hurting ourselves, sometimes, seems like the only way to make ourselves seen.
You will watch people like you fly in the Sky, reach and inhabit distant planets, but never forget that here, on the other side of the street where you live, things happen that we were sure one day we would only read about in history books.
A little girl told me that in the evening her mother uses the funnel to pass boiling water from a large pot to small plastic bottles to warm the bed and try to fall asleep together in a single embrace without feeling the cold.

Such bad and sad things happen, but our heart is as if anesthetized and can no longer feel the pain of others: we are so capable of love, poisoned by hate, educated to indifference.
There are people who attack others disturbed by the fact that they are happier and better off than them or are simply different and therefore enemies. No one has felt their loneliness and their hate coming. They can drive a car at full speed against people, enter a school armed or crash a party with the sole aim of hurting as many people as possible. Their heart is jealous of the fortune of others, like that of Snow White's evil stepmother, Cinderella's evil sisters, Scar and the hyenas who also want to enter the circle of life in one way or another. Thinking that certain people are not born evil but become so because they have not been loved enough is reassuring. The other day another child told me that he has a big, fat dad who, when he drinks beer, becomes mean: as Jovanotti sings, "that monsters exist is only the first half of the story, that monsters can be defeated is the other half to be learned by heart." Maybe it would be enough for us to try to stay as close as possible to each other to keep fear away.

There are lovers who have to see each other secretly like Romeo and Juliet because their families don't want them and they risk their lives for a kiss. Who knows if when you grow up the sky will be empty or full, if there will still be clasped hands asking for something or we will think we are enough for ourselves, that we can and know how to do everything. Every little life is so complicated, that it seems so presumptuous to think we can fix the world. How much kindness would be needed to do it and to make us heal. There are those who think they can fix things by putting up walls to keep anyone out, those who want to let everyone in, but no one thinks about what people do and how they are, what they would need to be happy.

Who knows if you will be able to be, who knows how much time I will be able to spend by your side.
If life with you will be good or bad. Maybe it will be a bit of both, as happens to everyone. But may it be beautiful, may it not make you bad too, may there always be at least a little piece of peace in your heart. May you have friends and dreams. Admiring your journey will be the most beautiful thing. First from close up and then from far away.
 

Marco Grossetti
Focus
NP March 2025