Change

Change yourself to change even a good piece of the world. But what does change? A Latinist traces this very common word more than 1,500 years ago and claims it was in use among the Gaul peasants of late antiquity. Those distant relatives of Asterix exchanged one vegetable with another to diversify the diet. They did so simply because they could do it: in fact they were free, unlike their contemporaries in the nearby farms of some of the various landowners of the time. I think this is the secret of the word: if you want to change, it is because deep down you know that you are free. If you weren't free, you couldn't change anything. How many times do people move out of pure and simple reaction, perhaps disguised as a conscious choice. The action-reaction couple is a law of physics, and some argue that an eye for an eye is a natural condition, but it is not really the only plane in which life can be played. In reverse: there are freedoms that remain even if you are locked up in a small cell, one of them is the freedom to change.


Fabio Arduini
NP May 2022