DAY 27: A SCRIPT TO WRITE

Andrea 27 – There are scripts that haven’t been written. They represent the time we still have available to live. The time to think about new projects and try to achieve them. The 4^th of April is a date particularly close to my heart. A day that 11 years ago changed my life and in which every year I think about this phase two of my life. The 4^th of April is the day my 1000km went from one extreme (Naples) to the other (Turin). I came here eleven years ago on a black Peugeot 206 that I bought the day before with Dad. I’ve been running since, metaphorically and otherwise, going through tales of small toys built for children, cocktails parties for the grown-ups and then coffee for everyone. These are the products of the companies I’ve been working for. It’s a script I’ve been writing little by little, but not the first one I had in mind after university. In the original one, I was a journalist more than an engineer, a writer more than a marketing man. Sometimes I wonder who deserves credits for this script, who was the screenwriter of my life, who designed my places in the sun, who defined the cruising speed of this journey. I’m sure it wasn’t just me, of course I’ve accepted some challenges, but I was lucky to get them on my way. And that’s the reason why every 4^th of April I thank who designed this journey so far, that allows me to live with a certain serenity even a time of crisis like the one we are living. And I’d like to make myself available for anything, to give back to someone a 4^th of April like mine. Miriam, what script are we writing tonight?

Miriam 27 – You speak of scripts to write, dear Andre, and I raise, speaking more broadly of scripts to review, or better.. second chances.

How often, in this script to perform, the one someone wrote with you and of which you are fifty percent the author, you thought “from tomorrow new life”.

How many second, third, fourth chances have you given to yourself to round those corners, to exacerbate those flaws, to enhance those abilities? I’ve given myself many, many times during my life. It often happens to me close to the new year, when ideally, we “start again” (and as the saying goes, new year new life).

And yet, often, good intentions quickly give way to old, bad habits.

Often life, always the same and ready to overwhelm you, brings you back to the same old script, more comfortable, more simple, easier to interpret because already known.

But such a period, such a long break from life, wasn’t written in any script. It’s an outtake, a transmission failure.

It’s the real, pure, second chance.

It’s the chance to change, but to do it slowly, day after day.

It’s the chance to choose, without haste, what new paths to take.

Or to understand, once and for all, that what we are taking is the right path, the one bringing us safely at the end of the journey.

It’s time to take the script in our hands, to make notes in the margins, to choose which character we want to be tomorrow, which won’t be really tomorrow, but which will come slowly, giving us the time to learn the lines by heart, to “have them made ours”, as they say on set.