We have a problem. And it’s not a small problem.
A flight simulator is enough to deceive our mind. However, often not even the simulator manages to silence our conscience.
Faced with the collapse of illusions, faced with the bitter truth we have before us, faced with defeat… we have taken refuge in a safe corner: we have shut ourselves in the idea that reality is different from what it appears to us.
We have restructured our thinking, at the 54th second, when – after 53 seconds of illusion – we were faced with the bitter truth of life.
However, not even restructured thinking has prevented our inner voice from telling us the truth, the bitter reality: namely that we are on a flight simulator, the plane has not taken off and what we have before us is only an invented reality.
If restructured thinking hasn’t worked. If everything is as before. If victory is invented, then we are in complete defeat.
What can we do now?
The 1976 high school graduation exam
The examination board was ruthless, at the oral exam of my 1976 scientific high school graduation, at the Girolamo Fracastoro high school in Verona.
At the Italian Literature oral exam I had done brilliantly. I knew more than the teacher who was examining me.
At the second oral exam, Philosophy, I had played it easy: the teacher was an idiot who worked as a History assistant. He examined following the questions at the end of one of those books that are made of summaries and stupid questions.
In the Italian written exam – my strong suit – it seems I ended up off topic. That, however, I found out later.
On the Mathematical Analysis test I admit it: I didn’t know jack shit. I simply hadn’t studied Mathematics in fifth year of high school.
The communist teacher – one from the League of Communists – had made me hate it. Besides, she wasn’t a genius in mathematics either. And I was a Marxist with free thought. Impossible to understand each other.
When the results came out it was a trauma for everyone. Stefania, the class nerd who didn’t know where Aristotle lived and thought Pascoli was a model of living room furniture, got 56/60. A defeat.
I came out with 40/60. The Mathematics bitch, internal examiner, had protected her servants of the extra-parliamentary Left.
I, who was a dissident Marxist, ended up in Purgatory. It happens.
My mother, Maria, an honest woman, got as angry as a wounded lioness. I took the blow. I was lucidly pissed off. That is, I had brought myself to the worst temperature.
Never let yourself be governed by anger. This way we give up sovereignty to someone outside of us.
The mad rush toward the Scuola Normale of Pisa
I spent the summer of 1976 studying like an idiot, after the graduation exam.
As revenge for the disappointing grade – the desire for revenge is ugly stuff – I decided to aim for the Scuola Normale of Pisa.
It’s crazy to think of bringing to the admission exam, at the Scuola Normale of Pisa, three years of Italian Literature, History and Philosophy, thinking you can make it.
Yet I did it. I got it into my head that that was what had to be done. And nothing else.
At the Scuola Normale of Pisa, the essay topic was interesting. I wrote about Leopardi and Hemingway, comparing them. They were my favorite writers. And I still have them in my heart.
Before knowing if I had been admitted to the Normale, mom gave me a stereo for the music I loved. Mama Maria was generous, but this way she nailed me to the obligation to win.
Obviously, I didn’t pass the written exam. I was a champion in Philosophy and Italian Literature, I knew that. But a champion doesn’t prepare for the Olympics in 50 days.
I would make up for it, many years later, with a thesis that became a book. And a contract teaching position at the University of Verona.
The anger against fallen illusions
What did I get from my mad rush against the collapse of high school illusions? Anger.
Bad company, anger. It makes you see the world at an acute angle. You forget your worth. You focus on useless details.
Life is instead openness to the Infinite. It’s running through freshly cut grass.
Life is making love with the woman you love. Fighting for an ideal of justice. Seeking authentic communication.
Life is telling shitty people who don’t have a shred of dignity, freedom, generosity to go to hell. And telling them to go to hell with a smile on your lips.
Anger is instead the other face of pain. It’s the B-side of the black dog of infinite sadness. It’s the renunciation of mornings that flood your bedroom with light, field fragrances and the desire to live.
Yet anger attracts us, seduces us, makes us feel like heroes. After all, anger is the easiest tool. Almost banal. Like a hammer, like a knife, like a loaded gun.
When illusions fall, anger pushes you to throw yourself – like a crazy racing car – against the corner of a wall. It’s the wall of your prison.
You come to believe, stupidly, that this is the way to beat defeat. To be reborn. To rise again and avenge the wrongs suffered.
Damn, what a great piece of shit anger is.
The light of dawn that consoles us
However, we cannot live on anger alone. If we are good people, anger doesn’t inhabit our soul for very long.
Not only that. Inside every anger hides a voice that whispers: “You’re on the wrong path. And you know it.”
Pain, in fact, rises slowly, within anger. Slowly it displaces it, destroys it, neutralizes it.
The illusions have fallen, at the 54th second. Not even getting angry has protected us.
Disillusionment stays with us. It always remains in our mind, even if we no longer detest it. And we are stuck.
A livid and light glow, however, advances from the East of our mind.
If we are suffering, we have been beaten. If we have been beaten, we are really in bad shape. If we are really in bad shape, we are victims of something or someone.
Here, then, is what else awaits us, at the 54th second.
After 53 seconds of illusion. After the appearance of the bitter truth that decrees our defeat. After all this, an unprecedented escape route opens up for us: that of victimhood.
It’s true. It’s certain. It’s sacred. We are victims of a dystonic, crooked and cheating destiny.
After all, who better than us knows what it means to remain a victim of a bitter destiny? We do, we know it. Because we have lived.
Maurizio F. Corte
(Part 4 – to be continued)
- Maurizio F. Corte, professional journalist, media writer and media educator, is adjunct professor of Intercultural Communication in the Media at the Intercultural Studies Center of the University of Verona and educational coordinator of the Master’s in Intercultural Competence and Management
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