It Takes 60 Seconds To Change Everything
Life Is Beautiful. Life Is Fragile
Yesterday morning I woke up to a terrible news. A shocking one.
A major earthquake had hit Italy.
Luckily the area that has been interested the most is quite far from where I am from. I didn’t have to worry about my family and friends, but the scenes on the news were pretty horrifying.
Entire towns don’t exist anymore. Houses collapsed. Families destroyed.
Death. Destruction. Grief.
Everything started in 60 seconds. Everything finished in 60 seconds. In the middle of the night. While you should be feeling protected by the walls of your home. Comforted by the silence of the night.
One big boom and everything change forever.
This Time It Hit Me Hard
A serious daily blogger would have written about this yesterday. I am not. I couldn’t. I wanted to sit on this news for a day.
I didn’t want to write just for the sake of it. I felt that would have been disrespectful. I felt that I was too shocked and sad to make much sense.
Unfortunately, it’s not the first earthquake emergency I see my country face. Even my region has been destroyed to ground by an earthquake 40 years ago. I wasn’t born yet, but the memory of it is still vivid in the memories of people.
This time was different for me. This time, it shocked me more.
I think that being far away didn’t help. I couldn’t help thinking that if this happened to my village, I would have been here. Helpless. Waiting for news.
This gave me chills.
Another thing that made this tragedy resonate more with me is my age. I am older. I understand the sacrifice. I understand the effort to make your dreams come true.
Everything was gone in less than a minute.
Years and years of work gone. Transformed into dust and death.
Slow Down. Think
Life is one precious, delicate thing.
We live in a constant rush. We feel invincible most of the time. We think that nobody can stop us. Nobody could stand between us and our ambitions.
This can come to an end pretty swiftly. In the middle of the night. At the end of another hot Italian summer.
Hundreds of lives have been interrupted. Thousands of lives have been changed forever.
I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about how precarious our existence is. About how suddenly everything can change forever.
I think that the best way to respect all those victims is to slow down for a second and appreciate what we have in life. Appreciate every single person around us. Every single moment we’re blessed to live. Every single problem we have. Every single dream.
Everything that makes us feel alive.
Nobody considers his life perfect. But that’s the true essence of life. A beautiful series of imperfections that make our lives special and unique.
I stopped for a moment. Felt that I was so lucky to be here. Thankful.
Writing this has been painful. Every word is just a word. Nothing more.
Characters on a screen. They can’t really give justice to the people affected by this earthquake. They’re just bits on a screen.
What I can do is try to find the positive notes. Try to learn to appreciate every single aspect of my life more. For the ones that are suffering. For the ones that have passed away.
PS — I know the majority of you is really far away from Italy. I know that there are disasters around the world almost on a daily basis. Every emergency needs equal attention, but this resonated with me for obvious reasons. The situation is pretty dramatic. Every little will help. Have a look here if you want to help in any way.
This is day #11 of my daily blogging challenge. Yesterday’s post was:
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