What he left behind

Lately some of my friends started reading what I write. They became curious, began engaging with it and I appreciated it a lot.
One of the questions I’ve been asked was “Why this topic matters this much to you?” and, of course, I had to come up with an answer which is the following:

Sure, there are many reasons. The will to take some risks and try new things, increasing self-esteem and facing one’s fears are all major issues in my generation: I was born in 1994.
A lot of us just sit back and let others have the final word in a vast majority of life-changing decisions we come across. It’s like we don’t even try.

• Parents often decide for their kids where they should graduate or they make their opinion weight A LOT on the teenager’s mind. This will likely cause them to be unprepared when it will come to make important decisions out of the blue.
• My generation is widely influenced by peers: we follow the same life-styles and go in the same directions trying to play by society’s rules, struggling to develop our own personality. You can be criticized if you follow the trends and you can also be criticized if you go against them. In such situation it is hard to find our own dimension.
• We love self-loathing! And I’m not speaking about the “I look SOOO ugly in this picture” kind of self-loathing, I’m speaking about the one we keep throwing at ourselves. At the first rejection, a lot of people are done, they feel worthless and they give up. Nobody knows how to deal with failure nowadays!

Here’s an advice someone gave me and that helped me a lot during my early years:

Be the main character of your own story!

The reason why these topics matter so much to me is because I recognized their importance. There was one person in my life that helped me maintain my inner child alive throughout my adolescence and my adulthood. Unluckily, he passed away when I was 18.

He was my uncle. That kind of uncle you don’t see often: he would just pop by every now and then during holidays, birthdays and special events. Always with a huge smile on his face.
He didn’t have a perfect life: always in the edge between middle and lower class. Married, with two children, he used to work as an accountant.

Although it might sound like a stereotype, family means a lot to Italians. Not more than 50 years ago the biggest decisions were taken in private meetings in the house of the elder person alive in the family.
In our family, according to my father’s stories, it was his grand-grand mother. If you wanted to buy a house, if you wanted to get married or for any other major decision, you needed to get her approval. This tradition was already lost by the time I was growing up but the love for the family remained. So you can imagine how shocking it was for us when he was diagnosed with cancer.

I remember him asking me a lot of questions. He showed true interest. He wasn’t just asking if school was going fine because he wanted to look engaged: he was genuinely interested in the answer. He didn’t know English that well but kept practicing it with me till I was tired of talking. He rewarded me with candies and hugs whenever I was able to answer a “hard” math question.
He kept my curiosity alive, questioning me about everything: “How do you think television works?”, “How many km you think Japan is far from Italy?” or “What do you think are the stars made of?”.
Whenever I wasn’t able to answer, he was there, ready to explain very easily and very gently all of the things I didn’t know. I grew up challenging him in our trivia sessions and eventually I was seeking his attention whenever he came by, longing for more questions, more knowledge.

Being a kid growing up in the technology era, you have to realize that it was very rare that an adult would be more important than Super Mario or whatever game I was able to play at the time on my PlayStation.

Despite all of those beautiful things, this man made for me this isn’t even the most impressive. In the moment he was diagnosed with cancer he underwent several issues, he had to stop working for a while and of course his problem didn’t allow him to leave his house that much.
As if often happens, when your life gets blown away by something like that, people give up. This is not what he did.
One day, after months of treatments, during one of our family dinners he said:

“You know what? I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer. I’ll start studying”.

This is how his story continued. In the next weeks he started studying Law in University. Dealing with assignments, exams and essays. He was doing everything. It was impressive to see. Something worth admiring was happening. Something worth learning.

Everyone kept looking at him like he was going insane but he was just teaching his kids and his grandsons his final lesson while realizing his dream.

Fast forward to a couple of years later. My uncle goes numb, faints on the kitchen’s floor and goes into a coma. He will wake up a couple of weeks later, just to say good bye to his family. Two days later he dies. Peacefully. Unluckily he didn’t manage to finish his studies.

At the time I was abroad working. The biggest regret I have so far is probably that I couldn’t say goodbye to him. Sometimes it is even hard to remember his face. This, although it hurts, it is of minor importance compared to what I can actually remember of him.

I remember an happy person. Someone that never let his inner child die. Someone that in the darkest moment of his life decided to fight back. Someone that was able to inspire me in never giving up, always being curious and keep seeking knowledge.
This is who, till the end of my days, I will never forget.
This is what he left behind.

Eventually, this was my answer to the question. I look around myself, holding tight to what I’ve learned from him and I see a lot of people not living their lives.
Complaining looks more appealing to us, while finding a solution implies struggle. It is easy to sit back and wait for things to pass, it is comfortable. I get it. But is it the right choice?

It is never late to change. We can all make ourselves a brighter future, no matter the circumstances. We just need to take a leap and try over and over.

Mine is a rather small voice, but right now this is my attempt to leave something behind.

If this helped you, even a little bit. If it made you more confident in yourself, even just for a moment, I am happy.

Giuseppe Festoni Perillo

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