The living room of Dionysus

This is just the introduction to a written that wants to be the message that The Ark lab intends to spread to all those who are dissatisfied with the situation of the society in which they live. Each of us has a responsibility to do something to improve the world in which we live and if someone feels the need to do so, then read this message and, if you don’t like it anyway, we will understand…

I don’t know who I really am, “I know I don’t know” (this is not mine but of a person who lived about 2500 years ago and was called Socrates) and I don’t know where I’m going. These three absolute truths are enough to throw every reasoning mind into despair.

I would like to start from here, because I can’t do it anywhere else, because no one has the truth about these matters. Anyone who claims to have it, lies and I do not like to lie, except when it is strictly necessary for “legitimate defense”.

If you look around, you realize that there are millions of people who claim to possess “the truth” and claim to teach it to others by offering the most varied solutions for the salvation of body, mind and soul.

But if it is true that there is no “the” truth, it is also true that there are various degrees of awareness. And it is the fact that I have reached a certain degree of awareness, suffering and at the cost of personal sacrifices and renunciations, that has given me the idea of this visionary project to have the opportunity to confront myself with those who will read these words and recognize themselves in them, because a certain awareness inevitably leads to having the desert around them. I say this for the simple and (for me) sensible reason that the achievement of a certain personal balance leads you to no longer depend on others, on their recognitions, on their styles and models, and leads you into the realm of your unique personality, with the awareness that that uniqueness can not be compared to anything and no one.

With this I don’t want to go so far as to say that each person “is enough for himself”, but that he can relate freely with others in a balanced way when he feels the need and when he realizes that those “others” have reached the same awareness. And it is here that the same person realizes the “desert”, when she repeatedly comes into contact with people who are still far from being and still attached to appearing. And it’s still here that you get bored after a few minutes of conversation … has it ever happened to you?

I would like it to be considered as a “message in a bottle”, because I confess that, in real life, I was not able to successfully communicate my thoughts to many people. The ones I was able to do it are the few that are now close to me but, I guarantee you, that you can count on the fingers of Captain Hook’s hand (not the good one).

But we are social animals and we must live in contact with others, and when you realize that no one around you understands certain ideas because he is afraid to listen to them or because he is not able to understand them, then you create that sense of loneliness that leads you to desperately seek someone else like you, because every social convention, tradition, fashion or trend is terribly close to you. There are birds that would die outside the cage, but there are few more that die in the cage. I want to address those who feel in the cage and do not find solutions to that dissatisfaction that surrounds and persecutes him.

I start by saying that I do not have absolute solutions and answers, but experiences in the form of problems and questions that, if you ask yourself to yourself, can not find a solution if not in isolation and in a kind of madness.

Therefore, please do not consider this writing of mine as a “guide” to follow, you would be wrong if you did, but rather as a cue from the questions that I have asked myself and that I continue to ask myself.

Each of us is a unique and unrepeatable being. There has never been someone else like you and never will exist in the future and, if you take your cue from this other milestone of existence you will understand that for every problem, there is not and can not exist a valid solution for everyone.

Every human being is born free but, with time and with the intervention of society and institutions, he is filled with conditions that make him a kind of obedient robot who is convinced that he has opinions and points of view all his own but that his are not really.

Family, environment, school and religion of the place where you have the fate of being born, transform a perfectly free being in a child, a student, a believer, a husband, a father, a worker, a lawyer, a doctor, a citizen, a fan, etc … and are all roles that require strict rules in which, in the long run a human being feels so constrained to get to not make it anymore, having completely lost sight of his true self.

A person born in that part of the world that, by convention is called Italy and that until 150 years ago did not even exist conceptually, will study at school the history of “his country”, his homeland, will do his military service by sacrificing his time in peacetime and possibly his life in time of war, will believe in the god imposed by the church of Rome, will support the Italian national football team and maybe a team of the Italian championship screaming, cursing and railing against those of other nations that are not his own, he will dress according to Italian fashion, listen to Italian music, speak the Italian language, have a piece of amaranth-colored paper that attests to its origin, vote and live according to established laws and valid only within the boundaries of what he believes to be his homeland, permeated by constant and ill-concealed distrust of all that is considered “foreign”.

If all this seems normal to you and you like it, if as soon as you see the Italian flag you are moved and swollen your chest proudly, if you are among those who “Italy is the most beautiful country in the world and how you eat here you don’t eat anywhere”, if you think that voting on the right or on the left will finally improve things in these moments of transient difficulty, then you can put aside this writing because you will not find a single concept that you will like and on which you can agree.

But if you are people who still like to reflect, who have an open mind and are willing to put aside preconceptions to consider only different ideas, then you may discover something interesting to reflect with yourself and discuss it with the people around you and who think like you.

I don’t need to tell you that, not being able to hold any “truth”, as I said from the beginning, everything contained in this writing is the result of my personal experiences, of the continuous trials and rehearsals that I had to make in my life, making mistakes a thousand times before reaching an acceptable result that was worth communicating.

Even when I believed that I had reached an adequate degree of conviction in the many aspects of this life, I never rested on the results achieved because I believe that every limit is made to be overcome, and when you think you have found the optimal solution, you realize that there is always something that can be improved. After all, every aspect of our existence is characterized by this eternal movement and we human beings cannot think we are exempt from it.

Think of technological progress; what was in the vanguard only twenty years ago is now obsolete and, in some ways, unusable. It is obvious that what we believe to be avant-garde today, in a few years’ time will be destined to the same end and what today seems impossible to us, and the prerogative of the most visionary science fiction films, tomorrow will be daily life.

“Panta rhei” said Heraclitus more than 2500 years ago, and if the rule applies to everything we have around us, why shouldn’t it also apply to our thoughts and beliefs? On the other hand, growth and degradation we experience directly on our bodies even if through a slow process, but with the same slow process we change our ideas even if we do not realize it. And just as we desperately try to stay young in our bodies, so do we with our thoughts clinging to our ideas and beliefs.

Our lives are made up of goals that, in turn, are made to be surpassed, and anyone who believes they have reached the solution to their problems makes a serious mistake. Just as time changes, so do our problems and, consequently, the solutions change. Reaching a balance can be valid for a certain period of time and you must always be ready to question everything because I have learned on my skin that this is life.

Always on the basis of my experience, which is the only one that I can share validly and with full knowledge of the facts, I realized that everyone has their problems and discomforts, all without distinction, old and young, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, problems that can be more or less great depending on the importance that is given. I think it is for this reason that today we see less and less sincere, spontaneous and relaxed smiles, and more and more forced, pulled and circumstantial smiles, a sort of mask coming wrong of a happiness that has increasingly become an unrealizable dream.

I must say that I am not a believer, but I wonder if certain awareness is the result of our willingness to research (which not everyone has) or if we are affected by fate regardless of when … I confess that I can not give an agnostic answer and perhaps asking these questions falls into a field “spiritual” that is no man’s land.

The only advice I feel I can offer is to keep an open mind on everything, to listen to everyone because perhaps each of us has a piece of truth to pass on to others and those who have the gift of knowing how to listen can be able to add a piece to that infinite puzzle that for millions of years mankind has been desperately trying to compose.

My goal, therefore, will not be to give “points of reference” to anyone, I repeat again, or to offer help and miraculous recipes, for the body and mind of the type “eat that particular food and you will live a hundred years” or “meditate and focus on what you want and you will get it”; these things I leave to the new gurus who want to get rich behind others, pointing to the roads that not even they know. Be careful, because this is the business of the moment and the people who fall for it are many. I’ve been there too, but this will be a topic that I will develop in a special chapter.

I want to give one last warning, perhaps the most important:

Since it is not my intention to spread or support any “doctrine”, but simply to share my ideas and thoughts and I am not interested in doing “followers”, I will also use very harsh words towards those that today are the institutions of reference, in every area of our daily lives. This will attract a lot of criticism on me, of this I am aware and I am ready to stand up to the comparison, if it is expressed in civil and dialectical terms. But this is not what I fear, rather I will be happy if someone wants to enrich my knowledge with ideas from mine, in a cascade of progress on a mental and personal level. No “like” and nothing “I agree with you”, rather compare yourself with what you will read and tell me openly what you think, the method is that of mutual enrichment because from dialectics and (civil) comparisons have always been born the great ideas that have improved the world.

You always have to sift for days or maybe months the bed of a river to be able to find a golden nugget. I’m not interested in stones.

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