Resolution & Awareness

First day of 2021. Nothing much has changed from yesterday’s night hasn’t it?

I almost started the New Year sleeping because honestly I couldn’t care less, especially not in a year like this one. However, the screen on my cellphone was showing 23:55 when I was woken up by the sound of the fireworks that were everywhere on the Milan grim shadowy sky filled with clouds, uncertainties and shadows. It felt good seeing the sky lighten up but this year felt different.

Albeit being 10 km far from the city centre, I could hear the silence of all the people out there. And it felt weird. For the first time in my life this silence was not an enjoyable one. It wasn’t the silence that you hear when you are on a mountain far away from the traffic sounds in the metropolis we all live in, nor the silence you can hear on a piano concert whilst waiting for the artist to start playing.
Instead, this silence contained the suffering of all of the people near my new flat that were smiling, celebrating and wishing each others Happy New Year and of all the other people out there, of me and you, that couldn’t wait for this year to end. 2021 has to be better, surely right?

As much as I want that, not just for myself but for all of us out there, and as much as I am an optimist in life, I can’t see this happening.
Unless all of us admit that all of this didn’t make sense.
Yes we might be protected physically but at what cost? Isn’t also mental health as many doctors out there rightfully claim also important? Why does the media never report about this? Why do we only see negativity all around us?
And what’s the end game of all of this and the deadline?
Everything in life has a deadline and an expiration date. No matter how hard it might be to accept that. And everything has it’s own counterpart.
For life it’s called death.

Life is meant to be a collection of moments, a mosaic of our memories intertwined with the memories of all of the people we get to see, feel, touch and share our opinion with on a daily basis. It is meant to be feeling that silence I mentioned before whilst swimming freely at 2 AM on a hot summer night and reflecting on our lives, careers and memories. It is meant to be sharing what you have with the people close to you and the society around you, helping the old lady on the street, taking a tea with your colleagues, kissing a random girl in the club and most likely receiving a slap.
That is what makes life more beautiful and meaningful.
Not money, not fears, not living in a bubble and waiting and hoping that it will get better.

I am perfectly aware that many of us lost or knew someone that lost someone close during this politically manipulated pandemic. And I feel sorry for each one of them. I felt sorry for the victims at the explosion of the port in Lybia. I also felt sorry for the Bataclan victims in France some years ago. At the same time I feel sorry for all the people out there that are thinking about suiciding because of this pandemic. The people that can’t hope anymore and they are at their limit. Who helps them? Will a vaccine help them? No, because the damage is already done. They weren’t lucky like others to hope and dream of a better future, because if you don’t have a stable present it’s hard to have a good future and hope for it. And besides, they can’t hope even if they wanted to since their dreams were shattered.

It’s not impossible, because nothing is impossible in life, but life is meant to be lived in the present not in the future and hoping a speedy return back to normality.
Besides, do we really want to go back to a controlled capitalistic “normality” that is or was already flawed for many reasons? I certainly don’t. What I want is to return to our thoughts, to our freedom, to a life not exclusively online, to drinking a champagne for New Year all together. To a reality where we all have to understand and accept that we are fragile and not immortal. This is how the world has been created and how it will continue after this pandemic.

May 2021 bring much more awareness to all of us.
Health of course, but awareness as well.
Don’t be controlled and trapped inside more than we were before the start of 2020. Don’t be controlled by your fears, at least not too much, and live life.
Remember that nothing is certain in life and it will never be.
We are the architects of life and we are fragile, but we must continue building.
With stronger materials, bricks and ideas. With critical thinking and recognition that only by not stopping we can go forward. Only by not stopping can all the generations after ours can live a better life than we did.

This is my wish to all of you
Happy New 2021

Sincerely Yours,
CS

Selfiecial New Year’s outcry

Day before the “biggest” and “crazies” night of all the other 364 nights.
A day where many people do their final preparations, put the last ornament on their New Years Eve tree, the most shining star on top of it.
At least this was the case when I was growing up.
And everyone was happy, I was happy too. Also because there was a special added charm to that tradition where everyone would talk about their trees and how were there decorated the following days. Before I move on to my next paragraph below I want to quickly highlight one strong word and that is: talk.
There was an undeniable, unavoidable and ineffable element of joy in this tradition.

Fast forward some 20 years of my life to this present point of time that was today’s date, the 30th of December. A day that started by having a mainstream all you can eat sushi lunch with my friends and some guests that decided to visit Italy for the first time and spend  the festive period here in Milan. After a continuous “suffering” due to the amount of food, we’ve finished all of the plates in 2 hours. At this point I was feeling like going to the gym but I was afraid they might not let me enter because I was way too full.
Instead all of us took a walk and after a while, smartly, my closest friends decided to go back home because they had to do “laundry”. I was left with the tourists. I immediately knew that a long day lays ahead of me, but I had no idea it will be that frustrating.
Where should we go? Obviously the center and heart of Milan needs to be visited: Duomo. A famous and imposing cathedral built many years ago that represents Italy, due to the magnificent details the art and its style. To everyone that helped build it: bow to you noble people, as for I know it must have been hard constructing and planning it.

We’ve arrived. An ocean of people scattered everywhere.
As soon as we climb the last step of the metro, the outcry started unfolding.
Ok I thought, it’s their first time for some, especially for this 18 year old girl in our company, a girlfriend of one of my friends. I hoped  that she will be amazed, that she will spend some time actually staring at the cathedral, study all the angles, be taken from the beauty, from the art and the landmark. I was deadly wrong. She didn’t last a second to reach out for her phone and start taking pictures. My nervousness started building. In less than a minute she took over 10 photos. Got to hand it to people like her, the speed of them taking pictures borders with the speed of light.
Even Einstein would be bewildered and astonished by it.

And now comes the main story line of my post. The really sad selfie social (selfiecial) outcry, She as many many others starts taking the inevitable selfies. The amount of cell phone storage consumed exponentially grows. It gets out of hand maybe also literally.
I have to take a small pause here, and ask a few simple questions: Ok, what is happening people? Do you actually think why are you taking these photos? All of them? I mean yes, I know that your answer will be well you know Instagram and stuff, I have to do that, I am visiting Milan for the first time, what else should I do? Well no matter how primitive rude and blatant I might sound here is the first answer to all of dear humans: take your phones and shove them up your ass for a change. Can you not just enjoy the art, the emotions, the special charm that comes from visiting one of the best arguably the best cathedral in the world? In the entire human history. Stop thinking about copying and pasting what others are doing, stop trying to take the best shot, stop trying to show your virtual and fake friends that you are cool as them. That you have visited more places than them. Stop competing with the internet community about who gets the highest amount of likes, about whose ass is bigger and who has the best make up whilst having some great place behind them. Stop changing your profile picture more often than you change your socks. Because this is a charade. Or better it was a charade and a circus, now it’s just becoming so addictive that it becomes a tragedy.
It must stop, mostly because it is an addiction. A serious addiction wrapped with envy, jealousy, fake competitiveness, insecurity etc. And that is just for you.
What is sadder is that you are raising the future of this world in this way. You are raising your kids like that, by giving them phones, taking pictures for them and therefore approving this. Approving this mass insanity. Yes I understand that some are for your personal collection. I understand that some of the photos are for you.
But I am a Libra. The thing with Libras is that when we see imbalance in front of us we fight. With all of my powers and means. I wrote this post for that reason, to stand against that. Because this world has less and less fighters.

For a change start actually enjoying all of the beautiful nature around you. Start enjoying the art. For starters ask who built that. Because once you start resonate like that, your mind opens. And there is nothing more beautiful than an open mind. A wandering mind. A mind that is creative and that it comes with ideas on what to do next and on what to learn and research next. You might initiate a communication between all of you. And someone around you might reply, and it can be a start of a story. Someone might find you beautiful because of your mind, and emotions develop. Etc etc. Endless possibilities without the usage of drugs. Pure state of joy and creativity. Not a limbo but a clear vision.

Many, just many, are blinded and are living in this bubble of fake 21st century popularity. So what if you have the best photo? So what if you have visited the best places in the world? At the end what matters in your life is that you cherish the memories and share these memories not by means of a picture but words and experiences. Or you might not share it at all, and keep the visual picture for yourself, because it gave you a different perspective and a different view a new one in your life. By keeping it and cherishing it, you fill your head and heart instead of just the storage farms of companies like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest ecc…
And sincerely I dare you to name me one thing in life that is more important in life than a filled heart and head.

My social outcry might not be read by that “crowd”. But it will spread across this great community. It will be a minor spread, but significant for me and hopefully significant also for you.

TO “THAT” CROWD:
DEAR ALL WAKE UP!
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND MAY YOU TAKE LESS SELFIES IN THE NEW ONE!

TO PEOPLE NOT FOUND IN THAT CROWD:
DEAR ALL
YOU ARE SPECIAL ALREADY
ENJOY THE NEW YEAR AND MIGHT ALL YOUR WISHES COME TRUE

Sincerely yours, 
Controlled Stranger