One day, inevitably, the veil of existence will fall upon each of us, like evening descending, slow and inexorable, upon the fervour of a day now past. It is our common destiny, whether we greet it with serene resignation or blind rebellion: we shall die. And yet, it is not death itself that stirs the shudder of the human soul, but rather the shadow of nothingness that is thought to follow it: the dreadful idea of vanishing, of dissolving into an arcane silence, like an unspoken word. Others, however, fortified by a faith that transcends flesh and time, await that moment as the traveller who, after a long pilgrimage, beholds the light of dawn: not as an end, but as a threshold; not a sunset, but the beginning of a new, mysterious chapter of being.
However, it is not my intent to discourse on the sanctity of death, nor on the enigmas that surround its threshold. There is an evil more subtle, more pervasive, and far more frightening than death itself: pre-death. It is the condition of those who, though still breathing, have ceased to live; of those who, day after day, consume their time like a candle that burns without a flame. Stop, I beg you, for just a moment: if today were granted you your final breath, could you say you have truly lived? Or would you find yourself counting regrets—retracing choices never dared, words never spoken, opportunities that fear tore from your hands?
How many of your decisions would you reconsider?
And mind you, I do not speak of distant dreams or future desires, nor of those illusory promises one makes to oneself to justify one’s own inertia. No, I ask you how you live today, in this very heartbeat of time that is given to you. Are you happy? Are you present to yourself, or merely a spectator of an existence that flows beside you like a river you no longer know how to cross? The truth is that most of you do not live, you function. You wake up, work, consume, sleep, and call all this “life”. Like blind cogs in a mechanism that knows neither face nor purpose, you move out of habit, forgetting why. And the system, which has neither heart nor compassion, lets you spin and spin until wear dissolves you entirely. Thus one rots, not in body, but in soul, and no tomb is more silent than that of a spirit that has ceased to desire.
Tell me, then: where is the joy in living like this? Can you truly call it life, this slow agony disguised as duty? Or are you merely slaves, and worse still, too cowardly to confess it to yourselves?
You see, I do not condemn work, nor discipline, nor the toil that builds. I too, like all, am a child of effort, and I know the weight and honour of ambition. But woe to those who make their future their only altar! Those who sacrifice today upon the altar of tomorrow do not live: they postpone life itself, and thus, day after day, become ghosts chasing the mirage of a meaning they will never find. For there is no future worth the price of a present unlived.
I beg you, look within. Observe. Rediscover the adventure, the one that burns inside you and that you have smothered for fear of straying from the path. Go where you know no one, and no one knows you; let curiosity guide you more than caution. Speak to those who inspire fear, walk into the darkness of the woods and listen to what the silence whispers to you; laugh with those who work beside you, not because you must, but because you can. Do something useless, and therefore wonderfully necessary.
Live.
Live, for God’s sake.
Do not remain imprisoned behind desks or in the sterile corridors of your ambitions, intent on building a future you will never see. For even if you manage to reach it, if you arrive stripped of experience, empty of passion, deprived of the warmth that makes a moment a memory, then you will find yourselves poor. And that emptiness you will feel within you, that whisper that will not cease, will be the truest voice you have ever heard: you have not lived enough.
This article was originally written in Italian. If you want to read the original: Considerazioni dal Sottosuolo.