HAPPY 2025

Dear All, I hope you all had a peaceful, holy Christmas and for the coming year I wish you to learn to “become good neighbors of the next things”, as our good friend Friederich Nietzsche suggests.

Time is surely the most precious commodity that cannot be bought and that we must guard with great care in order to protect it from the glittering illusions that the consumerist society presents to us, imposes on us and transforms into habits that are difficult to eradicate. Power, money, cell phones, social media and games are all dazzling stimuli that trigger instant pleasure and turn us into slaves and addicts through repetition.

Time must be defended and used well.

As life goes on, we realize that after the explosion of big dreams and plans that youth brings, we are often disillusioned and feel the bitter aftertaste that confronting reality in one way or another brings.

The first imperative for each of us is surely to develop the ability not to sell our time to the demands of consumerism, which is a great achievement in itself. The real question, however, is how best to invest the time we have gained in order to become more serene and happier.

“Becoming good neighbors to the things next to us,"” Nietzsche points us towards an interesting path: not simply living in the present and being aware of it, but observing, welcoming, listening, seeing, hearing, approaching and being unobtrusively close to what is next to us, what is close to us, what we can feel, touch, experience in our presence, without allowing ourselves to be blinded by grandiose proposals and projects that threaten to deceive and blind us, so that we can no longer see the wonderful simplicity of the reality next to us.

To be close to the people who love us, in our homes, with our little domestic friends, with music, in the bookstore, at the dinner table, to be close without asking for eternal commitments or promises, but simply to feel the world close to us, the context close to our reality that can embrace us and protect us from the darkness of loneliness and the bitterness of disillusionment that society all too often brings with it.

In this year 2025, I wish you to listen and see things close, nearby, next door, to realize the beauty of simplicity in life.

To have or to be, virtual or real, far or near, the choice is yours!