This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Talking with elderly people always sparks thoughts in me. A constant one is trying to imagine what the world was like back in their days—and I’m not only talking about houses, streets, the country side. I’m also thinking about how they related to other people, how they thought or spoke back then. And whenever I try to compare their stories to mine, I always feel something strange, as if there was a deep difference laying far beyond the words and the stories themselves.
So I started to seek what this difference could be, and after much thought I believe it’s all in three, fundamental points: in my stories there are too much noise, light and ease. Today’s life is filled with these three elements that make everything else disappear. Silence, darkness and pain—the three pillars every human had to face since the dawn of mankind—have grown dimmer and dimmer.
Back in the days, there was no way to escape them. No shortcut, no easy way out. Today, in turn, we have to seek for silence; we strive for a quiet place because noise is everywhere. It fills every second: music or radio are in shops, buses and restaurants. Traffic and ringing phones are all around us. Every time we let the noise invade us, it takes a small brick from our mind. A building block for our thoughts is kidnapped by noise. In silence, we build a solid house within our mind, a metaphorical start of a journey or a safe place to come back and rest.
Light is another invader. Thinking about ancient times, living in darkness was absolutely natural. Of course, it was the hiding place for predators, so it comes natural to tie it with danger—but even in darkness, there is something that was meant for us. A blank space to let our mind wander and push our creativity further. Light casts perfect shades, detailed contours and colors, but only leaves you with so much space for your imagination.
And last comes the pain. I’m not talking about diseases, I’m talking about issues of the daily life, both physical and mental—from a small cut while cooking to failure and disappointment. Nowadays, we try our hardest to avoid it: painkillers, notifications and social media have driven us away from facing it. How we handle pain shapes us. By choosing not to handle it, we choose to lose depth. Avoiding it makes us weaker and, no matter how long we can avoid it, every minute there is a chance for the world to hurt us. But we wont be ready anymore.
After coming to this realisation, I’m trying to give these three pillars more importance in my life. More presence. I’m not demonizing modern technology, but I’m trying to give the old world, the one that forged humanity for millions of years, more space to teach me again something we’ve lost along the way.
