A few weeks ago, we celebrated “World Education Day.” I would also attempt a combination to make the experience more intense. Do we just have to educate or do we also have to embrace the verb “witness”? And in order to educate by witnessing, should we settle for less tired words, as Chandra Livia Candiani tells us “that endure Fridays like the weariest Mondays,” yet words full of real, exciting examples?
Making life a straight line is not a project. True projects have curves, low reliefs, underpasses, penumbra, peaks, and caves. Do we want to carry messages written on the skin or scribbled by computerized inks? If educating meant risking daily, would it be too demanding?
We are born already educated and then there is childhood, adolescence, motherhood, pains, illnesses, resurrections… At 94 years old, I am understanding what education is, patiently rereading my life. I attended university, took psychoanalysis courses, wanted to delve into many experiences, but it was the disabled, the district of Primavalle, Parco Lambro, Madagascar, the reinterpretation of my somewhat eccentric adolescence lived in a boarding school, the death of my father at a very young age, the head-on collision in the accident against the Police patrol that left me on the asphalt for over two hours with my teeth on the street and my left arm broken in half because they had to figure out who the terrorist I was carrying in the car was… Only this made me understand that life and death can become friends and load our days with emotions, prophetic silences, mysteries. True education also needs words, formulas, theorems, but let me say that only silence, austere reinterpretation, and the courage to stifle the formulas help us to find the roots of our days. We must eat, announce, and breathe true silence as the essence of the “self” that is preparing to welcome it because it has understood that only then will we interpret the adventurous nature of everyday things.
From this comes testimonial education; from understanding how extraordinary ordinary things are. What kills man is monotony and routine. What saves him is creativity, the ability to turn things that happen into adventures. Is it possible to free oneself from increasingly unpredictable discomforts by randomly slashing whoever you find on the street?
Let’s go back to the verbs educate-witness, sow emotions, fly kites, inspire. It’s true, returning to Candiani, that words without support are dangerous and that sowing gardens breaks hearts? If education meant the opposite, why can the words “freedom” heal and rediscovered gardens allow us to redeem ourselves from the lost first garden? Perhaps the leaps I make are too long, but sowing testimonies as if they were fruits of the earth would be truly heretical?
We are in special times, and yesterday is already a thing of the past, even Freud himself I would like us to leave in peace. G. Michael Hopf’s phrase seems very apt to me: “Hard times create strong men; strong men create easy times. Easy times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” In our current days, instead of discussing difficult or easy things, it is appropriate for us to grow as Warriors (with a capital “W” to avoid confusion) and not as parasites.
Will education be capable of this miracle? Will neglected testimony silence help us to transcend even our small gardens? Galimberti tells us that only then is the human species what unites us. Because it is not so much our small homeland that we must rediscover, as the earth within which we live.
Thinking about today’s earth is like thinking about yesterday’s sky? And immersing oneself in the ordinary is like discovering Lacanian formulas? In terms of tests, educational theses, Martin Luther King says that “anyone can be great because anyone can serve. And to serve, a degree is not necessary.”
In today’s times, is it possible to attach serving to educating and witnessing? Can education also be “a service”? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says: “Here is my secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.”
If that’s the case, I should say that I started with two verbs and end with three: Educate, Witness, Serve! *Corriere della Sera is also on Whatsapp. Just click here to subscribe to the channel and stay updated. *
February 5, 2024 (modified on February 5, 2024 | 16:57)
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