Today, like any other day, I opened the homepage of one of the leading Italian newspapers, La Repubblica. While scrolling down, an article on Genova comes up. Genova used to be my hometown, there I lived for almost 18 years. The article explained how despite the leading role the city had in Italian history, nowadays it is just a place where people without a future live in frustration.
I haven't been to Genova in at least a year, but I have been in Italy now and then during these two last years. Every time I felt a sense of decadence, a decadence that I can't see in Belgium or UK, for example. When I get off the plane I see a country that doesn't resemble, even the slightest, the country in my memories. I see that people are disenchanted and disappointed because the government and the state have let them down.
I still have many friends and relatives to whom I speak regularly. Something in their voices has changed. They seem to have lost the strength to feel indignant about the all situation. The loss of jobs, the rise in unemployment, the deterioration of services and quality of life seems to have come to them gradually and gradually they have got used to it. Whenever I say it is wrong to be apathetic they just lift their arms (in true Italian style!) and say: "Nothing can be changed!". I sense a general idea that it is deeply wrong to be angry or indignant, that anger is purposeless if nothing will ever change.
I believe that it is our inability to feel angry that has created this apparently unsolvable situation, though. Politicians and the ruling class in general assume that they don't need to be accountable, they can just do whatever they like because people will never show their anger, It is a democracy for the politicians and not for the citizens. I can understand this feeling of resignation for those, slightly older, who think they've seen it all but not for the younger generations. Being angry and wishing to change the world is a characteristic of youngsters. We all believe we have a unique power to make things better, but why Italian boys and girl don't feel that too?
For most of us, life has become so unbearable that we have all run away. Now Italians are among the Europeans that most migrate within the European Union, why is that? Because resignation and disillusionment has finally won us over and we believe that moving away is the only way to pursue our goals. I strongly believe that too, it is in every human's instinct to do everything that is possible to survive. So if a boat is sinking naturally we would try to swim away to the shore. One question, though, remains to those who decide to stay on the boat and save what it is possible to save, why aren't you doing everything that is in your power to save the boat?
It is not a matter of cowardness and braveness; it is a question of choices. When you decide to go you fight to achieve all your goals but if you decide to stay then you should do whatever it is possible to make your home a better place for you and future generations. No one wants to live in a country where there are no jobs and no promises, where services are unreliable, where education has collapsed and people have lost their ability to dream. If no one wants to live in a country like this, there is nothing wrong in being angry if this sentiment is a constructive anger that will take us to building a better nation and a better country.
I would like to see again the country of my childhood, when people still believed change was possible and I am looking at you, Italians still in Italy. I don't belong to that reality anymore, I don't know what doesn't work and what needs to be changed but I know that you do. Italy's future is in your hands!
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