Dear Grandpa,
I’ve just come back from a long trip across Europe to fundraise for my most ambitious project in our home country: the International Social Innovation Competition for Naples.
This project gives me a new vibe. It’s like going home after a long journey. It’s an opportunity to face with past; not just mine, but the past of my family, town, people and you.
Someone told me I’m like you. I don’t know. What do we have in common, you and I?
We never met but you have been part of my childhood as the role model in the family: a doctor, a scientist, the youngest professor in the country. You were a convinced fascist and worked for Bayer during the II World War. Those are details omitted in conversations when the whole family gathered for Christmas and Easter.
The Institute of Oncology in Bologna has been named after you. Your father donated it to teh city to mourn your early death. My father has spent all his life failing to emulate your successes.
You were reputed a genius in your field but having little interest in your family. Promised to my grandaunt you ended up marrying my grandmother after meeting her twice – an arranged marriage as suitable for 2 prominent families in a provincial town in ’40s.
You spent all your short life working except for 3 brief intimate encounters with my grandmother. One of them produced my father and this is our link.
Perhaps both selfish and determined, I feel we have something more in common. We both have been madly driven by our job lived as a spiritual mission. It’s not about money or public recognition but passion, passion for life. Society needs to be constantly pushed and pulled to avoid entropy.
People like us are champions in such an infinite war. You gave your life to the cause. I’m ready to emulate your example.
Randomly I’ve embarked in this project in Naples. It seems it’s one of the most difficult and dangerous places in Italy. Camorra rules while people don’t believe in change anymore.
My work in Brussels is growing but is hallow somehow. Politics is a futile exercise if it doesn’t change the lives of people; if it doesn’t give them hope for a better future.
Somehow I’m back in Italy after 7 years of exile in London. I’m so ashamed of what’s happening in Italy that I can’t even speak Italian properly anymore. I’m embarrassed when I’m associated to that country.
Therefore, I chose Naples or Naples called me. I want to start from the most difficult place to show that there is a future for Italians as well. I want to take the risk and succeed working together with all the people who want to make a difference – Italians and anybody else. We will contaminate the country as a virus of hope.
Let’s see if an Italian renaissance can start in Naples and I can reconcile with my land.
