Italian
Between pain and hope, an invitation to transform mourning into inner strength and to rediscover in willpower the path to keep on living
ITALY – And so, once again, we find ourselves mourning our dead. Every tragedy that strikes the community — an accident, a desperate act, a senseless act of violence — reopens the same question: how long will our mourning last? And how long will we stand by those left alone in their grief?
Death, especially when it comes suddenly and unjustly, is always unacceptable. It strikes those who leave in the morning to earn a living and never return. When daily duty becomes a risk, there is no compensation that can truly justify it.
We live in an age of anger, an anger that drags with it both good and evil, victims and perpetrators, in an endless spiral. An anger that is wearing us down. A few days ago, an elderly man took his own life by jumping from the balcony of his home — the last resource he had left. Yesterday, even a massacre over a financial collapse. Different events, but tied by the same thread: the despair born of powerlessness and resentment.
Kant wrote: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” And yet the same philosopher calls us to a double duty: to be and to exist. Pure reason — the kind that analyzes and judges — is not enough; we also need practical reason — the kind that acts and endures.
To truly exist, we must activate our practice of reason, the one called will. It is willpower that pushes us to face the trials of life, even when events seem senseless. When reason tells us something is impossible, it is will that opens the way to possibility.
Mourning is processed not when we forget, but when we understand that not all is lost. To process means to still want: to want to go on living, to understand, to build.
To call upon the heavens, where our dreams and our dead rest, is not a meaningless gesture. It is a way to rediscover roots and wings, memory and future. Only then can we move forward — with the silent strength of will.
