Wonder.

What I wanted to hear from my teachers on my first day of school.

What would I have wanted to hear from my teachers on my first day of school, or what would I want them to tell me if I became a student again?

Tales about my vacations? No. Those of my classmates? No. I would already know everything. You have to study? This is going to be difficult? We’re going to have to make more of an effort? No, no thank you. I know. This is why I’m here, and besides I’m deaf from the ear of duties. Tell me something different, something new, so that I don’t start getting bored already, but rather that I might feel even just a slight desire to start this school year. From the ear of passion, I can hear perfectly.

Show me that it’s worth my while to stay here for a whole year listening to you. Tell me please that all this will be relevant to my everyday life, that it will help me better understand the world and myself, that it’s worthwhile for me to be here. Show me, most of all through your own lives, that the effort you demand of me will fill my own life the way it fills yours. You have dedicated studies, efforts and dreams to teach me your subject, now show be that it’s all true, that you are conveyors of something desirable and indispensable, something that you own and that you wish to impart upon me as a gift. Show me that you lose sleep to teach me these things that — you say — are worth my efforts. I want to look into your eyes and if they’re not shining I’m going to get bored, I’m telling you now, and I’m going to do something else. You can’t lie to me. If you don’t believe it, then why should I? And don’t tell me about your salaries, about the union, about [Italian education minister] Gelmini, about your family and relationship troubles, about your failures and your obsessions. No. Tell me about how much you love the force of the sun that has burned for 5 billion years and transforms hydrogen into light, life and energy. Tell me how this happens, this miracle that will continue for at least another 5 billion years. Tell me why the moon always shows me her same face and teach me how to interrogate her like Leopardi’s shepherd did. Tell me how it’s possible that a rose has petals arranged according to a divine and infallible proportion and why the heart is a muscle that beats involuntarily and how the eye transforms light into images.

There are so many things in this world that I don’t know and that you could teach me, with eyes shining, because only wonder knows.

And tell me about the mystery of humans, tell me how the Greeks built their temples that you feel like you’re in contact with the gods, and how the Romans managed to combine beauty and utility like nobody else. Tell me how Leonardo da Vinci did it, how Magellan did it. Tell me the secret of Einstein, Gaudi’, or Mozart. If you know it, tell me.

Tell me, how am I supposed to decide what to do with my life, if I don’t know about the lives of others? Tell me, how am I supposed to find my own story, if I have not a bit of passion for those that left their mark? Tell me what I should gamble my life for. Or no, don’t tell me. I will decide for myself. You show me the possibilities. Help me discover my passions, my talents, and my dreams. And remember that you will only succeed if you yourself have dreams, projects and passions of your own. Otherwise how am I supposed to believe you? And remind me that my life is not repeatable, that it’s made for greatness, and help me not to settle for small pleasures, real and virtual, that may satisfy me in the moment, but that deep down just bore me…

Challenge me, put my best qualities to the test, and write them on your register along with all those grades that are always the same. Help me not to believe illusions, not to live on dreams filled with air, but at the same time teach me to dream and to have the patience to realize these dreams, turning them into projects.

Teach me to reason, such that I may not derive my beliefs from common cliches, from the dominant thought, from unreasoned thought. Help me to be free. Remind me of the unity of knowlegde and don’t tell me about the unity of Italy, but be united among each other: don’t talk ill of one another, I beg you. And remind me of how beautiful this country is, talk about it, make me want to discover everything it is hiding before I begin to long for a tropical vacation.

And please, one last favor, keep your cynicism to yourselves. Don’t hide your battles from me, but give me the strength to bear them and don’t poison my hopes even before I have conceived them.

For this, one day, I will remember you.

Thank you, Prof. 2.0.

Change.

Ari Weinzweig on attending to authenticity ...

Being attentive to little things that others might miss, Meyerowitz makes clear, is a skill we can work to master. It’s not, though, an exact science. As Meyerowitz says, “Be open to your own intuition and instincts and you will find your way.” What your way will reveal, I can’t know, but I do know that when we’re tuned in we start to see a wealth of amazing things that are all around us. Interesting insights may well ensue. As Meyerowitz says,

At any given moment there is the possibility to say “Ah!” You catch your breath. You are inspired. You are at that moment suddenly feeling alive and awake. Some connection with the whole, has pressed itself to your senses. In that moment, there’s the tiniest little change—so tiny, it’s been smothered by all the energy around you—at that moment you stop.

Meyerowitz shares a great example that came from his time in Paris many years ago. As he sets the scene: “You’re walking down the street and all of a sudden you come to this sweet spot where you catch the smell of a buttery croissant.” I can certainly relate and maybe you can as well. You notice the subtle smell, and in a wonderful way, it calls to you. But then, Meyerowitz reminds us, the logical mind might likely kick in: You probably weren’t looking for a croissant. Maybe you already ate breakfast earlier, and stopping to see more might make you a few minutes late for your meeting. The tendency for most of us, then, would simply be to keep walking. As Meyerowitz says, “You take two steps and it is gone!” Our mind is quickly occupied by other things. Meyerowitz suggests we do the opposite. We would do well, he says, to back up and follow our nose. Go closer. Explore. Learn more. What we find just might change our lives. 

Authenticity.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to."

Jim Jarmusch

Where.

Gotlib, Lilies, n/d

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

Jim Jarmusch

Curiosity.

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master-passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.

Charles Dickens