Society.
The society we are living in is based on precise and strict scheme of rules that force us to live life in a certain way, based on fears, insecurities and unhappiness, making us believe that there isn’t a different life style or that a different way to see things would be wrong.
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Once we are prisoners of this system, as fish, it is hard to get our or escape.
Hard but not impossible.
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What are we trying to say? We are going to explain it now in an easy way.
21st century is the era of materialism (not material) and if 20 years ago a pair of trousers could last up to 10 years, now we feel in need of changing our winter coat, given it to us as a gift for Christmas, not even after a month of usage.
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They are bombarding us of advertisements, and even if we don’t realise it, our mind absorbs and elaborates these imagines in order to make us want buy have more and more.
Spending money all the time those money we don’t really have.
We buy a new phone and after a couple of months we need a new one.
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The black t-shirt matching with the black shoes and the red top matching the read trainers, the necklace, the shirt, the swimsuit, the sunglasses, the pants, the phone cover, the backpack, the household appliance, the 42 inch TV, the playstation and its games, etc etc, ending up on having wardrobes full of clothes we have never worn, a kitchen full of new appliances and full of dust, the fridge full of expired food, because when we go to grocery shopping we leave the house with the intention of buying only eggs for our omelette but then we end up buying any sort of discounted food, because if it’s cheaper we definitely need it.
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We don’t realise how many things we are slowly accumulating, for us buying is normal.
We have accumulated so much that the space in our tiny flat is not enough anymore so then we will start to look for a bigger one where everything will finally fit and have more space and where the bills will be way more expensive.
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We are so used to continuously buy than once we get what we need we are already thinking about what to get next.
We have become lazier than usual, and if before we were taking out our dog for an healthy number two, grocery shopping, or if buying a new dress was causing us so much hassle ,now we don’t even need to leave home to spend our money, now we only need a click to have anything we need to get delivered to our home, from the clothes we always need, food and dog’s diaper.
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How nice is this? We won’t need anything else anymore so we could chill in our comfy sofa with our goose feathers pillows, to get tanned in front of our screen and eating junk food that we all love.
And here we are on a daily basis, waking up and we go to school or to work, spending 8 hours (if not more) praying that the day will end soon, counting how many days we have left to the week end.
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We live in a bubble and quite often we don’t talk to the ones next to us, we get annoyed if someone tries starting a conversation with us or greets us.
Who was this person who said hello to me? Do I know him/her?
We are fed up, fed up of everything, of this monotony and restlessness and instead of curing this routine we feel stuck in, we close ourselves as a hedgehog and we start to feel frustrated.
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We go to work with our colleagues and we complain because we can’t stand this job anymore, we don’t have a job and we complain because we wish to have one and we have stopped applying because anyway in Italy it is impossible to find one of if they offer us a job we don’t want it because we are picky.
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We go to the coffee shop and we complain of being always there in the same place since 15years where nothing new happens, where we don’t have anything else to do apart from drinking on all what is happening to us and we get then lost in our deepest thoughts now, as it helps us to switch off.
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It is time for holidays but we don’t go anywhere as we can’t afford it, that money we have wasted last year buying unnecessary things, or we have some savings and we decide to use to go for a trip, we look for something exotic but not too far because the flight ticket would be too expensive.
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So we finally find those all inclusive deals where we can eat all the time thinking is for free, with conditioned air and scented sheets everyday during our stay and we feel king and queens even though there is still something missing.
All of a sudden though, an inner voice inside us loud and clear wants to tell us something, we barely recognise it but then here there is.
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It’s our own voice, or even better, the voice of who we used to be.
It’s the voice of our inner child, carefree and wild.
We give it space and we listen to it, it takes us back to when we were kids, when a swing and ball were enough to make us happy.
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When was last time you felt like this?
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When was last time you laughed for real without having used any drugs?
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Do you miss this feeling isn’t it?
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Good, so then try to close your eyes and picture this: you with a needle, you puncturing the bubble you are living in and now all around you is new and everything is getting coloured.
Your mind has never been so creative so far: you make projects, you become ambitious e positive.
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You look behind you but now you have become a different you, behind you there is a new journey that you have already been through.
While ahead there is millions of new roads to be travelled and discovered, you don’t care if it will be hard, any of these new paths will be yours, the right one, because you chose it.
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You walk, you go ahead, you make mistakes and then you pick yourself up with the same wish to make another mistake because by failing you succeed.
You have finally escaped from this grid, others around you don’t understand you anymore, you would like to help them, you try, but unfortunately it is not easy.
With your positivity you see everything taking shape, everything aligns, even though; there will always be ups and downs we have to accept.
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You have changed and your habits have changed, you through yourself back when you were at home, in the old life you were living and you realised that all those stuff you have accumulated you don’t need and you never needed them.
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You understand all those accumulate of useless things were just a caprice, a way to stop your being restless and a way to fill up some gaps, so you realised all this never helped you and maybe made everything worse.
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You end up living with you four clothes and if someone makes you a gift you are not even able anymore to wear it.
You beer belly suddenly disappears same as your panic attacks.
You start to look after your mind and body as a temple of your soul, even your food’s habit changes and you pay more attention on what you eat.
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The more you go ahead the more you grow up.
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You learn to understand that there is nothing better than an uncertain future, you can make your life a masterpiece and you can really choose to do whatever you like and all the fears you had before were only excuses.
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You learn that time, together with health, are the most important things we should worry about as none of these will be given back to us.
You learn that is never too late to make a change in your life, because if you want you can, we just need to be confident and believe in ourselves.
You learn that often our health issues are caused by our mind so we should start to listen to the signals our body sends us.
You learn so many things but the one that you will learn for sure is, once you are out of the system, you will never want to go back to your old self.
Once you smell the scent of the freedom you can’t cut it.
Freedom is not doing what we want but freedom is to be what we are.
Matteo & Anna.