Like Snow in the Sun
Simone Riva - This expression is used to refer to things that do not hold up in the face of the shock of reality. It refers to ways of doing, preoccupations, words, strategies, insistence -- forced to beat a retreat as soon as the challenge of living gets tougher than usual. It has come to my mind these days when, in the morning and evening, one already needs to cover oneself because of the decidedly frigid temperatures. The great heat has been with us all summer long, but in no time at all, the weather has been reduced without warning.
And what happens to our lives as well. Big speeches, meticulous plans, lofty words, are often swept away by a sudden change in circumstances. Those same circumstances we thought we could handle with our self-assurance. These months will also visually mark the change in our surroundings. The plants will change color, the hours of light (and they already have) will decrease, the cold will become more and more noticeable. There is a fascination in the arrival of autumn, the same as there is in every promise: a dying to return to life.
A film released in 1998 says it in a curious way, it is Meet Joe Black with a great Anthony Hopkins playing the part of a very brilliant communications tycoon at the height of his career and wealth. One day, however, he has a strange encounter that will mark his life until he turns 65. Mercilessly, the film shows all the dynamics of the life of such a businessman, from excesses to risks, from managerial skill to the plots of his closest associates.
Everything seems to depend on how he is able to conduct things, but in truth everything is revealed for what it is in the face of the inexorable news that reaches him and concerns his fate. Like snow in the sun everything melts away and brings out the true passions of the protagonist, his heart, his humanity.
Certainly the film also has its limitations, but it remains an interesting provocation for our time in which so many are caught up in figuring out what should be forbidden and what should be allowed, who can speak and who cannot, which positions are to be accepted and which are to be fought, as if the fate of the world and of our lives were in our hands.
All at the expense of the real move that is ours alone: discovering the need we have. Only in front of this discovery can we stop hoping for what melts like snow in the sun. Only in front of this discovery do we begin to stop settling for any answer. In the film, the protagonist sees his daughter superficially interested in the man she is with, and at one point, in his own style, he says to her, “Not a shadow of wince, not a whisper of excitement; this relationship has the same passion as a royal kite relationship.
I want someone to sweep you off your feet, levitate you, sing with rapture, and dance like a dervish! I want you to have delirious happiness! Or at least not reject it. I know it sounds cheesy to you, but love is passion, obsession, and someone you don't live without. I say to you, throw yourself into it!
Find someone you love madly and who loves you in the same way!”
The author has not reviewed this translation. The article was published in “il Giornale di Monza.”
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