We broke up in 2022 with this post in which I tried to share the 10 lessons learned in 2022. With today’s post, the first post of a 2023 that has just begun, I will try to share with you the 5 good resolutions for the new year. Let’s be clear: it is my intention to try to write not some classic intentions like going on a diet, being better, and bla bla bla. No. I will try, as I always do in this blog, to go deep into my depths and tell it without ever turning into gossip and with the strict rule that I have always imposed on myself since the blog started, to respect my own privacy. So let’s begin.
1) Travel and photograph more. I know this may seem like a foregone conclusion for a blog dedicated to travel and photography. But you know, in my case traveling and photographing are as instinctive as breathing. I need it. And just like breathing, if you don’t do it for too long you get sick, and then you die. Traveling and photographing are the two activities that, more than others, make me feel alive, make me feel important. I don’t feel like a king when I drive my Ferrari, or when I uncork a 500 euro bottle of champagne. I feel like a king when I find myself in a remote corner of the world where nobody knows me and where I don’t know anyone. Those are the fragments of the universe in which I feel I can learn, that I can enrich myself without ever feeling satisfied, with landscapes and chatter, sunsets and life stories, landscapes and the experiences of others.
2) Read on. During 2022 I started reading many blogs dedicated to psychology and, more abstractly, to concepts such as the pursuit of happiness and the meaning of life. It is clear that these are not miraculous pills capable of fixing your existence (let it be clear), but by reading I was able to understand much more about those who live close to me, their mechanisms and, conversely, even my own mechanisms. And I discovered that when you learn to understand these organisms you can also give the right weight to things, to discussions, to offenses, to disappointments. I repeat, these are not thaumaturgical cure-alls, but when you learn to understand the mechanisms of the human mind you are able to face certain interpersonal challenges in a “more equipped” way. So it’s welcome to know more and if this is also your goal then know that reading is your viaticum towards success.
3) Smile more. I don’t think I’ll be very nostalgic for 2022 that just ended. It’s been a year that has given me so much on many fronts (friendships and work in primis) but it took away from me on other fronts and, in general, it was a year in which I laughed less than usual. Too many times I have looked at what was, at that moment, the film of my life and I was not very happy with the film I was seeing. For this reason, for this 2023 I hope to recover the smiles lost last year with due interest and in this sense I have to make an effort to organize my days with the right situations, the right company, etc. Because smiles come when we try hard to attract them. I owe it to myself and, frankly speaking, I also feel I deserve it.
4) Learn to experience the small and large “downs” of life. The fact is this: everyone would like to design perfect, memorable days for themselves. And this is also my effort; light years away from wanting to live a normal life, I chose to make something unique of mine, something I can be proud of, every day. A story that is and will be worth telling. But this effort comes at a price. The biggest is what comes from the frustration of those days when things don’t go the way we would like. In which it seems to us that our projects are failing. The days when we feel that what we fought for is lost. I have to understand that these downs, that these frustrations are not always and necessarily sentinels of a failure. If life is a war then it means that every day is a battle, and every good soldier knows that there are also battles that can be lost without fearing having lost the whole war. I have to learn to see things more in their entirety. I have to learn to look these bad days in the eye, which I sometimes feel I am experiencing, and try to “embrace” them, welcome them… as much as I would like to strangle them. Because I know that if I welcome them in the end they will hurt me less. I have to understand that the sense of defeat that I sometimes feel is completely normal and that it shouldn’t always be taken seriously: sometimes it’s just a precursor to our reaction that will arrive shortly thereafter. I know I have to work on this, and I also know that in this fight I have an enemy, my lack of patience, and an ally, my strong conviction. And once you understand how the battlefield is set up, well, you’re already halfway there.
5) Ask more of feelings. If I look at the last few years and at my relationship with my feelings, I feel I have given a lot, a lot. For long stretches, in recent times, I have behaved like the good farmer who sows, sows a lot, and the more he sows the more he is convinced that he will be able to reap a harvest tomorrow even in the face of adversities that may intervene. Well, for this 2023 I want to try a bit to reverse the direction of this commitment. I want to demand more from the feelings for which I have committed myself in recent years, transform the verb “to give” into the one “to receive”. And not because I feel tired of giving but simply because, as for point 3) dedicated to smiling, I truly feel I deserve it. So happy 2023 Roberto!
