Being disobedient: the art of loving one's diversity

7 km of rapids. 5 children on board. Pure adrenaline.
And me in the midst of the adventure.

I think about how to leave a world a little better than we found it 🙈

I love water because it is disobedient:
You can try to frame it, manage it, put it along the path you want it to go….

But at the first heavy rain here it overflows, breaks out of the patterns to which you had forced it, and takes back its freedom.

We human beings, basically, are like water.

We also like to have the same freedom.
We too like to get out of the box.
We too like to feel that we are in full control of the flow of our lives.

And yet.

Yet, we all end up following predetermined tracks designed by others.
Some more, some less.

We live with dreams that we leave in the drawer.
We have brilliant ideas that we abandon 2 seconds after giving birth to them.
We feel within us an incredible will to live, yet we sit at a desk all day.

Why?

Because we stopped disobeying.
Some more, some less.

We have begun to accept compromises that have slowly pulled us away from ourselves.
In exchange for some economic security and social rules that make us feel accepted by others.

Because we all need some certainty.
Some more, some less.

The problem, however, is not compromising, but resigning ourselves to them.

The problem is not doing a job you don't feel is yours, but resigning yourself that it will be like that all your life.

The problem is not not having the time to follow your passions, but resigning yourself that there is no other way to live.

But there is another way to live, I assure you.

Since I entered the working world at the age of 19, I have always dictated my own rules.
For example, I have hardly ever worked in an office. Only remotely. Even 20 years ago, when I was 19!

But not because I am special…

But simply because instead of accepting the status quo I disobeyed.

And in some cases, so I also opened the track for changes bigger than myself.

Because being disobedient is not just about personal freedom.
It is about bringing about cultural changes that make this a better world. For everyone.

Being disobedient means loving your own diversity and respecting the diversity of others.
It means fighting against the imposition of social structures, constructs and hierarchies that want to trap us like water in a canal.

It means taking responsibility for bringing about changes that make this world a little better than we found it.

Challenge the ordinary, embrace the unusual. Always.

Emanuele