Dear Director Feltri,
I am a 48 year old lady. I am passionate about journalism and politics, aware that I can know more about its projection than its essence. My reality, the reality that I know best, is that of a woman and mother. I often hear generic complaints of prevailing machismo, labor exploitation of women and young people, repression of one’s freedom of expression, inadequate public support for training, and so on innumerable other arguments that smell like excuses for not rolling up one’s sleeves. We are all attentive to cruel, dramatic, tragic facts, but the society in which we live is above all much more. Our society is made up of men who love women and children. Our society offers us infinite opportunities, it allows us to travel, study, experiment, cultivate passions, watch films, listen to music, read books, design our own future… you just need to be willing to search! With method and rigor a life with satisfaction is likely to come, net of fortunes and misfortunes. We cannot wait for opportunities to fall from the sky, but we must be the ones to avidly seek them. It is us women who, first of all, also by our very nature, must convey the desire to seek, do and create. In this sense I would like to tell young people that the apprenticeship must not be understood as submission, but as an opportunity that lasts a short time to give you a lot. Let’s teach our children that we have to build life with our own strength!
I ask you what you think about this, as a man and as a father.
Slavka Morelli
Mozzecane (Verona)
Dear Slavka,
I can only share her point of view, which I believe to be the perspective of an intelligent, thoughtful, responsible woman, who has evidently known sacrifice, suffering, commitment, discipline and renunciation without expecting others to do it for her by serving her opportunities on a silver platter and complaining when this did not happen. It is only through this personal responsibility that we grow and progress, acquiring the awareness that failure is part of the journey and that it is not irreversible and that we should not point the finger at someone if something does not work, but rather ask ourselves where we went wrong and what we can do to improve or to exploit to our advantage what appears to us to be damage or a problem.
I started out as a delivery boy, then a clerk, then an apprentice, then a window dresser, in the meantime I washed the stairs of the condominiums every Saturday morning to earn a little extra and, to make sure I didn’t miss anything, in the evening I played the piano in a club on Lake Lecco. No one made me a director out of nothing. And even the most modest jobs I’ve done, even though they were far from journalistic activity, have helped to sharpen my soul and my pen. Nothing has been useless. We are the result of everything we’ve done and not of what we’ve suffered, as the contemporary mentality dictates.
It seems to me that today we look for excuses to justify our own failure or the stasis we are in. It is now the fault of our parents, now of the State, now of the society that does not offer opportunities, now of this and now of that. It is a community of lazy and spoiled individuals who pretend to arrive without fighting, to receive without giving, to have without sweating. Everyone wants to start from the top but you can only start from the bottom, even physics teaches us this. Menial jobs are snubbed, being a waiter for many young people is a disgrace, most dream of becoming influencers and earning tons of money by having fun and messing around. We have stopped teaching kids that every goal must be conquered and that, ultimately, existential joy can only come from the effort made in pursuing an objective. Well, I notice that sometimes people, young or adult, lack a purpose, that reason that leads you to roll up your sleeves, as you say, and get busy.
As for the female condition, which you yourself mention, I also refuse to believe and support that nowadays women are victims of men or of a male chauvinist world that hinders and limits them. A woman can get where she wants and without the patronage of a male, which she absolutely does not need. And it is essential that girls understand this truth without falling into the widespread prejudice that their fulfillment is made impossible by patriarchy, by toxic males, by rampant sexism, a narrative persistently proposed by the left. The victimization of the female gender harms women first and foremost, and yet it seems that many of them derive satisfaction from presenting themselves as martyrs of a backward and chauvinist society. The proof that any door is open to the female gender is the success of Giorgia Meloni, the first female prime minister who founded a party taking it from 4%, while no one believed in her and everyone mocked her, to establishing itself as the first party in Italy. If patriarchy were really in force in Italy, would this have been possible? Women command, they hold top positions within institutions, including the key ones in the country. They enjoy esteem, respect, consideration, also because they tend to be better prepared than men in every professional field. There are more female graduates than male graduates. And as if that were not enough, women shine more in their studies, that is, their performance is higher than that of the men. The only real limit that suffocates women and prevents them from taking flight is their tendency, currently prevalent, to make themselves victims, precisely, thus delegating to someone else the responsibility for their destiny, a destiny of which they are the sole masters. It is also a way of underestimating oneself, of giving up one’s dignity, of depending.
It’s time for a change, for girls to believe in themselves more.
Thank you, dear Slavka.