Last Sunday I found myself inspired to write something. I needed to express myself; it happened all of a sudden. So I didn't even open my laptop. I took a pencil, a notebook and started handwriting. The words went fast. My hand started hurting, and I realised I hadn't written by hand in a long time.
Everything started with a strange feeling, a feeling that I personally call the Sliding Doors feeling. Yes, like the movie. It is like a sudden calling that tells you there is something you should not avoid doing, because it will impact your future and that of others, like in the Butterfly Effect, with cascading effects on the world and the future. It is like clairvoyance: you don't know what will change, but you know it will change.
Every time I've had this feeling, it translated into something that realistically changed my life. Like when I had it during my time at university, when I was living in Pisa, Italy.
A friend of mine told me that there was an event, like a book fair or something. I declined the invitation, and I went home. When I saw the big metal gate of the house I lived in, I had that feeling. A feeling that if I had gone to the fair, my life would have been changed forever; so I went home, showered and went to the fair.
Once at the event, I was walking by the tables. Then a book caught my attention: it was Naomi Klein's No Logo, a book on globalisation and corporations. A man behind the table noticed me, and we started to talk. He was thin and tall, and he had a pair of glasses like two bottle bottoms. He was 20 years older than me, the exact natural age difference between father and son. We sat there for a couple of hours talking about how the world works. It was one of the first times I felt free to share complex ideas from my years of studying Computer Science and Economics, and I felt understood. I then learned that he had a PhD in Chemistry and that he worked for a European institution in Brussels. The man is called Urbano, and our friendship still lasts today.
You would say, why are you telling me this story? It was just a story, but the point is that sometimes you have a call, a feeling, the feeling of expressing yourself. Sometimes you have friends like Urbano to talk to; other times you don't, but the feeling remains. But if it all comes from my individualistic need for expression, why should I steal your time? If I talk with a friend, I don't ask myself that, or at least there is almost always a part in every story that inspires. And most of the time we don't even know it does; we are just fulfilling our need for expression.
I felt the call to write this to you, like I felt the call to meet Urbano. I call it destiny, but it might be the search for a like-minded reader.