The routine that makes you ill

It is there. It is not a wound on the body, it is not something that you see. It is the sum total of thoughts, of deciding in seconds, understanding, choosing. Acting. Choosing, understanding, deciding in seconds and the sum total of thoughts. Every day, for years. We call it stress. But not everyone is aware of it. Work, traffic, Milan, parking, meetings, always. Home, family, wife, children. The office.
The computer, phone calls, the clock. 2300 hours: a nightmare and a relief. Writing. E-mails, pages, interviews, the clock. 23.00 hours: a nightmare and a relief. That’s the scar, there. Like a furrow dug by ghosts. You remove the badness, sew it up, close it. It starts again and again, from 10 every morning. It is a job that you like, but that distances you. That closes you up. Me, you, we chew over things, foolishly powerful and proud, sick with worries, anxieties, doubts. You start to believe that life has to be lived in this way. It is not true. And the scar gets bigger. You become aggressive and distant. Only the daily grind matters. You have to stop yourself.
It took two years to rediscover other people. And then myself. To reflect on a useless haste. To recapture the meaning of things, to rediscover trust and understand that without trust there is no community. The scar? It is still there, but it is not getting any bigger.