"I’ve grown this year. Not on the outside, but on the inside. And that’s the only place where growth really matters", says Julia, the protagonist of The World from Down Here by Holly Goldberg Sloan.

The book was there, on a stand of used books, in the streets of the city center. One glance was enough, the exact moment I saw the title, and I was hooked. Flipping through the first pages, I froze. Julia had recently lost her dog, just as I had recently lost my cat, Neve.

At that moment, I faced a choice: read and relive this experience of loss, or put the book back where it was? I chose the first option. I chose to go through the memory, the love, the pain, everything that Neve was, everything that I was. But also to experience what I have become since then. Because there is always a "before", just as there is always an "after." Like a flow, a becoming.

"I know how to think, how to wait, how to fast", says Siddhartha. And he doesn’t study this from books; he experiments, feels it on his own skin. A fascinating journey of discovery, in search of oneself, of love, of life.

Hermann Hesse literally captivated me with his words and allowed me to take a few more steps toward the awareness that everything flows, everything passes, and the only thing we truly have in our hands is the present moment. Yesterday and tomorrow are the only days when we can do nothing. Nothing more, still nothing. But today, yes. Today we can.

"For those who move, the horizons shift." This is what Michela Murgia wrote. Clearly, freely. This statement is deeply thought-provoking. Those who move, those who leave behind their certainties, their comfort zone, can open themselves to new possibilities, to new discoveries. Not just of the outer world, but especially of the inner world. Traveling light (as we mentioned in the latest article), letting go of limiting beliefs and biases, in order to embrace other possibilities and put oneself to the test.

"We are multitude" Michela says. We are made up of many things, many facets. Of "a thousand souls", as Hermann Hesse's Harry Haller would say. Not "a good" and "a bad," but a thousand, all together, multifaceted, like the surface of a diamond. And this is the diversity and richness of being human, with the capacity and the desire to suspend judgment. Not pointing fingers, but rather listening. To the other and to oneself.

There are moments to live like true rituals. To pace, to experience slowly, to savor. And just as the profiles of clouds define their shape, our rituals can shape our moments. As always, the choice is ours.

Thus, the end of the year can be a ritual of listening. And for me, it is: toward myself, toward life, toward those who have come and those who have left, toward this constant change that is our journey.

This brief reflection, made up of books, represents part of my journey in 2024. A ritual to live, one I wanted to experience “in a direct and profound way: with my senses.”