“Nothing can save us”. “This world goes from bad to worse”. “And what have you done now? Do you think you accomplished anything, do you think anything will change?” “Now you believe what you’ve done will change the world, ha?” How many times have we heard these sentences? How many times have we articulated them ourselves? How many times did we feel the hope for a better future abandon us and our thoughts and life were flooded with despair? Sadly, the answer depresses us and there is one realization, that humans move through their lives, disappointed and hurt, without any hope of salvation.
Romanticism is the last-standing fortress against the wrecking and pessimism of modern reality. Its concept was born in the womb of the most revolutionary ideas, Art. It began as an artistic norm, which rejects the classic and the usual and breaks the mold and the existing stereotypes, and it was to be known as the inextinguishable love and devotion to idealism and dreams. After all, this is why romanticism has been so closely connected to great love stories that went against the world in order to exist. Because in these stories, romanticism took the form of self-denial, of love and of hope for a more beautiful reality which only exists in a dream, but we can’t find peace until it is realized. This is the core of romanticism in every aspect of our lives.
With it survives a small group of people, who manage to see a small ray of light sneaking in, despite the darkness that dominates. These souls, romantic and uncompromising, refuse to believe in anything less than the ideal world which they have beautifully shaped in their minds. They cannot possibly succumb to the demands of cruel reality and accept that the present cannot change. They love altruism, freedom, justice, equality, solidarity like everybody does, but they never forget. They don’t forget that the path only goes upwards and that they will fight for it and won’t stop fighting. They cannot content themselves with anything less than everything. Ideas and values remain immortal in their hearts and pour out of their actions and words. Although their common sense commands them to compromise and society demands that they adjust, they stay loyal to their higher values and cannot find peace unless they do anything possible and even more, for a more humane tomorrow. And this is why people call them crazy.
And who can blame them for calling them crazy? After all, the modern world offers us everything but hope. Poverty, unemployment, refugees, pain are everywhere around us, the environment is collapsing, humans are becoming less and less “human” and romanticism has vanished from our vocabulary. Change and regeneration seem to be distant and unreachable. Pain has turned into fear, despair and frustration, but it is never too late for everything to change.
Everything in life has two sides, a dark one and a bright one. It is the way in which we look at reality that counts. We choose the side on which we will stand. We choose if we will look at both sides and what we will do so that we can offer a little more light to this world. Every day is a possible opportunity for regeneration. Every day you are called upon to choose whether you will let the fear of change win or you will dare to be “crazy”. I will invoke again the allegory of the phoenix and remind you that it is reborn out of its ashes, young again and full of energy of life and creativity. Hence, this world can be reborn out of its “ashes”, more romantic than ever, living up to our dreams.
To sum up this article, I will tell you a little secret: I don’t know to what extent we will achieve the world that we envision. To what extent the phoenix will be as red and as beautiful. Nobody knows. Change is not a contract but rather a dynamic process and an ideology. The key is, when they ask you “What did you do about it?”, to be able to answer: “I did what I could and even more”.
Translation: Asimenia Chliara