How many times have you heard these words?
They are so powerful and at the same time so false when they are about life.
And so many things in our life would be useless and hopeless if these terrible certainties were true.
But they are not, fortunately.

There was a time in which I used to feel like those who have been abused for so long that they thought it was right, fair, and then even if I knew it was wrong, I used to feel ashamed of my past, cos I had been abused and I would have had to say no, but I hadn't done it.
So I started doing all the best for proving myself that I was better, that I deserved more.
But deep inside myself I still felt I was not.
It was like I was living in a bigger cage, but it was always a cage.
I could move a little more but I couldn't escape.
Still I felt that my warden was the only one who could set me free.
Unless somebody could steal his key, but any try was unsuccessful.
Then something unexpected happened: my warden opened the door, so that, to my surprise, I could shily step out from my cage and take a look outside.
Decide whether to stay inside or outside.
My old wounds of captivity began to disappear, one by one, together with the pain and the shame.
All that is still in progress, but the environment around me slowly changed.
My narrow cage turned into a nice and comfortable house, where I choose to take refuge whenever I can, with big windows and a beach in front of it.
And my warden turned into my beloved sea.

Happiness shouldn't be the aim, but the way to get it.

La felicità non dovrebbe essere lo scopo, ma il percorso per raggiungerlo.

Photo: the sea from Poetto Beach, Cagliari.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not Love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 William Shakespeare       (1564 - 1616)

Reporting a sonnet by Shakespeare is perhaps a bit banal, but I'm doing it because it describes very well something that I know. Many people affirm to love someone, but I think that, if they don't feel like that, it is not Love.

Siccome è un testo in un inglese un po' antico e per alcuni difficile da capire, vi riporto la versione italiana di questo sonetto. E vi lascio con una domanda: conoscete l'Amore?

Sonetto 116

Non sia mai ch'io ponga impedimenti
all'unione di anime fedeli; Amore non è Amore
se muta quando scopre un mutamento
o tende a svanire quando l'altro s'allontana.
Oh no! Amore è un faro sempre fisso
che sovrasta la tempesta e non vacilla mai;
è la stella-guida di ogni sperduta barca,
il cui valore è sconosciuto, benché nota la distanza.
Amore non è soggetto al Tempo, pur se rosee labbra e gote
dovran cadere sotto la sua curva lama;
Amore non muta in poche ore o settimane,
ma impavido resiste al giorno estremo del giudizio:
se questo è errore e mi sarà provato,
io non ho mai scritto, e nessuno ha mai amato.