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Gratitude and Resilience
By Tamara Pfeil, FSU Florence Financial Coordinator
These are the two words - and the lessons - most important to me. A lesson that I wish to extract from this frightening situation and that I hope to transmit to my children.
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Gratitude, for having the privilege of staying at home and being able to work and study from home while other people are on the front lines fighting a terrible battle.
And they fight it for everyone, even for those of us staying at home.
It is not only Italian law that requires us to stay at home, it is also a larger law, which respects life itself. Because life must be protected - not only ours, but also that of others. And it is precisely others that we must worry about: in this unusal period we are not in danger, we are the danger.
Resilience, because sometimes life freezes, turns on itself and transforms.
Thus our children (and we, ourselves!) must begin to understand that there may be a moment, in which we must stop, take a deep breath and gather our strength.
An opportunity to grow inside and through that fostering growth - a maturity to be gained, not from day to day work or just getting through each day, but from understanding overall that bad things happen, in everyone’s life, and the difference lies in how we react. Adverse circumstances are also an opportunity.
Despite everything and sometimes against all odds, you can effectively face the difficulties and give new impetus to your existence, even achieving important goals. It all depends on how we know how to react.
Finding in yourself, in human relationships and in life the strength to overcome adversity and also to focus on what you have instead of what is missing. Always.
Gratitude and resilience. I am sure that we will recover, and we will all be stronger and more aware than before. And it is with the same awareness, with the same certainty and the same gratitude that I see our new Palace in Via de ’Neri as the bridge that will lead us into our new life.
Our new “afterlife,” that same life that previously taught us that together we can face everything, every adversity.
We will come out of this stronger, and even better than before.
