The first Supranational Democracy Dialogue has ended one week ago and I am just recovering from the stress and the fatigue of managing and hosting it, and from the overdose of joy and enthusiasm of welcoming so many friends and fellow visionaries, of sharing ideas and plans for the future. We even signed a beautiful final manifesto, you can download it here: Manifesto for supranational democracy final.
It was a great experience and the most exciting in my career path. Nonetheless, I am not sure it was really about my career path. As Myra Jackson pointed out in one of our breakfasts together, it was more about coming out of my “academic closet”.
Several of my young, great team members published posts on the event pointing out how I was the visionary behind all this. And that’s flattering!
Except that, in Italian, if you write visionary (visionario), then you add “in a good way”, as they all did. Because in Italian “visionario” means plain foolish (pazzo visionario!).
It’s a pity. As I learned in other political and cultural climates, being visionaries is a good thing: it’s about having a vision for the future and sharing it. It’s the quality of true leadership. I wonder if this reticence of our language in using the word “visionario” is just a reflection of our collective pessimism and of having given up visions for the future.
It took me years to accept the idea of being visionary and it is just the first time that I am publicly defined so.
Before accepting my being visionary I went through a number of life-changing experiences: starting the Group of Lecce with some fellow visionary colleagues, being invited to join the Bretton Woods Committee, walking a spiritual journey and meeting many extraordinary mentors, attending three A-fests in a row and the first Mindvalley U (and this year, again!), stretching my finances – in a way I would have never imagined – and standing mostly out of my comfort zone. I was already forty – and a single mom – when it all started – several years ago. It happened gradually, it was sort of re-prioritizing my entire life, step by step. And setting myself free.
Do you realize how much of our freedom of expression is limited by self-censorship?
Now, I cannot say I have arrived somewhere. Maybe I have just stopped in some big station, and waiting for the train to move forward, to the next one. It’s all about who you become along the way: yourself, or Your-True-Self.
In my case, it is about becoming visionary (or plain foolish :-)))
By the way, I love this quote, it is from a conversation between Alice and her father:
