“All of us every day, when we get out of bed, we have enormous power: we can choose whether to be a help for someone or a problem.”
A caress to the heart hardened by the individualism of everyday life. This was the strange effect of the book by Iacopo Melio (Iacopo with the I recommend, otherwise he could became a bit upset), once the reading is finished. So much true that we immediately read it twice to appreciate its contents more, and get a breath of fresh air, without pietism or commiseration.
The writing is pleasant, smooth and very youthful in syntax and vocabulary, but this does not invalidate the message, making it even more effective. Despite the victory of a no-sense lottery, read this rare disease, and inability by health institution, just to use an euphemism, Iacopo manages to tell his life with a mixture of irony and seriousness and teasing, without crying on him, but rather showing resilience to every single event.
A boy of twenty’s like so many others, made NOT special by his physical situation, who like his same ages guys dreams, eats, gets pissed off and becomes an asshole. In short, a person like many others. And the claim of the state of “so-called normality” is the author’s main claim. At the end of the day, aren’t we all equal in a different way? So what is the meaning of creating fake categories? A concept as simple as it is alien to many of us, starting from who write these lines, that if only it was metabolized in the right way, it could have revolutionary repercussions in each other lives.
The second pillar of the story is love for life. Learn to appreciate small daily actions and take nothing for granted, because there are people who would pay gold to take a barefoot walk, to go for a coffee with a friend without worrying about the access ramps, to take a bath by the sea alone and a thousand other experiences A hymn to life without any will to be, because being able to make very high jumps is not for everyone.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Iacopo Melio, I do high jumps, Mondadori, Milano, 2018
