Tonino Bello adds, “He, who hopes walks on, does not flee! He is embodied in history! He builds the future, does not just wait for it! He has the determination of the fighter, not the resignation of the unarmed man. He has the passion of the seer, not the dejected air of one who lets himself be carried away. He changes history, he does not endure it!"

It is said that “at the age of sixty-seven Thomas Edison, during a dinner with his family, received the news that his research and production center had caught fire. Edison ran to the scene of the fire and saw the empire in which he had invested his whole life burning before his eyes. To his son traumatized by the scene, he said the words that remained famous: Run to call your mother and your friends. They will never have the opportunity to see such a thing again.  To his astonished son standing by him she added: Do not worry. Everything is fine. We just got rid of some junk.

The next day he went back to work and told a reporter that he did not feel too old to not try starting over again. The fire had destroyed his life's work, but not his spirit. Three weeks after the fire, the Edison plant was operational, albeit partially. Within a month, it was already producing new products. The loss had been nearly a million dollars of that time. Edison made nearly ten million that same year” (see La storia di Thomas Edison).

Nietzsche said that man's greatness consists in accepting and loving the destiny that is reserved for him and from which he cannot escape, because it is the only one that he can fully realize.

This means learning to accept what cannot be changed, because it is the beginning of wisdom and allows us to understand how much we can have the courage to change, transforming what we have to do into what we can do. And, do it at our best.

Oscar Wilde would comment: “It is always worth asking questions, but not always waiting for answers”, recalling that, “When you stop saying what could be fascinating, you also stop thinking about it”.

According to the Stoics we are as dogs tied to a moving car - with history -, who have two options. Fighting with the crazy idea of ​​gaining control, pointing the paws, refusing with force at every step to be dragged, or smiling, enjoying the journey and freely welcoming what comes from wherever it comes, so that at the end the conductor takes us exactly where we need to go.

Unfortunately, this is not possible for everyone, when external influences, such as wars, famines, plagues, all of which reduce our room for acting. But hope, even if it escapes from the tombs, as an Italian poet says, never dies in the heart of those who have the courage to keep hoping.

Hope is to understand in what direction history is going. Actually, at the end, even though we are not always given the possibility to choose what happens in our life, we can always choose how to react, how to work on it and give our contribution so that history itself recovers its authentic path that same one we have discovered and accepted as ours.