Words and their history have always fascinated me. I am keen on finding out the origin of the sounds we interpret and use every day, often automatically, without even thinking about their meaning.
Searching around, interesting elements come up. But this is not going to be a philology course; I would just like to share with you a brief reflection that arose from the analysis of the word Easter .
We all know what Easter is: a religious festival linked to the concept of ‘resurrection’, or the act of ‘getting up’. Well, the term Easter , actually, literally means ‘to go further’.
This made me think. If you try a quick brainstorming, you will realise that this action can be interpreted in different ways and with various implications: indifference, incapacity, impatience, selfishness, superficiality or competence, patience, resilience.
I go further because of incapacity, out of boredom, or because, due to my superficiality, I do not perceive what surrounds me and often tries to draw my attention. Doing so, I risk to humiliate and injure others, but also to damage myself because with my indifference I would not seize important opportunities.
On the other hand, I may go further because I have done what I should, I have completed my task: I helped someone in need, I faced and overcame particular situations, I solved a problem.
I might even have realized that I was stuck in something that exclusively required a “forced exit”, and I decided to go further so as not to waste my energy meaninglessly. It would not be a surrender, but a change, a growth, a greater openness that makes me look further to see new horizons. I could finally dedicate myself to a new beginning, to cultivate a more fertile soil to harvest long-lasting fruits, matured thanks to the sap of experience and awareness.
Here – I said to myself – the meaning of Easter lies right here!
This year, due to the contingencies we are experiencing, more than ever we should look further in order to be able to go further.
Neither with the indifference or alienation of those who are unable to react and look ahead, like the crowd described by T. S. Eliot in “The Waste Land”: a mass of beings annihilated by the heavy burden of WWI, gazing at their feet because unable to see a future.
Nor with the anger and violence of those who feel imprisoned and impoverished by events and institutions, like J. Osborne’s characters, protagonists in the second post-war period, of “Look Back in Anger”.
Mine, ours, must be a conscious, mature and profitable transition.
The situation is paradoxically propitious: a sneaky and invisible enemy attacked us, taking us by surprise, hitting us in our weak points and in our affections.
Too easy and obvious reacting angrily, or giving up not reacting at all!
Although at the moment our vision appears limited and blurred, we cannot fail to see our future at the end of the rainbow.
This is why we must commit ourselves, we must react with creativity and resilience: we have to ‘get up’ again.
The Hamletic doubt about the meaning of life, led the protagonist of the Shakespearean tragedy to make his decision: not succumbing under the weight of the “outrageous fortune”, but reacting: “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them”. So, let’s take our “arms”, the ones we sharpen every day through learning and experiencing, remembering and treasuring events, be they past or recent, apparently trivial or relevant.
Sunday it will be a real Easter if we manage to get up, laying down the “old man” and showing the “new man” (Letters of St. Paul) who managed to go further.
#everythingwillbefine
