A frank and passionate discussion about great themes of adolescence. On Thursday 9 May the high school students of Barbara Melzi in Legnano met Daniele Mencarelli, poet and writer, who became known to the general public thanks to Netflix series “Everything asks for salvation”, based on his novel which won the Young Witch Award
The students read his books and many profound reflections and questions emerged from the debate that positively affected the writer he spoke about redemption and beauty.
Mencarelli spoke about his difficult past strongly marked by addiction. As a boy he used drugs for a long period until he became an alcoholic. Then he began working in a cooperative linked to the Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital which allowed him to be reborn. He started writing and in 2001 he published “Bambino Gesù, Pediatric Hospital”, to put childhood illness and the desperation of hospitalized children on paper. From there he never stopped telling stories, also retracing his difficult moments: at the age of 20 he was subjected to a Tso and ended up in a psychiatric hospital and the fiction was born from this experience Everything asks for salvation.” «Writing is an enormous moral responsibility – he told the boys – it is not a career; the writer is a witness and he lives as a witness.”
Mencarelli speaks to teenagers with great respect: «I respect your generation more than that of your parents: you live in a digital world that allows a series of training, also through information that did not exist before: the digital age – he said without hesitation – has made you better also in the ability to express your fragilities and I have full solidarity with you because yours is the most difficult age: it is the age of pressure in which everything is an obligation and in which feelings explode. I consider myself a survivor, you have the opportunity to do better.”
Adolescence is one of the most important phases of life: «The teenage brain is like a beautiful block of clay, it changes shape and what you encounter is that you read will become a cardinal part of your life. But it is also easy to get lost because the magnitude of what we experience is so great that we risk losing our senses.”
Mencarelli lost consciousness many times but found a way to get back up: «For a while I hid my addiction then with alcohol it became evident – he said – it lasted from 17 to 27 years, but the hardest were the last 4. Also Today the problem of addictions is evident, but the approach to substances has changed. It is not true that we consume more but we no longer do so out of non-conformity. You consume substances alone to calm anxiety: maybe you start with them benzodiazepinesValium taken from the parents’ pantry and I saw kids end up in the community. For these medicines there must always be a doctor’s prescription: the concept of self-therapy leads to the development of addictions to legal substances.”
The discussion also covered profound themes such as escape from oneself and friendship: «Seek to build friendships that are present and available in all souls of your life and look for beauty: your generation will have to rebuild a pact with nature to bring back the poppies that are so missed.”
