Winner
Alessia Cazzetta, from Senago, Italy, chose an article from the Well section headlined “To Enjoy Life More, Embrace Anticipation” and wrote:
To enjoy life more, embrace anticipation
“Looking forward to something can be almost as good as experiencing it” this is the first sentence of the article “To enjoy life more, embrace anticipation” and it is the one that has remained most etched in my mind, after reading it I thought: is it true?.
I went back in time, precisely during my second year of middle school, my Italian teacher was reading a poem by one of the greatest Italian writers: Giacomo Leopardi.
The title was “Il sabato del villaggio” (Saturday night in the village) and talked about how extremely tempting the idea of Sunday was, but not so much Sunday itself.
[In the poem,] we are at the beginning of 1800 in a small village, it is a quiet Saturday evening, everyone is happily waiting for the next day, the day of rest: the children cackle, the maidens sing, and the workers return from work laughing. It is the happiest day of the week and that is because the next day the passing of the hours will bring more and more sadness, and everyone will start thinking about Monday’s work.
I remember thinking during that reading that there was nothing more true: waiting for a joyful event brings us more joy than the event itself.
So I ask myself, is it worth it? We live life waiting for happy moments in a sort of dreaming trance, but then, when those events finally arrive, we forget to actually live them. Is this what we have to aspire to? Shouldn’t we just stop fantasizing about the future and start embracing the present?