Valerio: “Hey, Moreno, look at that girl, she looks pretty cute, and also her friend doesn’t look bad!”
Moreno: “You are right, but I don’t feel like getting up from this extremely comfortable chair. We just finished walking along the whole promenade.”
Valerio: “Come on, she’s really cute.”
Moreno: “You convinced me! Let’s go!”
Today was another beautiful summer’s day. Valerio and I were sitting comfortably at Ciro’s Restaurant in Mergellina, fanned by a warm wind, contemplating the Gulf of Naples, with its placid sea and beautiful girls.
We were sitting there, carefree, sipping our coffee.
It has been a good while since I had had such a wonderful feeling!
Have you ever had that feeling of pure freedom, of total relaxation, when finally, after great exertion and a lot of confusion, you attain a longed-for goal? Finally everything is clear! Finally you can rest your being in the depths of fulfillment.
It is obvious that it wasn’t always like that. The worth of that feeling, so intense and priceless, is the result of great suffering and intensive investigation!
Before coming to contemplate these beautiful days and to devote myself to the sea, to the sun, and to love, I can assure you that I passed through the worst of hells, a little like in the movie, The Shawshank Redemption.
Do you know it? It’s a movie from 1994, directed by Frank Darabont, where Andy Dufresne, sentenced to life imprisonment, had to undergo 20 years of unjust incarceration and unheard-of suffering before managing to escape. In the end he succeeded in fleeing by means of a sewer, dragging himself for 500 meters, the length of 5 football fields, through stinking sewage.
Like Andy, I found myself suffering from the age of 18 onward, without being guilty of anything at all. Suffering from an illness apparently imaginary and nameless which outwardly had nothing to do with my body’s posture.
Symptomes i complained the most were many: repeated panic attacks, generalized anxiety, chronic gastritis, hiatal hernia, an ulcer, sudden attacks of vomiting, and, to top it off, constant back pain…not to mention the physical and esthetic problems that bad posture can create.