To My Son...

​In the name of the father and the mother,

In the name of the son and the holly spirit,

In the name of the fathers who created us, and the mothers who gave us birth,

In the name of the son that we are baptizing today, and the holly spirit who descended in my life two days before the 2000th birth of Jesus,

In the name of the sisters of tenderness and the brothers of the future, may they remain always by our side,

In the name of the nephews and nieces, may luck protect them from any harm,

In the name of few other people, my brothers and sisters in life, who always dwell in my heart,

In the name of all these people, I wish our son all the JOY the world can give him.

And in my name, his father, I wish for my son to never live in self-centeredness, thriftiness, greed, narrowness of mind, material and intellectual misery, humiliation, or submission. I wish him to never to be a dwarf of life!

By opposition, in my name, his father, I wish for my son to always try to live in self-giving, generosity, compassion, open mindedness, material and intellectual wealth, dignity, and freedom. I wish him to always be a giant of life!

Now that the obvious and classical wishes are said, I want to wish for my son few special things. They may seem strange and different, they may also shock few normal people, but as his father, it is my privilege to wish him anything I want out of my endless and incomparable love to him.

In my name, I would like my son to touch with his soul the true essence of life, and for that reason:

I wish him SOLITUDE, so he can enjoy the beauty and the mystery of each encounter.

I wish him NOSTALGIA, so the tenderness that flows from it softens the rigor of his logic.

I wish him VULNERABILITY, so he learns to appreciate the greatness of strength and to use it wisely.

And I wish him CURIOSITY, so during all his life, he seeks and finds, and seeks and finds again and again.

In my name, I would also like my son to live unique experiences and learn from them the true taste of life:

May he encounter DIFFICULTY, so its weight and its impact give weight and impact to his own life!

May he experience SUFFERING, so he remains molded in the reality of life and he never forgets that suffering is innate and abundant, while joy is acquired and rare!

May he know FEAR, so he spends every moment of his life in a quest for intellectual, spiritual, physical and material power, to keep away the specter of this visceral emotion, and maybe, who knows, to dominate it entirely!

And may he enjoy PASSION, so he tastes the exquisite flavor of life and realizes that it is not the days in his life that count, but the life in his days!

I especially wish for my son DISCERNMENT,

to know, in every moment, whom he can lean on and whom he needs to support,

to differentiate between dwarfs and giants,

to keep the hope and get rid of the illusions,

to strengthen his faith and lose his superstitions,

to never be pushed by his solitude towards futile crowds,

to always draw from his nostalgia a feeling of tenderness and not one of despair,

to distinguish between beauty and its illusion; create the former and forsake the latter,

to remain curious for the love of discovery and knowledge and not for vain prying,

to be able to make the difference between the necessary difficulties that he needs to overcome and the superfluous ones that he needs to ignore,

to strive for a cause and not surrender to easy life,

and to not fear except fear itself, and this latter be a generator of will and power.

I also wish him the STRENGTH to ignore, or at least despise, those who hate him, the WEAKNESS to surrender to the vulnerability of loving those who truly love him, and the WISDOM to live in peace with the others.

Above all, I wish for my son an everlasting PEACE OF MIND. I will do all in my power to provide it to him, all the time. I also wish him the INTELLIGENCE to realize that the source of his inner peace will always be the joy and peace of mind of those he loves and those who love him. I finally aspire for him the FEELING (SOUL-SENSE), the WILL and the POWER to keep trying and succeeding in providing more joy and peace of mind to the loving and loved ones!

My last wish for my son is to remember and possibly apply his father’s motto in life: “live to enjoy, the rest happens anyway”; “and whatever happens life goes on”.