Imagine

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti

On 8 December 1980, I was two and a half years old, and the family was probably putting up Christmas trees while John Lennon was murdered in New York. Too young to experience the world’s reaction, but the dismay and grief spanned the decades, so much so that I seem to cherish the memory of that cursed day.

During this time, I have been lucky enough to be able to closely follow the experience of reading aloud to boys and girls. I am gathering ideas, emotions, to be able to tell you about one of the most moving experiences I have ever had, perhaps among those that give me the most hope for a better world, because I am now realising that with the right care, it is possible.

There was a thought that crossed my mind as I observed the participation, the changing expressions and the wonder in the eyes of the little boys and girls, in a space where even the world seemed to have stopped to watch: I imagined how they might have reacted, if that same person who was reading them a fairy tale, with that same gentleness, with the posture of someone who is discovering a little piece of the world with them, had read these words, making those same pauses to give them time to dream, to respond, to imagine:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Perhaps, we should let the boys and girls enter that world that John Lennon invited us to imagine. Because they would know how to make sense of these words.