Beware of the wolf! Overcoming the fear of the unknown

Little Red Riding Hood and many other fairy tales make us grow up with the fear of the unknown.

The fear of what we do not know, like that of those who enter a forest, is real, objective, it is perceived and risks blocking all our actions.

However, fear must also be embraced and understood: it is part of us, of our culture, but we cannot be commanded and blocked by this demon.

We are afraid when there is uncertainty, and that fear can only be overcome with the courage to move forward and live the present serenely.

If we were to write a fable set in the present day, instead of the wolf we would find a virus, and instead of the naive Little Red Riding Hood we would be the protagonists, who travel into the unknown.

That Little Red Riding Hood should have been more careful, she shouldn’t have stopped to pick strawberries and chase butterflies.

The story leads us to live with feelings of guilt for what we have accomplished, but we cannot continue to live thinking and rethinking what happened: what was the fault of poor Little Red Riding Hood if she came across the wolf?

Here, let’s not stop to look for the guilty and the “infectors” … and if we get sick, let’s look at the healing, at the solution.

We cannot think of being blocked by the fear of the unknown: stopping living cannot be the solution.

Looking for a happy ending

But after the danger, fairy tales always have a happy ending: the wolf had been defeated by the hunter, and we slept more peacefully.

Not that we like the bloody end of the story… but we have to believe that a happy ending will come for us too.

We do not know what we will meet … “Del doman non v’è certezza” (We cannot be certain about the future), wrote Lorenzo the Magnificent, but he also invited us to grasp happiness in the present: “Chi vuol esser lieto, sia” (If you want to be happy, do it).

We cannot give up enjoying the present because we are blocked by future change.

And so we continue to live, picking strawberries along the path, but without going too far into the woods, because it is not the right time to take risks.

So we wish you all to get out of the nightmare of the unknown soon.

We remain calm but aware, without being commanded by fear.