LIVORNO. October 14, 2022. At the Goldoni Theater in Livorno, the boys and girls who graduated with 100/100 a few months earlier are awarded. An event that winks at America but here, instead of the campus, the best youth parades between the stage and the velvets. In the newsroom, we look for a Livornese who made it, who has achieved something important and who through his experience is able to speak to young people, somehow making them look a little beyond Chioma and the Calambrone bridge.
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The name of Marco Benvenuti comes to mind, who passed away last week at only 50 years old: he is established, Duetto is already a global giant, he remained connected to his city, he is young, pop and dandy at the same time. Too bad he lives in Las Vegas and the time zone is not exactly on our side since we are a daily newspaper and the piece has to come out the next day. And moreover, it is already late afternoon. We try to contact him anyway without much hope. The first message is at 4:53 pm, five minutes pass and he replies. After explaining to him that the call/testimony would be needed within a couple of hours, he is a bit hesitant, but accepts anyway. “I’ll get home and do it.”
For us, it is already a victory. The piece will be there. But what he sends us, even more reread today that he is gone, is revealing of a concrete and dreamer man, free and visionary, capable with example, courage and a bit of madness to achieve what reason may seem impossible. And the Libertas Livorno 1947 project, which perhaps he already had in mind back then, is the last shot scored, undoubtedly the one he cared about the most. “What to do after high school? My advice – Marco replies in that article published the next day in which there is a lot of his design – is to dream and look at the world. The perfect job does not exist, the obsession with money or a high salary will never make you take the leap in quality. Every opportunity must be evaluated by answering the question: ‘What do I learn?'”
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“Learning means many things, of course education matters especially if specialized, but it is not everything. You can learn languages, ways of living, working, understanding the changes in the world. But if success is defined only monetarily, you can find yourself in a vicious circle that does not make you grow. Failure is sometimes the best teacher. It is not rhetoric to say that you learn more from mistakes than from successes. It is how you take the blows that life deals you that makes the difference: you can stay down or get up. Because going against what is easier and familiar can open doors previously unimaginable. For example, when I worked at the Four Seasons in Chicago, I was offered a front desk manager position at the Four Seasons in Milan. Everything seemed perfect: secure job, in Italy, close to family affections, in short all those things that make you feel safe. I instead refused and went to Cornell to do two years of master’s. Today I am where I am because I made that difficult decision and somehow contrary to our culture and custom.”
And finally: This is why I can tell you that sometimes to achieve a goal it can be useful to take less traveled paths, apparently less comfortable. But the important thing is to keep walking in one direction. The one you feel inside you. Doing everything with passion, I would almost say with love. And it is not said that everything will go well. Also because knowing it in advance has little taste. This is why to you, Livornese students graduated in 2022, I say good luck, the world is waiting for you. And keep dreaming.”