Luca GastaldelloTo tell you a little bit of "my history" I have decided to start from the little village in which I was born, because the happy years my childhood have been very important for the formation of my personality and my way to be.
Sant'Anna Morosina at that time had around seven hundred inhabitants and almost all of them knew personally everybody. I didn't live in center, but on the outskirt of the village... And I still remember as it was yesterday when I used to ride my bicycle and go home through the little white path of soil and stones. There were everywhere cultivated fields and the people was cordial, generous of smiles and good person at heart.
The house where I grew up it was big and behind it there was a small farm with calves, pigs, goats, rabbits, hens, turkeys, etc. Since I was small it was necessary that I gave my contribution in the family and so, together with my parents, I fed the animals, I cleaned the stall and I sprinkled the vegetable patch.
When it was time to reap the hay I drove the tractor while my father, my mother and my uncles loaded the wagon. My parents, with their example, have been my first teachers of life and for this I feel grateful and I want to thank them.
Since I was small I have always had a depth respect for "the sacred", that I lived with simplicity in the family and in the village. My friends and I spent the afternoons running after a ball or riding aimlessly in bicycle searching for some adventure or some mischief to accomplish... for then to escape hurriedly! How beautiful times, how many memories!
This life in the country so simple, made of small daily actions articulated by the natural rhythms of the seasons, has moulded me deeply and those "healthy habits", after sometime, have been transformed in "internal quality."
I graduated in 1991 with good votes in technical studies. Subsequently I worked as technical draftsman until the first great turn of my life: the military service!
In these twelve months I discovered a Luca that I didn't know and I met hundreds of people from all the regions of Italy, that showed me the thousand faces, cultures and contradictions of Italy.
Subsequently the destiny of life brought me in contact with the "path of the Joga Kundalini", of the meditation and of the alternative medicine. In these four so intense and meaningful years I discovered the existence of "an internal world" that I thought it didn't exist. Subsequently it was the Antroposofia of Rudolf Steiner to explain it to me in a clear and scientific way.
I was born the second time at 24 years old, September 9th 1997 around the 10.00am, when I decided "to close a door" and "to open a big front door". I was born again in the instant in which I cut the "umbilical cord" that it held me attached to the world of the "false security".
I will be very happy to tell in person this "fragment" of my life, to all those people who "already hold the scissors in their hands” and know that "we are not born free, but we can become free" making coherent choices.
The first footsteps in my "New Life" were uncertain and not without doubts, anxiety and fears. Behind me I had left the working and productive world with its "false security" but what laid in front of me?
The most absolute void!
No job, no economic certainty and above all no idea of what I could do in this my New Life.
It was in this moment of desperation that I wondered: "what do I really like to do? What gives me joy? Which are my talents? "
Since I was small, I manifested a good predisposition to the Artistic Creativeness that I expressed inventing strange artefacts, wood constructions, painting, writing etc... But now, in this crucial point of my life, how could I really transform my talents into productivity?
The answer arrived later around one month when “The Sky" made me meet a girl Raffaella, that was exsperiencing the same I was. So together, on two feet, with the enthusiasm of two young people that are thrown in the void with the hope that "Someone or Something" picks them up and don't let them fall, we launched ourselves in this new adventure and we enrolled in the academy Aldo Balgero for teachers Waldorf's formation.
I didn't want to be a teacher, because I didn't consider myself capable. I didn't have any component of my family that was teaching and to say the truth I didn't even have ever desired it.
But in that School we painted, we carved, we played, we sang, we recited, there were lessons of eurhythmics, gymnastic Bootmer, art of the word, manual works, horticulture, philosophy and still more! I wanted to practice my talents and so I enrolled.
Only the following year I matured the decision to enrol also for the second year of the seminar and it was at that time that I decided to become a Waldorf teacher.
I studied very hard in that years and I succeeded in graduating at the Waldorf school and also at the teacher's college, getting in this way the titles required by law that would allow me to begin to teach.
They were intense and fervent years of great stimulation, so much that the Luca that went out of that academy was not the same Luca that had entered two years before. It was a true formation: human, artistic, pedagogic and professional.
At the academy Aldo Balgero I met Elena, my actual companion and just after one month we began to live together. This is probably the most important encounter of my life! We had a lot of things in common and, above all, the passion for the circus and the juggling.
The following years I began to teach at the steiner school of Citadella and the class that was entrasted to me it was composed of 16 splendid children six, seven years old. Elena concluded the studies at the academy and the following year began to teach in the same school where I was.
After a short time Elena and I, together with other parents of the school Aurora, we founded the "Circus Aurora" and we began to involve other parents, boys and friends preparing a series of shows of circus-theater. The creativeness of the group was infecting and so we began to introduce our shows to the parties of the school and wherever they asked us to bring some joy, lightness and love.
Together with the children and the parents of my class I spent eight marvelous, unforgettable and unique years. With my pupils I shared deep and involving experiences of life and human, artistic and scientific learning. I fell in love with teaching and together with my pupils I ri-discovered the physics, the chemistry, the astronomy, the biology, the history, the geography, Italian literature, the mathematics and the arts. I can say that in 1999, when I began teaching, I was no more than a "boy" and in eight years I became a "man", my pupils were "children" and they became beautiful, healthy and strong “boys".
With love and devotion I helped them to do an evolutionary step and they reciprocated the favor making me do the same jump. It was a miracle that was perpetuated day after day, year after year, a miracle made of coincidences, of meetings, of continuous surprises and adventures.
Really I don't feel to reduce everything to few lines, in a summary presentation as this, but I will be very happy to offer you a coffee and to tell you personally when we will meet and we will spend some time together. Because this is the real meaning of this letter, to know other people with whom walk the path that "it conducts to the peak".
The man that undertakes
his Climbing to the Sky,
in his heart prays
for the Bridge to form between the Sky and himself.
A Bridge
that can fill the void
that separates him from the Infinity,
a Bridge
that unifies the man to God,
the creature to his Creator.
Clearly this is only an image, because in reality "Everything is already inside us", but the image of the "Climbing to the Sky" can be useful to understand that this path uphill is walked with a certain "effort" and there is need of the others to reach the peak. No great climber has ever climbed the top of the Everest alone… Simply because it’s impossible!
This adventure of the evolution is to be lived together with others, with all those people with whom “we have in common the passion for climbing". It’s a free choice and nobody can be forced to do something that doesn't want to do or that is not ready to do!
Today, 19th December 2007, I am writing you from Melboune, city that has generously given me hospitality for about one month. At the end of the first cycle of teaching I decided to undertake a trip around the world to know "my family", I mean all those people that like me "love the Climbing", love the evolution and dream a best world, a real-utopia, a dream to live and touch with hand to realize that, after all, our dreams can really become reality (this concept today is scientifically confirmed also by the quantic physic).
In these months of trip I have met people, friends and brothers in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, New Zelanda and Australia. Each of them, with his own Being, his own evolutionary level, his own character, culture, language and vision of life has GIVEN me a LITTLE PIECE of the GREAT JIGSAW PUZZLE of LIFE.
Day after day I am discovering again something "inside" and "outside" of me. Perhaps.... these meetings.... they have been the most meaningful moments of the whole trip. Perhaps.... it’s for these moments that have made the trip!
The next stops will be Thailand and England, for then finally return in Italy, where another white page of this DIARY that is LIFE awaits me.
I believe that each of us has his own HISTORY and his own DIARY to write. I would like to hear YOUR HISTORY, because I don't believe that there are banal or boring histories are not worth telling. I WAYT FOR YOU… I COUNT ON IT…!
Luca
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