Once upon a time there was a chubby little boy, rosy cheeks, straight brown hair with a “side parting” … the perfect conditions to be nicknamed “Braciola”.
He was five years old, maybe six… and had his very own pedal tractor.
It wasn’t blue, like the “grown-ups’” one, but red and green and looked more like a “caterpillar” than a farm vehicle.
Yet he drove it with the pride of someone who knew where he was going: through the curves of the little square, “shifting gears” by miming the gesture with his right hand on the “vertical plastic exhaust pipe”… he circled around the two trees, in the heart of the village, and every lap was a dress rehearsal, every pedal brake a declaration of intent that already left its mark (for sure, on those black and white fake mosaic tiles, the “skid marks” were clearly visible).
The blue tractor, the real one, was there… sometimes parked but very often I sensed it, in the distance, near the viewpoint, coming toward me… Huge, made of iron, noisy, “puffing” and as hot as an oven in summer: just climbing on it – even just the rusty trailer – was enough to feel the engine pushing (and your heart beating faster).
It was a rough, heavy, uncomfortable dream. But it was a dream, damn it!
And that vision stayed there, even as I grew up.
Only now “I DON’T DRIVE TRACTORS”… maybe I “fix them” because “I help people understand WHERE they are, WHERE they want to go and if, to get there… they want to DRIVE A TRACTOR”.
Who are you, really?
Where are you going?
What tools do you need to drive your own road, the real one?
Today my work is still an uphill climb “up the hayloft”… or a ruinous descent “down the pacine” (across the steep, cultivated fields, where the earth was turned and you’d find the “breccole”, in dialect).
I work with people and organizations who are searching for their direction, their identity, their voice. I do it with method, listening, and a good dose of concrete imagination (yes, it exists).
- There’s humanistic coaching, which brings you back to yourself.
- There’s ikigai, which rekindles the meaning of what you do every day.
- There’s identity design, which brings together who you are, what you offer, and what others see.
- There’s business storytelling, because every project has a story that deserves to be told well (respecting its own timing for maturation).
- There’s copywriting, to turn all this into living words, that reach out and leave a mark.
It’s never “just a tractor”. And you know it.
You know that behind every dream, memory, or vision there’s something deeper: an intuition, a desire, a way of being in the world that belongs to you. And maybe, like me as a child, you still can’t describe it but you recognize it “by the sound of the engine”.
Listen to that voice.
Find the courage to give it a shape and a direction.
Because sometimes you don’t need to change roads: you just need to learn to drive “that tractor” you already have inside you…
I don’t know if yours, like mine, also has a “trailer”: it’s a responsibility to carry the load to its destination, to make sure the load “arrives safely”, that it doesn’t arrive damaged…
It means TAKING CHARGE… it’s up to you to understand whether to CARRY A WEIGHT or TRANSPORT VALUE.
If you feel it’s time to (re)start your journey… count on me!
I’ll be by your side, sitting on the armrest or, if you prefer, you’ll find me “behind you”, sitting on the trailer, legs dangling… but with the smile “of someone who knows where they’re going”
P.S.
After the earthquake of August 24, 2016, Poggio Casoli, half of it, no longer exists (like almost all the other hamlets of Accumoli – Amatrice and Arquata): the little square and the adjacent Church are piles of stones… The tractor, today, is no longer blue and no longer carries bales of hay… but materials to be unloaded for a crumbling reconstruction…
And, “the Braciola”? What happened to him?
Of that child, today… I keep THE EYES and that damned urge to IMAGINE, VISUALIZE “something that doesn’t exist yet”, to DESIRE something new… AND TO LIVE IT ACCORDINGLY.
I don’t know if I’m a dreamer, a nostalgic… or an incurable romantic.
What I do know is that I NEED a DREAM (...to LIVE).
So nurture it…. your dream because, one day… even when it might be “too late”,
if even just the memory brings a smile to your face… you’ll start again from here for a “new tomorrow” or, even better… “a new you”.
