Hot bread returns “to the center of the village.”
Today I saw an old white Fiat 850 van, with a red diagonal stripe “on the front” and an iron roof rack.
It was parked there, in silence, but inside me it “rang out loudly.” It took me back to “village Wednesdays,” near Accumoli… when Stefano — from the bakery — would drive up to the hamlets with his recognizable horn, always the same, always on time… with his long white coat, red sweater, and “old style” white fabric cap (or, at most, one of those “improvised” hats… so as not to look untidy).
A sound that didn’t disturb… but announced.
It was an appointment, a ritual: in the sun, in the rain… he never missed it.
He knew well his “role” and his importance for the community: his kilometers kept the hamlets united, erased the distances. He perfectly marked the start of the day, called together those in the garden or those who had just woken up.
It wasn’t just bread: it was always the same person who remembered you, who came to meet you.
Stefano didn’t “sell,” he served… he understood. He remembered who had asked for more eggs, who couldn’t go out, who was waiting just for that moment to see someone and feel less alone… who always asked for the same information about festivals in nearby villages…
He knew the hands and stories of the people. And those people — often elderly, “tough” but alone — felt seen, heard, understood.
Every sound (I can still hear the click of the purse opening),
every gesture (those hands marked by time handing over the blue-violet 10,000 lire),
every word, every delivery (I can distinguish the sound of the knife cutting the egg carton)… it was empathy, a familiar rhythm.
And today, in the time of haste and algorithms, thinking back to him did me good.
Because it’s precisely from there that everything, now, asks me to converge: towards a more human way of being (professionals, consultants, coaches, communicators) and of listening.
Because to CONVERGE means:
- nothing has been wasted, no detour was useless, no skill is foreign to me;
- becoming a single gesture (with a thousand nuances);
- transforming multiplicity into unified presence;
- embracing everything (art, craft, pain, talent, your roots, “the trembling earth,” memory, body, silence, dialect, anger, care, failure… fear);
- “catching fire in complexity”… and it’s a “good” fire, the melting point where all knowledge dissolves and becomes (transformative) energy;
- uniting mind, heart, vision, and action;
- being simply unrepeatable (not something more);
- building your new, intimate… personal language.
When everything converges, a language “all your own” is born.
A language made of visual metaphors, strong and intense images, deep narratives, listening rituals, humanistic aesthetics, real and social impact… of dialects.
And that language no longer needs to be explained because by now you feel it and live it.
Those who meet you recognize it, even without fully understanding it… because they feel its vibrations.
Everything you are, now asks you not to be separated anymore.
Everything you have learned, now wants to become a tool.
Everything that has passed through you, now wants to become language.
Everything you have served, now wants to serve through you.
There is no more time to “be halfway.”
There is no more need to divide.
It’s the hour of convergence.
It’s the hour of the work.
Because to CONVERGE above all means to REALLY SEE THE OTHER PERSON: it’s what holds all your work together.
- Coaching
- Copywriting
- Identity design
- Narration
- Photography
- Packaging
- Art and communication
- Strategy
- Ikigai
- Language of the territory
- Personal and collective history
In such a competitive and fast-paced context, the only way to interpret complexity is precisely to make your skills converge into a single integrated approach… able to “embrace the other person in their entirety (and complexity, of course).
And this ability is the beating heart, the common thread that holds everything together.
Because without this “true gaze,” everything else is technique: it works but it doesn’t transform.
When you “really see,”
• you don’t project but reflect;
• you don’t impose but resonate;
• you don’t build “for” but together.
It is in this “gaze” that the possibility of change is born, trust, the desire to evolve. This is how a consultancy becomes an alliance, a project becomes a story, a strategy becomes human.
From the village square to the country road.
Wednesday at 08:30 with its faces and that urgency for bread, that vitality that only real contact can give you.
I remember those looks well… and I “make them mine” every day…
Because there are those who bring bread and those who bring ideas, visions, words… change.
But the real question is: how do you bring them?
And above all: why?
