Earthquakes and heartbreaks: the bittersweet longing and idealism of someone who left Irpinia
According to reliable sources, I was a career-oriented kid who had no intention of settling for just one dream job. They say I used to explain my “plan” of getting multiple degrees and wanting to cover a variety of positions in different fields.
It wasn’t until later that I found my drive for politics and leadership – that came out after my passion for writing and before my discovery of project management – but you can definitely tell the spirit has always been there. Proofs of my first attempts to be on the frontline against inequalities date back to primary school, but my interest in politics as a thing sparked in middle school when I created a fictional party (that was actually a Whatsapp group) that had the ambition to make Italy work better (because the news and the satire tv programs I used to watch suggested that something was broken in my country). For a while I stopped wanting this, thinking that diplomacy was a better suit for someone who would have never been likable enough to gain votes from citizens (my intrusive thoughts suggested so during high school) but the experience at the ELA Summer School relaunched my dream of becoming a politician and made me see the potential of aspiring to be one at the EU level. Now what I see myself becoming in ten years is what I already used to envision ten years ago.
As I move forward with my life and career, my vision about how to get to that point and how to balance a political career with my other aforementioned interests is getting clearer: I want to take around five more years to complete my education (with multiple degrees, as a certain kid prophesied) to deepen my knowledge in EU, peace and conflict and gender studies, human rights, communication and mental health, all while carrying on with my work as a project manager (in the human rights education and youth empowerment field) that helps me master the ability to observe problems and think about solutions. As soon as I feel mature enough to put this expertise into the political arena, you’ll finally see me in an electoral list. Throughout the entire process, I don’t see myself putting aside the poems and stories that I write: contrarily, I was recently persuaded that I should reach out to publishers. I can see that happening in the near future. Learning literature, we easily find many men who were both poets and politicians, so I joke about bringing back that trend – and doing it as a woman!
In conclusion, it’s hard for me to answer the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” because I have too much to say and I fear the judgment of those who believe that having too many ideas equals having no idea at all. I might just reply that what I want to be when I grow up is myself. Would that be too much?
Alessia Ruta on 14/05/2024