Nostalgia is the way the mind rewrites the past to make it better than it was. Stefano calls it a trap because it operates subtly: it does not say "go back," it says "it was better before" — and this conviction prevents you from investing in the present. If it had been truly perfect, you would never have left. The past you long for is not the real past; it is a version edited by your brain.
What Stefano says about the nostalgia trap
From Letter 01 — Here we go again
It's not meant for you, really it's not meant for anyone. I've been writing this kind of stuff for years, in places where no one knows me, at tables where no one sits with me, in cities I change before I can call them home.
I've felt this distance for as long as I can remember.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
If you're not guided by your vision of the future, you stay clinging to the emotions of the past. And your personality, instead of pushing you forward, drags you back. To where you've already been. To where you don't want to return but where it feels safe, at home, in a familiar place.
Last week I told you about beginnings. About waves seen, caught, and let go before they ever reached shore. About the problem that's never outside.
From Letter 03 — The price no one wants to pay
And every time you choose that path, you'll wake up six months later in the same place as before. With the same hunger. With the same distance from what you want to become.
But it wasn't the growth that changed me. It was the awareness of something I had never seen before.
From Letter 04 — Week 4 of 54 — Happiness is a habit
And every time I got there, happiness lasted three days. Then the emptiness returned. Then the hunger returned. Then that feeling in your chest returned, telling you "it's not enough, it's still not enough."
The day after the exit with NoLimits-Ad I worked all day. Because everything before that was just warm-up. But even after, the emptiness was there. Different, but there.
From Letter 05 — Week 5 of 54 — The real cancer
One night, in a hotel in a city whose name I don't remember, I wrote a sentence in my notebook, in a single line.
Every morning, before taking my phone, I sit and ask myself two questions.
From Letter 06 — Week 6 of 54 — Monkey mind
I opened my phone before I even put my feet on the ground.
I call it, for as long as I can remember, restlessness.
From Letter 07 — Week 7 of 54 — The art of defining your boundaries
One evening in a hotel, I don't even remember which city, and this already says something, I noticed something banal: I was living a life that from the outside seemed enormous and from the inside was generic.
Generic like a hotel room: clean, functional, identical to all the others. You sleep there and tomorrow you don't remember being there.
From Letter 08 — Week 8 of 54 — Those who don't come down from the mountain
I was in a village up in the mountains, at the foot of the Himalayas, the greatest border that exists. (read the old letter if you don't remember what border means ;) )
If the answer is I don't remember, we're in the same column.
From Letter 09 — Week 8 of 54 — Those Who Don't Come Down from the Mountain
I was in a village up in the mountains, at the foot of the Himalayas, the greatest boundary that exists. (read the previous letter here if you don't remember what boundary means ;) )
I remembered, while watching them, an eight-year-old boy.
From Letter 10 — Week 9 of 54 — The music we keep inside
▎ Richard Williams had written a seventy-eight-page plan for his daughters' lives before they were born.
Not when they were seven years old. Not when they were two years old. Before they were born.
From Letter 11 — Week 10 of 54 — The Man on the Roof
I arrived from São Paulo a few days ago — and before that from the mountains of India. I wrote to you last week about a music inside that doesn't play (reread it, if you don't remember), and one thing I know about myself is: my music plays in movement. Movement is the way. Stopping means quitting.
He arrives before all the others. Always. At seven he's already on the roof — the roof of a building that doesn't exist yet, exposed rebar sticking out of concrete, wooden planks, no protection, as if he were immortal.
From Letter 12 — Week 11 of 54 — The traffic light
I'm writing to you again from Buenos Aires, last week here, soon I'll return to Italy to the warmth (finally, because here it's winter).
Yesterday, while going to a little shop to buy mate, I crossed the street on red without thinking about it.
From Letter 13 — Week 12 of 54 — Head on the Pillow
And usually there's only one way this ends. You open Instagram and scroll for an hour, until you fall asleep in worse shape than before.
That night, the concept that got under my skin was the answer to a question I'd left you with a few weeks ago — one I'd been keeping in my pocket. I'll ask it again, so you don't have to remember it: is it right to settle, or do you always have to raise the bar?
From Letter 14 — Week 13 of 54 — The Punishment
But when I got there, the morning after I woke up, like always, before everyone else, opened my laptop in a house where there was no one to wake, and worked. Like any other Tuesday.
And after a while something strange happened. The children who were rewarded started drawing less. The ones who received nothing kept going like before, for the pleasure of it. The others didn't — the reward had switched something off. They had stopped drawing out of love, and were only drawing in relation to the prize.