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.

(Big deal, you'll think. But wait.)

Empty street, red light, and I crossed.

I didn't decide it, I didn't reason about it, I didn't look to see if someone else went first. I just glanced right, glanced left, and crossed.

Nothing special. Except that, while I was halfway across, I noticed a detail: behind me, there were two people standing waiting for the green. And the exact moment I crossed, they followed me.

When I reached the sidewalk across, I started laughing, because I remembered how many times I'd been the one standing at a traffic light thinking too long about whether to wait for green or cross... until someone else gave me "the go-ahead."

Let me tell you this properly, because here we're talking about free will, about actions that weigh on our entire life. Because you know, it's never just a traffic light... it's everything behind the real problem.

There was a period — years, not days — when I, at a red light, on foot, with the street completely empty, almost never crossed.

I felt it, you know, that it was bullshit. Inside I thought: maybe I should cross, it's safe, I'm not hurting anyone. But I stayed there, with the decision to cross already made in my head — clear, final — but my feet wouldn't move an inch.

(I know how it sounds: someone who has a crisis of conscience at a pedestrian crossing should have more serious problems. Bear with me another moment, because the serious problem is coming now.)

Then he always arrived. The guy. Anyone — earbuds in his ears, backpack on his shoulders, the look of someone who has more important things than a traffic light. He'd arrive, wouldn't even slow down, and cross on red as if the rule, for him, had never been written.

And I, at that precise moment, would unblock myself. "Ah, see? He's doing it, I'll do it too." And I'd cross. Right behind, glued to his back.

Exactly where I wanted to get twenty seconds earlier — except I got there later, and I got there because he told me to. Not me.

And you know, that traffic light, even though it didn't seem like a problem, was my entire problem.

Because every decision of ours hides behind it a series of behaviors and habits that prevent us from changing and being better.

And in fact, I realized that I didn't do that thing just at intersections.

I did it everywhere. I had the decision already in my pocket — clear, right, mine — and I stood still waiting for someone else to make it first.

I waited for the partner to say "I think it makes sense." I waited for the one a step ahead of me who had already made the same exact move, so I could say "ah, see, it can be done."

I waited for permission. Some scrap of permission from someone, about something I had already decided inside, by myself, and even first.

That's the thing that drove me crazy. Not the traffic light. The fact that I have the brain to understand by myself what's right for me — I have it, it works, I know how to do the analysis — and then I outsource to the first stranger who passes the job of giving me the green light. As if my decision, alone, wasn't worth enough. As if I always needed someone else's signature at the bottom of the page to say "ok, you can go."

I wrote these words in 2022:

"I feel decisive, often I feel like I really know what the right thing to do is. But then I get blocked, I stop... and I always wait for someone to give me the ok to proceed in my direction."

And then, at the bottom, a line thrown there like a promise. I still find it, with the same date:

▎ I choose for myself. I don't wait for anyone anymore.

Nice, right? Too bad that, at the time, it wasn't true at all.

It was one of those promises you write at night, with the conviction of finally having understood yourself, and the next day you're back there, on the edge of the same sidewalk, waiting for the guy with the earbuds. It was written by someone who still didn't know how to cross alone. Someone who gave himself courage on paper because he couldn't find the courage in the street.

And here I have to tell you the thing I made you take this whole journey for.

Yesterday, at that traffic light, I crossed without thinking about it. Without waiting for anyone. Without even noticing while I was doing it.

And you know, the victory isn't the traffic light: it's the ability to decide without observing or waiting for others.

Three years later.

I'm not telling you that now I'm the free man who decides everything for himself. I still have a lot of sidewalks where I stand planted watching if someone else goes first. On some I'm still the same as before.

But that line written at night three years ago, which at the time was a complete lie, today is a truth.

And you know what the beautiful thing is? It's not that now I always cross first — that, alone, doesn't count much. The beautiful thing is something else, and it's what I understood three years and one traffic light later: that we'll always have a traffic light in front of us. You never stop crossing.

Because when you live with the hunger to grow, to improve every day, you'll always build another traffic light ahead. You cross one and another pops up in front of you, wider, with more traffic. Always.

And that's fine. That's the challenge.

So don't feel stupid if you have a traffic light in front of you that you can't cross. You're not. You just have to accept the challenge, understand what your traffic light is, and start crossing it. Because everything changes with action. Only with that.

Between saying and doing, you know what the saying goes: there's an ocean in between. I tell you that's not true. Between saying and doing there's only and exclusively the doing. No ocean. You just cross and that's it.

Taking the risk. And taking responsibility — because in the end we're the ones who choose, we're the ones who live our life minute by minute, on our piece of road. And we're the ones who pay the consequences, even when we're wrong, even when we cross and realize it would have been better to stay put. The one who crosses pays, not the one watching from the other side. Never once has someone else signed off on screwing up my life.

So we might as well cross when we decide to. Without waiting for anyone's go-ahead. Without following whoever started first just because they started first. Without permission, without judgment and even without anyone's help — because that guy with the earbuds, whatever face he has today, isn't crossing for you. He's just crossing his own road.

I'll leave you this week's question on the edge of that sidewalk.

What's the thing you've already decided — clear, right, yours — and for which you're still standing there, waiting for someone else to cross first?

Fifty-four attempts to become better. This is the eleventh. Best, Stefano.

Whatever your traffic light is, don't wait for anyone.

Until next week.

Fifty-four attempts to become better.
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