Questions that open doors #1: Who helped you remember who you were?

Newsletter created by Erika Marchioro

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Welcome to Questions That Open Doors.

Here you will find a question, a story, or a reflection born from observing people, relationships, and those small things that often go unnoticed.

You won't find definitive answers.

The most important questions rarely serve to close something. They serve instead to open a space for listening, to look at a situation from a different perspective, or to rediscover something we had forgotten.

Take all the time you need.

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And if a sentence stays with you beyond the end of this reading, perhaps this newsletter will have done its job.

There is a story that comes back to me every now and then: the story of Aunt Ludovica.

To be honest, she isn't a real aunt (or maybe she is?).

Aunt Ludovica was a woman who had gone through many difficulties, so much so that she found herself, at a certain point, with little money, poor health, and, because of all this, with fewer and fewer people around.

It happens, more than we like to admit: we are very good at loving those who are doing well, a little less good at staying when life gets complicated.

Getting back to the story, Aunt Ludovica had a great talent: she cooked delicacies, and she did it in a way that made recipes feel like love letters.

One day she told me she would have loved to prepare a particular octopus recipe that reminded her of her mother, but she simply couldn't afford it.

So we simply sat and talked.And then talked some more.

And more.

And more.

We talked about recipes, about life, about fishing, about fears, about dreams left suspended.

At some point we even started going fishing together.

Don't ask me why.

The best ideas in life often have no convincing explanation, only a direction.

And that direction, that day, was a river.

Between one trout and the next, meeting after meeting, Aunt Ludovica slowly began to return to herself.

Not because someone had taught her something, nor because someone had given her advice.

No one, in fact, was poking her with that fateful phrase "You need to react" — a phrase that should be abolished from the human vocabulary.

Aunt Ludovica began to bloom again because someone had stopped. Right there, there with her.

Someone had listened to her stories.

Someone had seen the person before the problem.

A scene from Tim Burton's Big Fish comes to mind.

(Spoiler): at the end of the film, the son discovers that the exaggerated stories his father had told his whole life were not mere inventions — they were the way he had found to give meaning to his own existence and to stay connected with others.

In the end, we don't remember people only for what they did.

We remember them for the stories they shared with us.

Aunt Ludovica didn't need to be fixed — she needed to be met.

And in the end, she managed to buy her octopus.

She cooked it and set the table with care, choosing the good dishes.

When we finished eating, she looked at me and said simply:"You ate our octopus." Underlining that "our" with her gaze.Ours.

Many years ago, the psychiatrist and philosopher Martin Buber wrote that there are two ways of encountering the Other.

We can experience them as an "it" or as a "you."

An "it" is a function. Cold algebra. A problem. A role.

A "you" is a person. 

The difference seems small, but it changes everything.

Some things are not born from help, but from relationship. 

And this is where a phrase I have carried with me for years comes back to mind:

 It is not the word that heals, but the relationship. 

The word can open a door, offering comfort and direction. 

The relationship, on the other hand, allows us to walk through that door.Perhaps that is why the people we remember most are not always those who gave us the best answers, but those who stayed.

Those who knew how to sit beside us without rushing.

Those who reminded us of something we had forgotten.

And so the question that opens today's door is this:Who helped you remember who you were?Perhaps the answer is worth keeping.Like an old family recipe.

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The questions that matter don't ask to be solved right away. They ask to be lived with.

You can carry it with you for a few hours, a few days, or for as long as it takes.

We'll meet again in the next newsletter, with another door to open.