When I heard the news, I thought: here we are, another one eye-catcher from Kafka syndrome. One who rises in the morning and is so much changed that decides to throw everything off the sea and start from anew. In another part of the world.

Michelangelo took this picture during one of his travels with Elisa, his girlfriend

I know Michelangelo Pasini for many years. A boy like so many, technologically enough, curious enough, awake enough to decide to go. He and his girlfriend travel so much. Much more than their peers. Long, low budget travel and all of them well planned. Travel that comes from deep and long thinking, what you could call soul trips. Discovering so different worlds and so far away that when you come home you can only think to the next. And then again to the next one. Until you enter a loop and decide that the journey becomes your life. Or rather the size of the journey, both physical and mental, it belongs to you so much that you can not do without it.

After all, I and Michelangelo from this point of view are very similar. Travelers or better explorers of dimensions. That of the territory I live in, my case, that human one, in his experience But both are careful centered about the details, the little things, the ones you take for granted, the ones you do not know because you’re too fast.

We both come from the same job: communication. A perpetually centrifugal washing machine that at one point spills you out, curled, exhausted, and inhaled. Michelangelo dared to jump aside, to jump out and recover his own dimension.

Between Romagna and India. Today I’m here.

“We think it’s a personal itinerary. One day you work 10 up to 12 hours a day and you are part of the system. You work, you earn, you buy, it’s compulsory and obsessive and it’s part of the western societies. I was a great collector of comics, for example. You can leave your home, store your belongings at your parents’ house and take your backpack. It’s not easy to leave everything and maybe it’s not necessary. You need a good compromise. We understood what was wrong for us, but still, some things reminded. We miss Italian aperitivo, for example!”

Indeed, India is the place where he is now. So I decide to understand better. But what do perpetual travelers live for? What do they give up or rather, what do they get? After all, there must be something worth more than anything they have left. Something worthwhile. Something you draw a smile on your face in the morning and tell you, I’m on my way. What I chose, or what was marked for me. I think in the end the case does not exist, things happen, people come. Sometimes they stay, they sometimes pass, and if they do, they leave a sign. Positive or negative that is. But they leave it for a reason that only we can understand.

“Now we have the time. This is what we gained. We both worked a lot, working also means traveling to get to the office and this needs time. We didn’t have time for our passions, for our friends and for each other. We choose to work part-time, we have a huge part of our day free and we do not need time to go to the office. We also have freedom, freedom to work where we want. We need less money also because we are living in countries where life is less expensive. And this is because we chose to earn less. We do not want more money, we want more time.”

I have tried to follow their adventures, both on Social and on their blog. This is not the first time I happen to see an extreme traveler. One of those who does not have the concept of home, because home is where I lay my hat. But never one who was so close to me, a known person. And usually, the Italians are not made to live that way. We love our land, the place where we were born and raised, the one we belong to.

If we emigrate, we do it for necessity or spirit of adventure, to look for what we can not get here. If we emigrate, we do it with our eyes looking back home. Not always, that’s true, but sooner or later everyone does. Everyone looks back. Because there is always something to discover close to home. That something around the corner that made Romagna the place I wanted to be.

“When I look back I only see good things. I would love to underline that we didn’t flee away. At home, we had the chance to have a good job, a home, friends and most of all we had the chance to do this choice. My parents educated me in a way that I could choose. My family gave me this. We want to come back home and spend some time with family and friends. What I see, is that I dedicated too many energies to work. I work for society now and we are dedicating a lot of energies to change this concept. I realize that often we waste time and now I am much more concentrated and more efficient. I work the right number of hours to do the right things.”

A friend of mine always told me: life sees more and more than we do. By the time I realized she was right. By the time I got the tests. And I learned that what we are is a precious distillate. What it does not matter. The important thing is to recognize it.

If you want to read the stories of Michelangelo and Elisa, click here
https://www.2backpack.it

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