Valerio
Not surrendering to the adversities of life is a diktat from which we can learn a lesson when we meet people out of the ordinary who explain us how to do it. We are used to having a linear life, similarity for everyone. The most normal things, like running, tying your shoes, driving – perhaps with the wind in your hair – are so ordinary that we forget their extraordinary nature.
Valerio cannot run, he cannot tie his shoes alone and he cannot drive. There are many things that he does not have the opportunity to do, yet there are others, many, that Valerio knows how to do better than others.
Disability condemns most people not only to physical immobility, but also – and above all – to an oblivion from the society, which fails to value those people as resources, imagining that the handicap is something that forces the least lucky to a life spent in bed or in specialized facilities.
So let’s tell the story of Valerio, who from his workstation, located in a beautiful town in central Italy, masterfully creates websites that travel at the speed of light all over the world. Exactly like ours. All is need are the right equipment and the skills of a web professional, learned over years and years of effort.
The secret ingredients of Valerio’s perfect recipe are tenacity, love for life, the desire to make the world extraordinary, transforming critical issues into opportunities. And much, much study, books, universities, exams, tests, work. There are areas in which you don’t necessarily need to be physically perfect – you don’t have to do endurance competitions! – but mentally prepared and ready to face the unexpected signed HTML and similar sources.
Valerio loves what he does, so he pleases others too. Clients ask him for advice and he gladly dispenses it, as he knows more than most people. He was an excellent partner in putting the iMasterminds website online. Or perhaps more, because he has been able to design a website that is truly out of the box, a bit out of mind too but functional. As you see it today.
However, despite his problems, Valerio is an absolutely normal young man who loves music and sports, especially football and motorsport. His house is always full of friends, of laughter, of jokes. And there is the scent of freshly baked cake and hugs, the sound of chatter and heavenly deeply lovely smiles on the faces of those arriving.
The greatest passion he has, however, is that for travel. Yes, Valerio is a traveler. He carries suitcases full of stories, full of tales and adventures worthy of an explorer. Did you think his life was reduced to a chair and a desk with a complex computer in front of it?
He is a true traveler, one of those who meticulously plan each step, any route, each stop. By camper. Not alone, but with the many, many friends who leave with him and with those he meets along the most disparate paths, roads and slopes. With whom he shares roadmaps, programs and stages. Laughter, adventures and engine revs. His parents accompany and follow him. Because they are there, and they make them feel it. They love him. They have already traveled half the world. And planned to complete soon the other half. He is lucky, Valerio, to have such a family and friends. And also to have seen a the vast majority of the United States, up to the foot of Ontario. I’ve never been there yet. When it will be my turn, I will ask him to write me a travel itinerary and to tell me about the scents of Rochester and the sounds that can be heard looking down at Niagara Falls which tickle your face with their cheerful and cold splash of water. I think it all tastes of poetry, of good.
Valerio has an intelligent, serene and competent gaze. He has so many difficulties, yet he is no different from anyone.
His disability hasn’t stopped him from having a fuller and more normal life than most people. On the contrary. Perhaps it was precisely his condition of physical difficulty that prompted him to roll up his sleeves and find his place in the world. How many are capable of doing it?
He did not give up, and with his strength he taught everyone who knew him a lesson. Boundaries exist to be crossed. It’s all a matter of point of view.
There are difficulties, in Valerio’s life, as in that of anyone else. Perhaps, for him, sometimes they are more tiring, articulated and full of pitfalls, but he is and remains an example. For those who think they cannot make it, for those who believe they are unlucky or unable to do something, for those who say that life has not smiled at them. There is always the possibility of overturning unfavorable conditions and transforming them into strengths, opportunities.
You can change things, otherwise those same things will change us.
Valerio did it and he’s happy with what he does. He continues to smile and work with his head down, helping to make digital dreams come true and to make paper thoughts take off, which turn into electrical impulses, which fly from his PC around the world, free to simply be themselves. Little tiny ones. Unique. Special. Because the limits are only in the eyes – and in the heart – of those who see them.
And we at iMasterminds are proud to have understood all that as soon as we shook his hand.
Valeria Bellobono
