Every time I leave Alfedena to go back home, I'm seized by doubt. Is camp life something that unfolds in a different world? I find myself asking, each time I return, whether it's enough to accept giving up a life that, for a few days, happens in a world apart. But I've asked myself again and again: isn't camp just a way to flee the mediocrity of everyday life—with all its tedious details—that suffocates these moments of living differently?
Yet these experiments in community life aim at something specific: they're meant to spark a continuation of camp life beyond the camp itself.
To bring it into everyday existence. But the obstacles are countless. Most of all, we have to face the world around us. We start with what seems easiest, closest—our own families. The young people we leave behind. Our friends. The space we've lost. And though the tension has sometimes grown, it retains nearly all its power to transform and persuade.
So what now? Is this camp a kind of drug that distracts us from daily hardship, or can it actually be a path toward thinking differently about the weight that oppresses us? One thing strikes me: our time there, whether we realize it or not, teaches us respect for those near us. Accepting that we live fourteen days with our young people—accepting their condition, all its complications—this itself becomes a form of learning.
Our young people had to bear their condition for so long, with patience, often with pain. We learned to respect their different situations, to weigh their struggles and their strength.
Returning to everyday life can begin by looking back at camp and remembering what respect means: sometimes easy, sometimes terribly hard, but always important.
The key is to keep remembering, to draw on those memories—beautiful and difficult alike—especially the hard ones, which teach us something deep about how to change.
And then, after respect, comes love. The difficulties remain the same. But inside, finally, something begins to stir.
It becomes clear how true friendship takes root—friendship built on mutual forgiveness. Camps and journeys are places of joy, yes, but also of wounds. Wounds that open again constantly: a thoughtless remark, an impatient gesture, a careless word. Yet there are beautiful moments too, many of them, and they can only matter if we forgive each other.
Fortunately, chances to forgive are everywhere. And the moments for it—beyond just saying "I'm sorry"—never run out.
The most beautiful moment of camp, the one I want to bring back into my everyday life, was being forgiven. Over and over, many times in a single day. Each time I was forgiven, not only was a rift repaired—I felt accepted for who I am. All my flaws included.
Like everyone else, I recovered the certainty of my own dignity and my own worth, in spite of everything.
Claudio G., 1980