I went to the barber today. Giorgio was there—the shop boy, as we used to say. He greeted me with warmth, as always, and launched into one of his expert pronouncements about soccer, or rather about AS Roma. Giorgio has Down syndrome. I've never understood why we say someone is "sick with" Down syndrome. Sickness means disease, and a syndrome is a cluster of symptoms that characterize a disease. But Giorgio didn't get sick. He can't be cured. He can't recover. There's no point looking for a cause. All we can do is care for him, because he was born with something missing—born with a congenital condition. He simply needs to be loved the way all human beings born of woman should be loved.
Ombre e Luci—two beautiful words. Together they bring to mind those first months of life when a newborn perceives the human reality around him through light and shadow. But more than that: he senses the other through what we might call an inner sense. These perceptions, woven through with feeling, will become his deepest human identity. Sometimes it happens that a child loses, in this early period, the hope he was born with. That he becomes sick. That his thinking becomes sick. That his mind becomes sick.
A healthy child falls ill. And so we must search for the cause of the illness, treat him so he can recover. Once we discover what made him sick, we can give a face and a name to the pathogen that broke him—that stole his hope in other people, that made his mind sick. I've worked in printing for many years. Sometimes I talk with the people who work on the magazine. Sometimes we discuss what goes into Ombre e Luci—like this troubling business of giving psychiatric drugs to children just because they're a bit lively or a bit withdrawn.
I've worked in printing for many years, and I think I know the difference between someone born with a limitation and someone who was born healthy but became sick because of repeated disappointments in human relationships.
I work in printing and I'm not a doctor or an expert in the field. But I can't believe that a tranquilizer or a stimulant—because that's what psychiatric drugs are—can give back to a child the peace he lost through disappointment, or restore his joy in living and his trust in other people.
I've worked in printing for many years, and I'm grateful to work for people who dedicate their lives to other human beings who are more unfortunate than I am, than we are.
Gian Carlo Zanon
technical director of Quintily Press, 2007