Transgression!

Being transgressive has become the order of the day.
It may be done with nonchalance, or out of anger; in a stubborn way, or merely to be cheeky; to impose one's views, or to assert one's personality. It is expressed in one's way of dressing, or in one's talk; in the way of carrying one's bag, of sitting on a bus. One may spend half an hour in front of a mirror, in order to fix a hairstyle that is supposed to look spontaneous and casual: nothing can be more elaborate than calculated spontaneity...

Being transgressive is often appreciated and encouraged; it is certainly politically correct.

In this context, the only real transgression is joyful and loving obedience.

Originality vs Eccentricity

Today I have read an interview that was worth its salt.

Alessandro D'Avenia, teacher and much more, younger than I (yes, I have reached this stage!), answered - very wittily - questions about the core issues he tries to share with his students. It was in Italian, and so I will not elaborate further. Translation is always betrayal.

There was a detail, however, that continued to drill my mind even after the bliss of reading was over.

D'Avenia underlines that each youth is in search for oneself, and this search starts from a confrontation with the previous generation, which serves as a term of comparison. Here is were we discover our originality.

Originality, he continues, not in the common meaning we often give to this word, that is “eccentricity”. Originality as relation to one's origins. Youth look for parents among adults, because they need to distinguish themselves from them, to find themselves.

Originality is a great aspiration of each human person. We all wish to be original, none of us wants to be the copy of anybody else, an imitation, a duplicate. Rightly so: God created us unique, and has a unique design for each one of us.

And yet, all too often I found that we confuse originality with eccentricity, and encourage eccentricity, mistaking it for originality . We wish to be different, but end up being freaks. We think that only by cutting ourselves away from anything or anybody else can we be really ourselves.

This is a great mistake.

I have started to become sensitive to this fact a few years ago, when I realised that the just being different did not yield the results I hoped, did not yield the results anybody hoped. It was not originality that we had been pursuing, but eccentricity. Good for a circus, maybe, but incapable to meet the deepest aspirations of the human soul.

It is like expecting that a tree could bear abundant fruits by cutting itself away from its roots.

That is when I was led – unexpectedly – to rediscover tradition, in its various and rich expressions. It's a long journey, and I have just started it. It was like finding the origin, the source, the starting point.

When we find our roots, only then we are able to develop the originality of our seed.

Originality, not eccentricity, is to be encouraged.