Elephants with a heart of butterfly

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Why do I fly? There's no reasons. Or maybe there's.

Today I'm not here to tell you about a particular flight, but for giving an answer to a dear friend. A friend who asked me a question so simple but in the same time so hard to answer: Why do you fly?

Why do I fly? What the hell I know, I never asked myself this question. I just do it because I like to do it. That's it. Is this a sufficient answer? No, right?

Ok. Let's start from beginning, from one of the thousands takeoffs of Castelluccio, one of those places where flight lovers meet every day to live a life experience called “paragliding”, one of those places light years away from crowds cheering in football stadiums and Formula one circuits, one of those places where the highest cry you can hear is the eagle's one, telling you that you're entering its territories and that It is the boss there. 

People says that paragliders are foolish, adrenaline junkies practising an extreme sport. Statistics demonstrate that...percentages says that...Tellings! But instead of heeding percentages of accidents, we're still here, in our takeoff, with paraglides opened and helmets on our heads, talking about percentages, yeah, but percentages of possibilities that the wind could calm, that we could reach the top of Mount Vettore, that we can dynamic at the sunset; we're talking about percentages of getting the phone number of that blonde girl met in this place light years away from civilization.

Then the wind dies down and the magic happens: like caterpillars becomes butterflies, paragliders slowly become flying beings, graceful, and slowly start our flight, living our second life far from this land full of statistics and percentages. It's something instinctive, it's something coming out from the inside.

Maybe we're really caterpillars: ugly and clumsy on the land, graceful and beautiful in the sky!

Maybe in our past lives we really were butterflies and this could explain our spasmodic desire of staying in the sky, this could explain our wandering between mountains and valleys, this could explain why, after 30 years, I still run to see helicopters when they fly over my house even if I see them every day at work.

“..inside me I have a heart of butterfly.” here is the answer, taken right now from a song written by Michele Zarrillo (talking about an elephant fallen in love with a butterfly: it's an impossible love, but he feels he loves her because he has a heart of a butterfly). 

Yeah, Giacio, I fly because when I'm on the ground I feel like an elephant (or a caterpillar), but when I fly..damn yeah! I'm a butterfly, beautiful, graceful, free like ever! I fly because up there even the world (that when your on the ground seems an ocean of tears) seems a beautiful challenge, I fly because inside me there's a child that never stopped dreaming, and I never stopped him, leaving lead myself through desires never dormant; I fly because you can't close emotions that you feel up there in a cage, like the air...and these emotions stays suspended 10 meters from the ground, making only dreamers capture them.

“Fly butterfly Manè, fly over meadows full of flowers, majestic woods, fly over beautiful mountains and endless beaches, fly over numb cities and snow-covered meadows, fly because when you are in the air your clumsiness becomes prettiness, your wander becomes poetry, your passion becomes life!”

Giacinto, I must ask you a favor (but it's a favor I'm asking to anyone who's reading this piece): you could be an elephant, a caterpillar or a hornet, but you must never stop dreaming and chase your goals!

Dedicated to elephants with a heart of a butterfly.

Manè