From Plato's allegory of the Cave to Matrix, by way of La Fontaine's fables, symbolic language is a privileged means of prompting reflection and passing on ideas.
Like a shell full of echoes, a story resounds for a long time. The way it works is surprising, like a magician pulling questions out of a head as if they were doves out of a top hat, like the work of a gardener sowing seed while already thinking of the plants that will bloom.
A story is the art of telling the deepest and seemingly inexpressible truths through fiction. Of explaining life to real people with invented characters.
“A story is like a shell: you hold it to your ear and it tells you the ocean” (Marie Hélène Delval)
This is what I have tried to do during these 12 years leading the OASI CANA Association: to use stories to mark the key moments of our history. From one assembly to the next, at least twice a year, to take stock with a story that would say, simply and briefly, truths that were at times uncomfortable to speak or hard to explain.
Whether I succeeded I do not know, but it certainly helped me, time and again, to reduce complexity, finding the essence of what I wanted to say… and the way to say it.
Today, as I “hand over” after so many, too many years as president, I have decided to give each of you the gift of these stories, which are in a way our own story, the story of our Oasi journey over these years..
Thank you ALL for these 12 years of cooperation, support and friendship!
Antonio Adorno
download the book as a pdf here
