Brunello Cucinelli wrote a letter “to women and men” who have humanity and wisdom at heart, an open letter that ideally should and could reach all the people who can concretely influence the current very difficult situation of our planet, linked to the climate emergency, of course, but today above all to wars and inequalities. Here is the text of the letter signed by Brunello Cucinelli (in the photo above, photographed in Solomeo, near Perugia, where the company he founded and of which he is president and creative director is based).
The text of the letter
“Women and men who with humanity and wisdom have the responsibility of the destinies of Creation, you know that in the difficult days and passages that last for no longer a short time, something, like a painful destiny, has now become habitual to us traveling companion. He has been around the world for two years a virus which, like a malignant Proteus, has a thousand new lives and formsand like the waves of a dark sea now withdraws in a low tide, now it rises silently, meter after meter, stealing, together with the ever renewed hope, often also our life.
The illusion of having overcome the crisis linked to the pandemic
You know that last year it seemed to us at times that we had left behind this reality that we were trying to ignore, we pretended to neglect, but which, so to speak, entered every discourse, pervaded the mind in the evening moment of sleep, became the importunate guest of our mind in every single moment of the day, he denied us the usual happiness of living together with the family and conducting work and the joy of being in harmony with nature. The landscapes that caressed my soul, along the beautiful childhood spent in the fields, together and within Creation, embraced by Mother Earth, those enchanted landscapes seem so far away to me today! Nature renews itself and renews itself strengthens itself, and so for us, the rite is the very foundation of the story, a story of beauty. How many nights, as a boy, I went to the window, and the moon, as if there waiting for me, shone fresh and bright, and I dreamed of what was in the sky and beyond the horizon. Heaven has a great responsibility, and in the meantime we await old age, in order to recall our own memories to our grandchildren, not as boring senile sentences, but as useful memories of a youth where our person and nature were so close as to seem like a lonely thing.
The return of the war
Today the sleep of reason has awakened an ancient demon, and it is war, which Tolstoy, in its greatness, considered an “event contrary to reason and human nature”. This ugly soul of the world peeps out again with all material desolation and spiritual that is congenital to it, and for this reason the burden we carry on our shoulders becomes even heavier. But St. Augustine prayed: “Oh God, thank you for sending me pain as a teacher.” The pains make us stronger, they bring us back to essential values, they unite us more. This Creation, whose silent universal language we perceive, still tells us that life is all before us, for an infinite time. We know, as human creatures, that even the poorest of people is always such, and bears the name of sister and brother who live together helping each other, and then all together, as in an immense universal embrace; she is along this road that will lead to peace. We expect the answers to come from your wisdom so that all of this becomes relevant for the whole of humanity.
Rebuilding together starting from the soul
Hafez, a 14th century Persian mystical poet, recalled that we can rebuild a different world and a new humanity. This is what we believe in, the teaching of a lifetime, for us and for all men, is something that you sages know. The sky, the stars, the Creation are the origin of our essence and their consistency is perennial and not contingent. At times, as in the conjuncture of our days, this reality may appear less clear, the strength of the courage to believe may fail, but for this very reason, as the emperor Marcus Aurelius thought, we must be in accord with every note of the divine harmony of creation, and it “will grant us good visions.” And I turn to you, women and men pro-tempore guardians who govern the destinies of the world, because this seems to be the moment of a contract, of a new social contract extended not to single parts, but to Creation as a whole.