If we define intelligence as the capacity of human beings to weave links between what they know and what they feel, transforming the understanding of the world into empathy, creativity, and beauty, it is evident that we would like our rulers to have a good dose of it. But we can make it more prosaic and, although etymologically intelligence" means "to read within" or "to choose between", I would ask for no more than a somewhat objective understanding of the world, even if it were without empathy; and if beauty cannot be, I would like it to be replaced at least by rigor and by the will not to cause unnecessary suffering.

The healthcare system is one of the most complex and successful achievements of democratic societies. Complex because knowledge, and consequently the capacity to treat illnesses, is constantly evolving for the benefit of us all, and also because those of us who are part of the healthcare system sometimes speak indecipherable jargon. Furthermore, healthcare activity indicators are not easy to interpret in their entirety. We must acknowledge that today we have more information than we are capable of processing to draw the necessary conclusions and adjustments.

I bitterly confess that I have seen lives torn apart by fanaticism, by criminal greed, by the violent defense of dogmas that had been deconstructed, by accidents that were not accidents but the consequence of recklessness, by loneliness or poverty, by climate catastrophes. Bad politics has consequences, and they are not good.

When fire shows its destructive power near a house or crops that are the result of the efforts of many generations rooted in that land, it is impossible not to be moved. It would be utterly insensitive to tell them that it is only a spark of what is happening on the planet.

Fifteen years ago, Francesco Piccolo wrote a light and delightful book in which he recounted "moments of unseen happiness." The smell of bread as it comes out of the oven, the moment the coffee pots turn off, finding a special stone on a walk along the sand, hands covered in oil when you can't stop eating peanuts during an aperitif, the encore of an extraordinary concert, when the person you're waiting for knocks down the corner, the ruix filling a carefree life for a few summer weeks.

Our lives unfold, day after day, walking along visible streets and others that are perhaps less well-known but equally essential. This Monday, April 28, 2025, a Monday called to repeat each person's usual procedures with a familiar degree of automatism, has changed radically when the trains we had boarded without any announced incidents have stopped their journey, when the subways we had accessed by elevator and with illuminated stations.