THE LABORATORY OF EMOTIONS
Today is Thursday. And my Thursdays always come together with a mixture of trepidation and great desire.
The appointment with the students of the Diverse Ability workshop is certainly a moment of joy, but also of extraordinary commitment. The organizational machine behind it is merciless. To ensure that everyone has their own space and can learn, while having fun in safety, the mechanism must work at its best; And it’s not always easy.
Especially when there are many people and expectations are high, just as high are the responsibilities that we take on with apparent lightheartedness every time we enter the water.
It happens, in moments when fatigue weighs me down, that fatigue takes over. Here, yes. And paradoxically, these are the moments that most manage to give me back the value of what we have built together.
I just need to close my eyes for a moment to dive into the frames of the last past Thursday. Emotions that intertwine by reworking, shouts of voices that are lost in the echo of the pool, equipment in plain sight ready to be worn… faces of people who come to you to share a joke, sometimes a wish, but more often a last-minute problem, with less than a minute to find a solution.
But that’s exactly how I feel strong again. Strong in the trust of many friends, strong in the serenity of many families who have entrusted us with the most precious asset, their children, our young people. A rainbow of personalities that presents itself with infinite nuances in the characters but with a common denominator: the desire to be there, learn, improve and demonstrate.
I put on my wetsuit and role and enter the water: this week I have a new student to pay attention to but my gaze goes even further. I observe everyone and experience their progress, week after week, as personal victories.
For example, I see Davide pass in front of me who has stopped being ‘carried’ and now moves independently on the bottom and responds to his instructor by performing all the exercises; then it is the turn of Amedeo, Stefano and David who masterfully interpret the won recognition of expert tutors and transfer trust in their classmates; Sara who now looks like a mermaid, perfectly at ease with any instructor, always ready to high-five at every intersection. In every corner of the pool there is a seething of instructors and students committed to their goals who, just like me, have a lesson to carry on.
This image brings me back to the present. I open my eyes again and exclaim: “Today is Thursday, there is the laboratory of emotions!”. Real thoughts, pure emotions.
Fabio, Diverse Ability instructor
What is the laboratory?
A group of volunteer professionals from different schools and educational institutions who, after the personal path in Diverse Ability culminating with the qualification to teach people with disabilities, have chosen not to disperse, demonstrating once again that “working together with passion everything is possible!”.
To date it is active in the city of Monza with about 30 young people with different disabilities: 30 different personalities, characters, feelings, linked to the staff by the double thread of very strong passion and the desire to dive into the water every Thursday evening and open their eyes together under its surface. A path of growth for professionals and students who with continuity and assiduity transform each appointment into a real show of the skills acquired.
This project has the ambition to act as a leader and be an example so that it can soon be replicated in other territories.
