Before Nefino’s Journey became a book, there was a two-page file on my computer. Rather ambitiously, it was called “philosophical consciousness for children”. I found it again while preparing this blog and decided to share it, because everything was already there.
A perfect world, and an empty one
“Once upon a time there was a planet in galaxy XY where people never asked themselves any questions.” That is how it began. A world that looked perfect: everyone seemed calm, and everyone always carried a device, very like our smartphones, which they used all the time.
Nobody had goals, nobody was bored, nobody was truly awake. People let themselves be carried along by whatever came from outside, like programmed machines.
In the book that device became the Khaib, the filter that decides what you see. But the idea was born there.
A child looks up
In the first draft the hero wasn’t even called Nefino. His name was Red. One afternoon he looks up at an endlessly blue sky, and that simple gesture changes the fate of a whole planet.
“Something inside me is asking.”
For the first time he feels his emotions. And the first thing he feels isn’t joy: it is feeling different, left out. He tries to talk about it with another child, Mecco, who looks at him without seeing him, turns and walks away.
Loneliness and fear
Here is the passage I still consider the heart of it all. Questions pour in like a flood, and the harder he tries to stop them, the more his mind churns. He feels a great loneliness, mixed with fear. And instead of running away, he lets himself feel it.
That is when the fog lifts. Fear becomes possibility, and loneliness becomes freedom.
Read today, that paragraph is the P.R.O.C.E.D.O.© Method as a fable: noticing what is happening (Presence), no longer fighting the tension (Release), calmly watching what moves inside (Observation).
The seed of curiosity
In the draft the child sets off and travels far and wide, looking for people like him. He convinces nobody with speeches: he sows curiosity. And slowly, after many years, the rock around the inhabitants’ hearts begins to crack open.
The last sentence went like this: by listening to his emotions and changing his attitude towards himself, a small child in a small world can make a difference.
From Red to Nefino
Years passed between those two pages and the book. The world grew richer, new characters arrived, the dome, the journey, the return. But the first gesture stayed the same: looking up.
I like to think that each of us has had, at least once, a Red moment. An ordinary afternoon when something inside us asked a question.
Once a day this week, really look up: from your phone, from the screen, from the road. Look at the sky for ten seconds and notice what moves inside you.
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