It might be a way of arriving alive at death
A reflection on the meaning of conducting research.
by Gian Stefano Mandrino
In itinere intelligere
Let’s face it: titles have never been my strong suit. In truth, I don’t feel I’m strong in anything. No certainties, no securities, no overwhelming passion, no family, no career (being the supreme head of INFOGESTIONE, believe me, is quite far from the concept of a career).
I remember, during military service, a fellow soldier from Brescia—gruff, but genuine. He invited me to the shop and asked if I wanted a grappa. I replied, candidly, that I didn’t drink. Leaving the shop, he offered me a cigarette. I proudly replied that I didn’t smoke. He lit his with practiced ease and, like a scene from an old Fox movie (Guccini will forgive the borrowing), asked if I had a girlfriend. Once again, I replied no. His comment, “What do you live for?!”—I still remember it.
I was seven years old when, one evening during dinner with my mother and father, I noticed that they—and all my relatives around the table—were nothing more than skeletons with skin on them. At that age, such simplistic anatomical notions, born of fear and loneliness, were no more than an epilogue, a meaning, and a foreshadowing of what my fellow soldier would say to me nearly twenty years later: “What do you live for?”
Now I find myself celebrating the launch of a new website (not so different, in the fiction of existential configuration, from what I understood as a child about Mom and Dad) of my institute—through which I try, as honestly as possible, to earn a living, practicing the oldest profession in the world: searching for answers.
“Quid est veritas” (John 18:38)—and the rest does not matter. Life is not sensory. Life is not eating, drinking, having (as a smug person once spat in my face during a painful moment) a woman, a job, a house—and paradoxically, it is not even about being free from those who bombard you for having such things or want them for themselves. Like Pontius Pilate, I believe I know nothing about life—now that I am old and weary, pressing keys that write for me (and here I must apologize to Umberto Eco).
None of the many acclaimed academics I’ve met have ever been able to tell me what life truly is: this game I was entered into without permission, this whirling carousel that, once you get off, you can never board again—this rosary of monotonous acts, the harsh result of molecules constantly agitating us until agitation is no longer possible.
I admire those who say they have ‘arrived’—because they “have” a family, a house, a position, a dignity. I admire the top of the class, those with a career, those with so much memory they recall the names of their lovers (I struggle to remember my own phone number), and those who, come what may, never skip vacations just so they can say they had one. I admire the few decent people, often victims of the ones just mentioned, who, like oxen, drag the plow of their lives hoping someone, someday, will reap something from their effort—really, just a hole in fragrant earth cut open by a cold blade.
I admire the eight-hour folks, the all-rights-no-duties types, the “smart ones,” those who are their own image, who only speak about themselves—even that ex-con who found a job by threatening thugs like himself for a spot in a cooperative. All things considered, coming from someone constantly beaten by his father, we might have expected worse.
Yet the question remains unresolved: “What do I live for?”
You see, Mr. Pilate, the truth is here. Truth is the courage to know you do not know—and still, like foolish prisoners, try to scratch a hole in nothingness, with bloody nails, through the prison wall for the entire duration of a life sentence. That’s why, years ago, I decided it was illogical to pack everything for a journey without knowing the destination—while my peers got married, chased careers, and summoned innocent beings from limbo, perhaps just to pass on the same sentence they themselves endured. Suicide, although I deeply respect those who chose it, didn’t seem like a viable path: it’s for the capable. It’s not easy.
So here I am—self-satisfied, puffed-up with vanity—sitting at a computer, while a collaborator begs for my prestigious editorial for the even more prestigious website of my research institute. Here I am, free researcher of many things—except what I truly wanted to know. I did not become Einstein, nor Piero Angela, even less Cousteau. I found crumbs in my work, which I used to nourish myself—inside and out. I traveled thousands of kilometers, but arrived nowhere. I met so many people I stopped being enthusiastic about belonging to humankind—because there’s not much consortium in our species.
And yet, for me and my condition, it was the most logical thing to do: searching for why one lives seemed the only way to reach the end of my days sincerely, less stupidly, less hypocritically, and less uselessly to myself—while still being honest, almost heroic. I wasn’t a drone, nor a stallion, but a poor donkey trying to understand why he had to carry such weight along a mountain path to nowhere.
It was a way to arrive alive at death. And God? I struggle to explain—to those few who made it this far—how kind my doubts are. Who would ever listen to the ramblings of an old man who still believes he might someday hear, in another dimension, that he is loved eternally?
In itinere intelligere!
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Titolo: “It might be a way of arriving alive at death”
Section: “Editorial board”
Author: INFOGESTIONE
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Reference ID : INMNET2507131500MAN
Last updated: 13/07/2025
Online publication: 13/07/2025
Intellectual property: INFOGESTIONE s.a.s
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