Last night, I dreamed of the quiet, clear-minded and moderate. Those who remain silent while thinking, rather than speaking from a distance as though they were prophets. Those who wish to be themselves rather than identify with or represent others. Those who seek self-respect rather than the esteem of others. Those who refuse to compromise themselves for the sake of a little reputation.
Those who carry courage within them, without tarnishing it with futile or ineffective words, and preserve it like a precious treasure whose worth they understand. Those who love freedom, respect, mutual aid and action; who prize adversity or quietude more than obstruction, invective, egocentrism, herd mentality, communitarianism or uproar.
Those who recognise the difference between facts and their interpretation. Those who understand problems without manipulating them to polarise opinions. Those who know that simplistic answers are a lure. Those who can still recognise an ignorant person and acknowledge their own ignorance.
Those who distinguish belief from knowledge. Those who seek truth without imagining that they will one day possess it. Those who accept that an opinion is an untested idea, whereas a reasoned thought requires rigorous recourse to facts and knowledge.
Those who watch media spectacles and sensationalism as a dangerous game, without denying the impulses that drive their addicted players.
Those who distinguish between the pursuit of democratic debate and the loyalty that would silence and awaken only those who agree with them—or worse, who promote the latter or defend the former. Those who measure the importance of influence and proselytism, at every level of society, without subscribing to the theory of systemic conspiracies or grand-scale plots.
Those who still believe in progress without giving every form of innovation a free pass. Those for whom spirituality is a private matter, while giving meaning to life and ethics in every action. Those who believe education should transmit all forms of knowledge without omitting self-knowledge and the development of individual and collective responsibility.
Those who embrace a desire for radical change without forgetting the principles of reality and coexistence. Those who call for sobriety and are accused of doing too much. Those who want the world to change and transform themselves in small steps, without grandiloquence. Those who aspire to evolution without denying the past, which they use as a source from which to draw their future.
I often think of the quiet, clear-minded and moderate, for they are numerous, far more numerous than those who overwhelm us with deafening noise. I meet them every day, in cities and in the countryside.
They often act discreetly, in every corner of civil society, to calm tensions, put out fires, identify common ground and, if possible, build coalitions.
Yet the world is so often built without them, to the rhythm of media headlines, the sirens of uproar.
I often think of them because history teaches us that, at crucial moments in an era, their voices matter and resonate tenfold.
So they emerge like protectors. Last night, I dreamed of the quiet, clear-minded and moderate who would reveal their faces and become like fireflies illuminating the shadows that circulate all too easily across screens and through minds. Last night, I dreamed of guardian angels who would act when our societies are struck from every side…
Always, still, society needs the quiet, clear-minded and moderate.
