Few are granted the chance to live through those unique moments in which chance and will combine to begin a new era or set in motion a gesture that will tear through the fabric of History with something more than the human trivialities allotted to us all as the basic portion of everyday life.
In very many cases, as rare as living through unique moments is living through them with full awareness of their extraordinary future significance.
Many of those who later say — “I was there, but I saw nothing” — are doing little more than confessing their former blindness, because only in retrospect do they understand the combination of life’s diffuse signals and the irrelevance of their participation, the dispensability of their presence.
— “Ah, if only someone had warned me…” they will say later, looking incredulously at the evidence and at the traces of the obvious that they were unable to see when they were contemporaries of History, without feeling it and without influencing it.
When we help write a page of a History that will unfold with us or without us, we accept that the inexorable march of the future takes the shape of our days, and we burn our hands in the fire of the present for fear of becoming the past.
And that History will bear our fingerprint, perceptible or imperceptible, depending on whether we dare expose ourselves to the risk of sun and rain or choose the sheltered, grey path of the shade and sleep in the comfort of a warm sofa.
To be able to take part in launching a company, relaunching a project, renewing a technology or betting on a new idea is an unrepeatable opportunity, even for those who live the longest.
It would be incomprehensible for the professional journey of each one of us not to open a special chapter to recount the excitement and depth of the experience. This kind of process is so radically striking that it challenges us all, encouraging each person’s generosity to express itself through action rather than seek refuge in omission.
Building an alternative to hopelessness and chaos in a conservative society and an anaemic market is a Herculean but possible task, one that should summon restless spirits and audacious souls.
There are demonstrations of knowledge, understanding and commitment that encourage us to take the risk and unleash a current of energy that carries others along with it, generating a dynamic of creativity and almost desperation for the success of what has been set in motion.
But when the aim is to radically alter the course of a Country, it is not enough for only a small group to demonstrate, through intelligence, the advantage and necessity of charting new paths.
The democratic system requires the desire for change to become a moral demand shared by a broad percentage of the population, so that it becomes possible to move from a state of anaemia to a state of potential, and for that potential to be realised through transformative action.
This is precisely the greatest challenge facing any project to save the Nation, and it should be a central concern of any political programme: to win some people over through admiration, but also to obtain the favour of the people — that is, to earn the affection that gives rise to belief and ultimately determines the vote.
Paulo Fidalgo
CEO of Marketividade
