Why?
When I think back on my childhood years today, I realize that one word kept returning to my mind. Why? Why did fathers leave for work so early every morning? Why had we left Italy? Why did some children speak Italian at home and Dutch at school? Why were some people poor and others rich? Why do beautiful things happen to good people - and why are they, too, struck by adversity? I did not always ask these questions aloud.
Most of the time, I kept them to myself. I observed. I listened. And I tried to understand. Perhaps that is where the habit that remained with me throughout my life was born: the desire to look beyond what is visible. I could spend hours observing people. Not to judge them.
But to understand them. Why does someone smile? Why does someone remain silent? Why does a person seem happy when their eyes tell a completely different story? Questions like these fascinated me. I believe I understood very early that every human being carries a story within them. A story you can never understand simply by looking at their face.
Later in life, I would meet thousands of people. Miners. Salespeople. Architects. Business owners. Artists. Entrepreneurs. Inventors. Priests. And each time, I discovered the same truth. Behind every smile lies a story.
And behind every silence, another. My curiosity was not limited to people. Objects fascinated me just as much.
When something broke, I wanted to know why. When I saw that a machine could work better, I wondered why no one had tried to improve it. I took objects in my hands. I examined them carefully. And I tried to understand how they had been made. At the time, I did not yet know that this curiosity would become the thread running through my entire life. That it would lead me into the world of espresso.
Into the world of ceramic tiles. Toward innovation. Toward software. And many years later, even into the world of artificial intelligence, whose development I continued to follow with great curiosity. It all began with one very simple word. Why? Curiosity may be one of the most beautiful gifts a child can receive. Not because it provides every answer.
But because it awakens the desire to keep searching. Throughout my life, I found many answers. But I also learned that some questions are more important than the answers themselves. Why do certain people meet at exactly the right moment? Why can a single decision change an entire life? Why do some coincidences, when we look back on them later, no longer seem like chance at all? There are no final answers to these questions.
And yet they have accompanied me throughout my life. Some call it intuition. Others fate. Still others Providence. For my part, I only know that life surprised me far more often than I could ever have imagined. Perhaps that is also why I always remained open to new ideas. I never believed that everything had already been invented. That everything had already been written.
That there was nothing left to discover. Quite the opposite. I have always believed that every new day gives us an opportunity to learn something. When I meet young people today, there is one thing I wish for them more than anything: never lose your curiosity. Education is important. Experience is important.
But the desire to continue asking questions may be even more precious. For the day a person thinks they know everything, they stop growing. Today, I am an old man. But deep within me, that little boy from the mining community still lives. The one who looked at the world with wide-open eyes and never stopped asking: why? And perhaps that is exactly why I wrote this book.
Not because I found all the answers. But because I hope to pass my search on to the generations who will come after me.