Through anecdotes, reflections, and touching personal experiences, Crepet challenges us to rediscover the courage of imagination and the power of authenticity, giving us a veritable manifesto for those who reject conformity and want to rediscover the power, now revolutionary, of free thought.

We live in an age that, more than any other, celebrates freedom and proclaims it an absolute right. Yet something is not right. A subtle, silent fog has crept into our lives: it does not forbid, it does not command, it does not punish. It seduces. And while it promises tranquility and well-being, it pushes us toward conformity, extinguishing critical thinking and inhibiting creativity and the courage to be different. In this new essay, Paolo Crepet focuses on one of the most insidious trends of our time: censorship that does not come from above but infiltrates our daily lives, our gestures, our language, and the choices we no longer make. It is a gentle, pervasive, invisible conformism that invites us to stay in our comfort zone: the place where we do not make mistakes, but we do not grow either. With his brilliant and provocative writing, Crepet takes us on a journey against the tide, rediscovering what truly makes life free: doubt, imagination, conflict. Because freedom, he reminds us, is not a slogan, but a daily, arduous exercise that requires courage, lucidity, and disobedience. A particular warning is reserved for young people and educators: enough with the obsessive pursuit of perfection and happiness at all costs. We must restore dignity to error, failure, and defeat, which are essential steps for healthy and balanced growth, because “storms can even be salvific and brighten the horizon.”