I have to say that, having arrived at the sunset of my existence, I can’t understand any relationship with another (whether in love or friendship) that doesn’t involve a willingness to recognize and respect the other. It’s important, in that regard, to ask ourselves what image we have of the other, since it’s from that image that our relationship stems.
Nowadays there’s no one who completely rejects the other or wants to destroy him. He prefers instead to talk of love, which has become a magical, hypocritical, slippery word, that’s used to hide the true, neurotic mechanisms in play – deceptive, even self-deceptive mechanisms.
The other enters into a relationship with me and every day I live serenely but also intensely my desire to arrive at an equilibrium, however precarious, between knowing I have to die and not wanting to die – but wanting to know it – be aware of my own mortality. (excerpt from LA RELAZIONE/RELATIONSHIP. Valerio Albisetti. Ed.Paoline.Milano)