The Question That Remained

The manuscript disappeared, but the two letters IF continued to live within me.

IF — What if…?

The Lost Manuscript

Around the year 2000, I wrote a book on paper. I gave it the shortest English title I could think of: IF. Two letters, one open door. The manuscript was later lost.

I searched for it, but I never found it again. Yet the thought behind that book proved stronger than the paper on which I had written it. The first question sounded simple: what if the world were round? That sentence was not a geography lesson.

It was an image for everything that once seemed impossible until someone dared to think differently. What seems obvious today often began as doubt, imagination or a question for which there was not yet any room.

Two Small Letters

With IF, I do not want to tell anyone what to believe. I want to open a quiet space in which a person can let their thoughts be free for a while. Not every suspicion has to become a conclusion immediately. Not every dream asks for an explanation.

Sometimes the question itself is valuable because it invites us to look again. The Renato rewriting this book today is older than the man who wrote the first manuscript. Since then, I have built and lost, loved and said goodbye. I have had to live with the loss of Marco.

I have seen the Glass Pyramid come into being and disappear. I have had thousands of conversations. All of this has given IF greater depth today. The original question remained the same, but my life has added to it.

Looking at the World Again

This book forms a bridge between doubt and reality. On one side lies what we can see and touch. On the other live our dreams, intuitions and experiences for which words sometimes fall short. On that bridge, we do not have to choose which side we wish to stand on forever.

We may walk, pause and look around. In My Life, I described the path that shaped me: my Italian roots, my childhood, my family and the years in which I sought my place as an entrepreneur through setbacks and new beginnings. It was a life of building, trying, losing and starting again. Behind every project were people.

Doubt as an Open Space

Behind every decision lived the hope of bringing something good into being for my family and for those I met along the way. Readers of that first book will also remember Marco’s place in my life. He was my son, but also someone with whom I shared ideas, worked and could discuss things for hours. We recognised ourselves in each other’s curiosity about technology and what might still become possible.

His death left a silence that work and new plans could not fill. Yet my interest in the invisible did not begin with that loss. It was already there when, as a child, I had experiences I could not explain.

My Life Between Then and Now

Later came other events, dreams and observations that continued to occupy my thoughts. While everyday life revolved around family and work, questions remained in the background for which I could find no simple answer. In this part, I give those questions more room. What is consciousness?

Why do certain experiences stay with us for a lifetime? How do we carry our love for someone who is no longer here? And how do we find the courage to go on living, with our sorrow and uncertainty? Between Heaven and Earth grows out of the same life I described before.

The memories of my parents, my bond with Dorina, my children and grandchildren, my work with Marco and the difficult years remain present here.

Dreaming Without Obligation

They form the ground beneath my search. The reader will recognise the person who spoke in the preceding life story. I describe my unusual experiences, my interest in numerology and the many conversations in which people shared their own questions and sorrow with me. In doing so, I want to keep distinguishing between what I remember and the meaning I personally give it.

I cannot explain or prove everything that has touched me deeply. The reader may see it differently. I do not ask for agreement, but for attention to a personal testimony. My life story and my spiritual search belong together.

The Bridge Begins

In both, I seek what keeps a human being standing: love, connection, responsibility and the ability to begin again. If these pages have taught me anything, it is that my attention to the invisible must also find meaning in caring for the people beside me today. That is why I take you from My Life to Between Heaven and Earth. With the memories I carry, the questions that have remained and the hope that a shared story may offer another person a sense of recognition.

This book grows out of my life. Out of the people I have loved, what I have built and lost, and experiences for which I did not always find the right words.

A Question for the Reader

Some memories carry a date. Others live on mainly as a feeling: wonder, peace, longing or a suspicion that there is more to discover than we see at first glance. In My Life, I wrote about my family, my Italian roots, my childhood in Belgium, my work and the people who shaped me. With this book, I want to show that same person from within.

The entrepreneur who kept starting again, the father who misses Marco and the child who marvelled are not separate people. They belong together. Their experiences form the bridge I am trying to describe here.

What If

On one side of that bridge is the earth: our everyday existence, our responsibility, our relationships, our bodies and our care for one another. On the other are the questions I associate with the word heaven: what is consciousness, what does love mean, what remains when someone dies, and how do we make room for something we experience intensely but do not fully understand? My search lies between those two sides. I do not write because I can answer every question.

I write because staying silent about what has touched me would also leave part of my life untold. My experiences need not be understood in the same way by everyone. One reader will recognise something in them. Another will seek different explanations.

Both are welcome as readers. That is why, in these pages, I allow my story and further reflection to exist side by side. First I tell what I remember. Then the questions that arise from it receive more room.

Sometimes an experience connects with what others call an out-of-body experience, a meaningful coincidence or intuition. That recognition is the beginning of a conversation. It does not settle the explanation once and for all.

IF — What if…?
Which question from your own life deserves room again?