I am not a man, I am dynamite

In the final pages before descending into madness, Nietzsche wrote:
“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis unlike any ever seen on Earth, the deepest collision of conscience, a decision summoned against everything that has been believed, demanded, and sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite.”

With that self-definition—“I am dynamite”—Nietzsche expressed his awareness of his own exceptional nature and the revolutionary character of his thought. He was pointing to the destructive, but also creative, force of his philosophy: a force capable of shaking the foundations of established culture and belief.

The first time I read Nietzsche, I was off the coast of Spain, in 2005, a few dozen miles from the place where I had been shipwrecked the year before. It is a place to which I remain deeply bound: something had ended there, and something else had suddenly begun. I remember how deeply that sentence struck me—not because I fully understood its philosophical implications, but because, in some way, it was speaking about me.

And I believe, ultimately, it speaks about all of us.

We are all made of dynamite—of an explosive substance that, if ignored or repressed, can destroy what surrounds us. But if understood and channeled, it holds immense creative potential.

That is why the most urgent work we can do is to discover how much explosive force we carry within us, where it lies hidden, and how to use it wisely. It is a task that leads us into the deepest and most irrational parts of ourselves—through emotions, passions, and also through shadows. Those same inner territories upon which, to a large extent, our happiness depends.

For me, this inner work took the form of exploration. But I remember a time when that dynamite was ready to explode in my hands.

In the years after high school, I enrolled in the Faculty of Banking Sciences in Milan. I don’t know who—or what—I thought I was, but it is clear now that I was a very different person from the one I would later become. I remember those years with an almost external clarity, because they came immediately after the loss of my mother, and at home we were still trying to find a new equilibrium. Without meaning any disrespect to my father, who did everything he could to support and guide us, we had lost our captain. My sister and I had to grow up quickly. On one hand, we were trying to build our own lives as best we could; on the other, we helped my father keep the family restaurant running, while he carried a grief that, in hindsight, I believe weighed more heavily on him than on any of us.

My decision to enroll in economics did not arise from any true personal inclination. Quite the opposite. It was the result of my inability to listen to my own inclinations. I followed the easiest and most predictable path—the one many accounting graduates took. At first, it required no real effort. I was navigating calm waters, moving from one exam to the next, in the company of other castaways whom the sea of life had washed ashore on the same beach. But when you are surrounded by other castaways, it becomes difficult to recognize your own condition. Everything seems, in some strange way, normal.

It took years for me to understand that there was nothing normal about that drift.

In the meantime, something inside me was already beginning to shift. And life, as it often does, intervened.

One spring day in 2000, almost as a joke, I submitted my application to the Camel Trophy—one of the most iconic adventure competitions of the 1980s and 1990s, where teams from around the world crossed some of the most extreme territories on the planet. The Italian team was assembling a new crew for the 2001 edition.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived inviting me to participate in the national selections.

Who could have imagined that this experience would change the course of my life so radically?

For the moment, the dynamite remained safely contained.

Let us return to Nietzsche’s words. I am convinced that his intention was not to ignite a social or political revolution, but rather to provoke an inner revolution: to make human beings not only “free from,” but above all “free to.”

Free to do what, exactly?

Perhaps—borrowing a phrase attributed to the Greek poet Pindar—free to “become who you are.” This means recognizing your own qualities, accepting your limits, and learning to bring forth what makes you unique. In a world that constantly invites us to become something else, to live according to expectations that are not our own, applying Pindar’s message means recovering authenticity and inner coherence. It means learning to distinguish between what we truly want and what others want—or expect—for us.

Each of us walks a different path, and looking too closely at the paths of others risks making us lose our own direction.

Combined with the Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” this message becomes a powerful reminder that self-knowledge is not optional—it is necessary. It is the work through which we discover our true nature, our own “dynamite,” and learn how to channel it into our daily actions.

It is a path that inevitably requires courage. Because it is the path through which castaways become navigators.

And in doing so, they recover something essential: freedom, balance, and a far deeper sense of fulfillment.