What Do You See That Is Different?
Simone Riva - Even though it often happens, it's always something new. I arrive at school with a certain idea, having prepared some provocations, and then something unexpected happens that I don’t want to stop.
They are distracted; they have other things on their minds. It’s the last class. At a certain point, however, the question arises: “What does it mean to respect the other? Who is the other for me?”
The discussion quickly becomes intense, and you almost forget that it’s the last hour of the lesson. The lesson ventures into the vast field of relationships with adults and, without beating about the bush, they admit to having decided not to get involved with adults because, according to them, adults are not willing to give young people credit.
However, I point out to one of them that he has opened up compared to last year.
His answer takes me by surprise: “But it’s different with you.” Intrigued, I ask: “What do you see as being different?” He replies: “You care about us.” A strange silence falls in which, for a moment, I feel as though I am the protagonist of the scene.
But then two questions immediately come to mind: What could that boy have seen in me that made him say what he said? And who taught me to look at them in a certain way? What they see in me goes beyond even myself. The willingness to let oneself be overcome by a Presence that is not us is the greatest help in not falling into the trap of thinking we are the eternal protagonists of everything.
In reality, we are all immersed in a great struggle between two conceptions of man: that of those who think they belong to themselves and that of those who are aware of belonging to an Other.
It is a merciless struggle, played out in everyday life, which leads man, mirror of himself, to seek a hiding place as soon as possible to escape reality. On the road, however, he may come across the unexpected.
It shouldn’t have been there, yet it is. It is the unexpectedness of a gaze that wants to embrace everything about us, a Presence that doesn’t hold back and begs for our heart.
“Allowing this presence to enter is called memory: it is what allows all our prisons to become a place of breath, so that any circumstance, even the ugliest, can be invested with breath and newness. This is why we were given life: to recognize more and more what Christ is. That whatever circumstance we happen to face or experience, whatever pain, whatever suffering, can be a place, an occasion in which Christ reveals himself and makes us understand more the extent to which He loves our life and wants to change it, to make it great” (Don Julián Carrón, from his talk during the Macerate-Loreto pilgrimage, June 7, 2008).
This allows us to begin to “care” for others: there is Someone who cares for you, who is rooting for you, who gives His life for you.
After all, what could ever convince us, and our young people, to trust again? Perhaps our rules, our recommendations, our measures? The initiatives we set up to reel them in and that become just another stage for ourselves? Every day, the fight starts again; every moment, we have to choose between being beggars or self-sufficient so that someone can still say: “It’s different with you.”
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
