Men Committed to their Humanity

Julián Carrón - My commitment to my humanity has saved my life. I have seconded the demands I perceived within me, meaning I have never settled for anything below what my humanity demanded.

If we don’t go along with this, we end up “wasting our lives living.” It’s objective, not a matter of opinion. If we don’t take seriously the cry of our humanity, its maelstrom, it will never be fulfilled; we will have to settle for crumbs. Crumbs that can’t give us the fullness for which we live, for which we wish to live.   The question is what committing oneself to one’s humanity means.

  How do we discover our humanity? What do we commit ourselves to? To our images? A challenge. If a child or a student asks you: “How can I discover my humanity? I give you five seconds to formulate a hypothetical answer: where would you start? What would you think of it? If we don’t take a chance on these questions to verify our answer is adequate, we may run away and then realize we have taken the wrong path. Whoever has a hypothesis should write it down in just one sentence, one word. What method do each of you follow to answer this question? What path and hypothesis do you think of? Where would you start to discover your humanity? Is there anyone brave enough to try? This is a job only for the bold! To commit oneself to one’s humanity is only for the daring!

-The heart. I would start with my heart.

-The heart ... with the word “heart,” one can make many menus.

-I mean my desire. Your desire, there; you also have to verify what you say. If I were to ask my students this question, I could spend the whole hour challenging them on what they would say. What you said is right. It could be. But if you don’t realize what you are saying, you can make several menus with the same words. For example, we often know the heart by what we think, what comes to mind, what someone else says, what we have seen in our friends on the road, or what someone does. For this reason, in order not to let ourselves be carried away by images and by all possible paths, if we genuinely want to understand what our humanity is, Father Giussani says: “Start from ourselves. You start with a fundamental point. 

We can’t start from anywhere else than ourselves. We need to look at our experiences to see all the parts of ourselves that we have, that show up when we live. This is not introspection. You discover your humanity by looking at it, by surprising it in action. “The factors that constitute us emerge by observing us in action. It is here that the elements that sustain the mechanism that is the human subject appear” (The Religious Sense)[1]. We often have another starting point: an idea, an image of how life can be fulfilled. Look at young people: “If I could do this excursion, it would be the best! If I fell in love, how wonderful. If I could go to that party, if I could take this trip...”.

Life doesn’t always mistreat you; sometimes, it grants you the knowledge that what you wish for comes true. How often has it happened to you that life answers you a “yes” with a capital “yes”? And how many times, looking at your experience, even though things have been excellent, you’ve been surprised, saying: “I’m not comfortable; it isn’t enough for me.” 

You don’t need to study at Harvard to see this. Just watch us do what we do. You may be convinced that I would have solved the riddle of life when you went to that party, finished your degree‌ and married. Is it true that when one of my pictures comes true, I realize something is missing because that picture of life didn’t match everything I thought it would? We often don’t see it and keep thinking about projects that have already shown their failure. We do it continuously. And so we waste our life living. Why? Because we learn nothing from the experience we have had. 

Even though all the signs tell us that it’s not enough to get what we think we want, we keep changing our image, replacing it one after another. So what does it mean to start from ourselves? Father Giussani warns us that “starting from ourselves” is a proposition that can be misleading, as we have seen. I don’t disagree with anyone’s good intentions, and I don’t doubt that someone does it really well. But it’s different to find out who you are. You often identify with yourself, your desire‌ and your heart with an image.

Desire is always there; it allows you to decide what you desire with an image of something that should satisfy it. But when you verify, that is, when your image is fulfilled, you realize that your desire is infinite! Suppose you need to learn to realize this. In that case, you will keep making mistakes until you give up: first, it will be one thing, then another, then another‌ and you’ll buy a dog to be happy. Do you see how skepticism enters into life? So when do we start from ourselves? "Starting from oneself is something real when we look at our own person in action, that is when it’s observed in daily experience.” When, by trying something, you reach it and see what happens to you.

Because the party may have been phenomenal, it’s impossible to blame the party for being a failure because it was great! It was much better than anything you had imagined. I always remember what happened to a painter friend of mine in Barcelona. What is the dream of someone who paints? To exhibit her paintings. She finally gets to exhibit! A success that exceeds all her expectations. And what happens to her? She spends the whole afternoon crying. Someone might think he has a psychiatric problem. .... If the unexpected success he wanted so much has happened, why isn’t he satisfied? When things don’t work out, you can say: “It went wrong, but the day it goes right, it will be the bomb.”

The problem starts when you get what you want! The image of what you wanted is fulfilled, but more is needed. That’s when the problems start. If it’s not enough when life responds to my desire, what’s enough? Do you understand why I was crying? It’s not that I had a psychiatric problem. Our painter friend had realized the nature of the matter. She only discovered her humanity by observing the experience. She had accomplished what she was after; she wasn’t a poor wretch because the exhibition would have failed. But it wasn’t enough for her, and so she wept.
Giussani says, “Indeed, there’s no “I” or person who can abstract himself from the action he carries out.” I insist I can only discover myself in action. You can do all the mental tricks you want, but reality sets in: you had an idea, and it’s done, but it’s not enough for you.

You can say everything and prove yourself as you want, but the truth is more stubborn than all your ideas and mine. When I discovered this, I rejoiced and said: “Here, I cannot cheat because there is something that unmasks the fallacy of my image in front of my eyes. Inside me, there is something that does not give up! Something that I cannot manipulate! That I cannot reduce to what I think!”.

 This is the most powerful instrument for someone who wants to walk. Then I started to enjoy life because I would say, “The more I risk, the more it comes out whether or not I have the answer.” Then life starts to be a fun adventure because any experience you have opens a way to your destiny. You can try to find the answer, as a friend of a researcher told me. She met a PhD student in the hallway at the university, all distressed. "What happened to you?” He asks her. And she says, “I’m sad because the experiment didn’t come out.” My friend replied, “But an experiment is always an experiment!”. That is. It’s a journey.

I was lucky to spend a few days with a friend who works with Elon Musk this summer. He told me how Elon Musk has beaten NASA, the US space agency, thanks to a question of method. Have you seen how long NASA hasn’t sent a rocket into space? Because they keep thinking about it, thinking it over, postponing it. Elon Musk has outdone them by simply experimenting.

The day an expedition failed, he didn’t stop until he identified the reason for the failure. When asked, “Can we see a video of what you’re doing?” Do you know what he showed? All his failures! After every failed mission, he talks for two hours with each of his collaborators daily until he discovers the cause. Sometimes, it’s a bolt out of the blue! That’s how you make progress.

On the other hand, if you keep looking the other way without checking the images you have in action, you don’t move forward. Then we discuss, obviously — we are all experts in this. We don’t only move forward by talking; we move forward by trying out the ideas we have in our minds.

Until you verify in action, you can pretend you already have the answer and continue discussing. We either choose to follow this way of finding out what our humanity means, not just in general, which we can write about in philosophy, but also in your and my humanity, or we won’t find it. Our humanity isn’t found by thinking about ourselves, as many think because we only see what we want to see. It’s in action that all my reductions are unmasked. That is why “starting from ourselves” means looking at the movements of my person in action, surprising it in everyday experience‌ and surprising myself in action! Because that is where I discover myself.

Like the painter who realized who she was. Even though her show was successful, it wasn’t enough for her. Or the boy who comes home sad after a great party. Giussani says: “Then the starting ‘material’ will no longer be a prejudice about oneself, an artificial image of oneself,” formulated with the best intentions but surprise in action. The factors that constitute me as “I” as a person come to light before my conscience, not imagining, not thinking in the abstract, but observing me in action. All this makes you more yourself than an anthropology course because even the anthropology course can be reduced to an image. 

The factors of what I am, my heart‌ and my desire only emerge in this way. Giussani continues, "St. Thomas says in his De Veritate: 'In hoc aliquis percipit se animam habere et vivere et esse, quod percipit se sentiré et intelligere et alia huiusmodi opera vitae exercere.'" This means that one understands that one exists and lives the fact that one thinks, feels‌ and carries out other similar activities”, that is, being in action! It’s by surprising myself in action that I discover myself. Therefore, if one doesn’t commit oneself or verify, one will be unable to find the resources of one’s humanity! And this always happens. For example, a student who doesn’t study a subject because he doesn’t like it won’t be able to find out if he is good at it. He can only understand it if he takes risks if he studies it.

I remember when, just before I was ordained a priest, I went to a small town where a priest friend lived. I was to prepare some spiritual exercises for a group of young people with him. When I arrived there in November, with a cold to die in the church, where there were four cats, I thought: “If they send me to a place like this, I’m going to die! Never think about these things because they happen! Three days after my ordination, I was sent there. Immediately, you get an image that makes you say: “You see, now they are sending me there, and I am going to die.” However... they were three precious years, such as I could never have imagined! It had nothing to do with the picture I had of myself when I saw myself in that church with four cats and a bad cold. 

Why? Because the constitutive factors of my self came to light while living. I found the skills and possibilities that could come from that situation. They opened up to me just by living. If one does not do this work, one will not stop making mistakes, just as I made mistakes. Then, when I complained about something, a friend always reminded me of that episode: “Remember when you thought you were going to die if they sent you to that town and how precious those years were for you.”

Therefore, one must take risks to be able to understand oneself. "The constitutive factors of man are perceived when they are engaged in action; otherwise, they aren’t noticed,” they do not come to light. To reach this awareness, I have to engage myself. That is why the more one engages with life, the better one grasps humanity. However, “being committed to life doesn’t mean having an exacerbated commitment to one or another of its aspects,” such as soccer, work, or a hobby, because “commitment to life is never partial.”

Commitment to one’s humanity implies a “commitment to the whole of life, where everything must be included.” It’s about being attentive to how my person emerges in the face of love, work, politics, money, food, rest, “without forgetting anything” of the experience of my humanity. All the factors of who I am emerge before my awareness is only by engaging with all aspects of living. What does it take for this to happen? To look sympathetically at your humanity. We can only understand who we are if we take it seriously. We need to take seriously what we try to be able to discover who we are. We will continue to have an image that doesn’t correspond to our identity. What happens when one commits to oneself like this? 

According to what we have said and many of you have read in the first chapter of The Religious Sense, what is the method when Father Giussani quotes Alexis Carrel? "Little observation and much reasoning lead to error. Observing myself and thinking about it leads to the truth. It isn’t about thinking, thinking‌ , or imagining things about my humanity. It is about finding out what is happening in my life.

The first thing to do to understand our humanity is to look at our daily experiences. We will have millions of examples of people who have wanted something, tried to get a picture, and then reality showed all their true humanity. The point is not to say to yourself, “Now I’m going to engage with my humanity,” but, “Watch!” Because her reaction surprised the painter, her humanity came out not in the abstract but in reality.

2. The I-in-action: What are the characteristics of the human that emerge when one observes oneself in this way, engaged with one’s humanity? “The more we discover our demands, the more we realize that we cannot satisfy them alone.” The more we work on ourselves, the more we realize that often, what we need to fix, what we want‌ and what we want doesn’t happen. That is why “the sense of impotence accompanies every serious experience of humanity” (The way to truth is an experience)[2]. The painter has put all her heart into it, like when I was sent to that town or the boy who went to the party. However, this commitment only shows that I can’t solve the problem. In fact, I can see that I can’t do it through my attempts to get it.

“This sense of impotence,” observes Giussani, “engenders loneliness. True loneliness comes not so much from being physically alone but from the discovery that our fundamental problem cannot find an answer in ourselves or others.” Then, we begin to realize the nature of the problem that appears in experience. 

“The sense of loneliness [because what I seek, what I perceive in myself there is no answer to] is born at the heart of any serious engagement with one’s own humanity.” The more serious I am with myself, the more my incapacity appears, and, therefore, the experience of solitude, which has nothing sentimental about it. “This can be well understood by anyone who has believed to have found the solution to a great need in something or someone, but then this (...) reveals itself incapable. We are alone with our needs, with our need to be and to live intensely. Like someone alone in the desert, the only thing he can do is wait for someone to arrive”.

This is what emerges in people who are most committed to their humanity. Let us think of Leopardi and the need for meaning he had within him. What kind of human experience must he have had to write something like this? 

“Not to be able to be satisfied with any earthly thing, nor, so to speak, with the whole earth; to consider the incalculable vastness of space, the number and marvelous mass of worlds, and to find that everything is little and small for the capacity of one’s own mind; (....) and to feel (...), and always to accuse things of their insufficiency and nothingness, and to suffer want and emptiness, and, even so, boredom [because it isn’t enough], seems to me the greatest sign of greatness and nobility that can be seen in human nature”. What for many is a cause for despair, for Leopardi, is the discovery of his humanity. Nothing is enough for you because you are infinitely greater. It isn’t a psychological problem to be solved.

The discovery of the “insufficiency” of things brings out who we are, what our humanity is, what our self is made of, and the irreducibility that we are. Leopardi calls it, with a happy phrase, “eternal mystery / of our being,” which is the same thing that Pavese discovers on the day of his great success when receiving the Strega prize: “In Rome, apotheosis. So what?”. As if to say: and what do I do tomorrow morning? Have you ever asked yourselves such a question the day after a great success? At that moment, we see that everything is disproportionate to the demands that emerge from our humanity. 

If you don’t care about yourself, you’ll always feel forced to leave yourself. But where to go? Do you think you can escape yourself without yourself? You can go to the world’s end, but go with your whole being! So everything will start all over again wherever you are. Look at what happened with the Covid. We all experienced helplessness. Who’d have imagined a week before that the world could be paralyzed? A small virus caused it without knowing the dimensions it was going to have. Seeing many deaths made us feel closer to each other because we were all in the same situation, no matter how angry we were.

Do you remember what the doctors said they had created among them during such a big emergency? It’s an amazing unity. But as soon as the emergency was over, they hardly said hello to each other in the corridors. Once the danger is over, when our sense of helplessness disappears, this unity is no longer maintained. This is why one can feel truly close to the other when one takes one’s humanity seriously. If people who are deaf or hard of hearing don’t talk, they feel lonely more. As one’s self-image grows, one sees the rules we use to judge everything. They also check that it doesn’t meet those rules. 

That is why I am so struck by a text by Ernesto Sábato that says: “They have always reproached me for my need for absolutes,” that is to say, the awareness of my infinite need, as Leopardi and geniuses like St. Augustine, Pavese or Ernesto Sábato used to say. "I have always been criticized for my need for absolutes, which, on the other hand, appears in my characters. This need runs through my life like a channel, like nostalgia, to which I would never have arrived. [...] I have never been able to calm my nostalgia, to tame it, telling myself that that harmony was a time in childhood. [...] nostalgia is, for me, a longing never fulfilled, the place I have never been able to reach. But it is what we would have liked to be, our desire. One does not get to live it so much that one might even believe that it is not natural, if it were not for any human being to have the hope of being, the feeling that something is missing. The nostalgia for that absolute is like a backdrop, invisible, unknowable, but with which we measure all of life”. This isn’t a problem of faith nor a decision to be made; it’s a problem of humanity!

Anyone who knows his humanity will be unable to avoid any position he takes in his life (and that doesn’t interest me). He can’t avoid comparing this longing for the absolute with anything he tries. This is decisive to intercept, in reality, something that can respond. A few weeks ago, I walked with a group of friends. At one point, the mother of a boy says to me, “Do you know what my son asked me, ‘Mom, how can you live like this?’” I said, “But where did your son get that question from?” “Well, I don’t know.” “How your son asks you a question like that, and you just let it go without trying to understand?”. 

Then he says to me, “Ask him, there it is.” Then I go up to him and say, “How did this question come up for you?”. And he answered, “By looking at my mother.” Then I said, “Do you realize that the answer to your question is right in front of you? Because if you had not seen your mother, this question would never have occurred to you. This question has come to you because you have seen a way of living reality that, amid the panorama of everything you see, you would like for yourself.” That boy took no particular course. Living the drama of his humanity, he intercepted a presence that aroused a crazy desire to second it. But before seconding it, he recognized a difference! He recognized someone in whom he perceived a glimmer of an answer to the demands of his humanity. Around him, many other ways of living didn’t raise that question!

Father Giussani describes this phenomenon: “In our environment there are in fact people who have a greater sensitivity to live an experience of humanity, who in fact [not in theory, but in fact!] Learn more about the environment and the people in it. They can easily start a community movement. They live our experience more intensely, more engaged; each of us feels better represented in them,” and so seeks their company. Recognizing people like that is a gift, as it happened to this boy. Amid the general confusion, he intercepts a face among many others, in whom he finds a more appropriate, more corresponding, more human way of living, and he feels like living like that. "Such people naturally constitute for us an authority,” a word we tend to use obtusely, which has nothing to do with what it indicates. It brings out your humanity, makes you grow, and activates you! "There is an inevitable attraction in it" because it lives a humanity you would like to live. "Authority thus springs forth as a wealth of experience that imposes itself on others, that produces novelty, astonishment and respect.” But who realizes this? He who lives devoted to his humanity and has found that not all ways of living are good. At some point, he meets such a person and is surprised. And he would like to live like this! "The encounter with this natural authority educates our sensibility and our conscience” shows us that living our humanity is possible and within reach because we see it! This boy asks his mother, “How can one live like this?”. The more you live your humanity, the more challenged you feel by people who live in reality, in the same situations as everyone else — not in a monastery or the desert — with intelligence, with the ability to be, in fact, with calmness, peace, and joy that you can see! I don’t have to imagine it; you can see it!

Don Eugenio told me about a sick girl. He meets with a group of very sick people every week, but they don’t see each other. What did she perceive in the humanity of the other to be able to say: "I want to die as soon as possible, to go with you to the other shore, to see your face! Because I will no longer be blind. This girl doesn’t see, but she “sees” much more than those who see with their own eyes. So much so that she wishes she could see the face of the other. Because life is seen in the face, in the sparkle of the eyes. That’s what we call “authority.” If you don’t like this word because it isn’t politically correct, erase it. Still, you must keep the fact of coming across these presences. The problem is whether we ask the questions based on the image we have, not on our experience. We must decide whether to follow it. That’s our problem.

Our humanity isn’t a problem but a resource. Only those who are committed to life can stop these people and have the human ability to see them. It is not a question of having some extraordinary gifts but of humanity itself! That emerges in one's own experience through everything we experience. If we know what Ernesto Sábato says and become more aware of ourselves, we can stop the answer from coming. Many times, when going through a moment of difficulty, discomfort‌ or confusion, one doesn’t know where to look and, after thinking about it a thousand times, asks: “Who can give me a hand?”.

Then, among all the people he knows, he looks for someone who knows something’s available and can accept his humanity as he can’t. Finally, he decides, “I’m going to see so-and-so.” We start talking, and after twenty minutes of trying hard to share his discomfort and concerns, he stops and asks, “But do you understand me?”. The other replies, “Of course I understand you!” But the one seeking help believes the other doesn’t understand anything. 

To understand, you need to want to understand. You also need to be available to understand. Having good intentions to understand the other or feel understood is not enough. We can thank the other for his availability, but he doesn’t understand what we are telling him. By how he reacts to what we say, we realize he doesn’t understand. Why? Because we can only feel understood by someone who has something of us, something of our human experience. Suppose one listens to another person but doesn’t have something that somehow brings one closer to another person’s experience. In that case, one can misunderstand the meaning of any word. Then loneliness gets worse. He doesn’t understand me when I try to talk about it with someone. He doesn’t understand, not because he doesn’t want to or can’t, but because he doesn’t know about the human experience I’m telling him about. Do you see then why our humanity is a resource?

Only he, with experience of his humanity, can see the need of the other through the signs he sees, like the signs of the problem, of the problems that are happening inside that boy, son, colleague, or friend. That is why we can only learn to understand young people by working with our humanity, which isn’t a pretty thing. We won’t achieve this by taking a course but by accompanying ourselves in living our society. 

Without this, in the middle of this educational crisis - ours and others’ - it’s better to close the chiringuito; we will only be wasting our time. We will also be wasting others’ time. Suppose we don’t want to waste our time living, nor make others waste it. In that case, we can only offer them ‌real help and stop their need if we live our humanity. That is why many things I learned by living remain with me. I know them from others; I repeat them many times. But the others from whom I understand them do not know what’s happened to them. I talked with a mother about her worries about work, love, etc. I tried to help her understand what was at the heart of her most important need. It wasn’t about work or love. It was more important, but I could tell from her reaction that she was not getting through all the water, fog, and darkness blocking her. At one point, she started talking to me about her daughter, who, one day, came home from school and said, “Mom, the teacher asked us what we need to be happy. 

Listening to my classmates, I realized that I didn’t need anything. You and Dad love me very much, so I don’t need anything, but I feel sad. I asked her: “Do you have anything to say to your daughter? Do you realize that if you don’t understand your problem, you won’t understand your daughter’s problem either? In what did she see that she didn’t understand her daughter? In what she told her, “My daughter, you are never satisfied!”. A mother who says this to her daughter — it pains me to say it - hasn’t understood anything about her life. She needs to understand the bottom line of her humanity problem.

Suppose we want to enter into a relationship with young people or children. In that case, perceiving our humanity and feeling our society isn’t a decorative ornament. Suppose we don’t commit ourselves to our humanity and aren’t the first to live this commitment. In that case, we won’t be able to interact with others. The mother didn’t know what the main problem was with her humanity. She couldn’t understand what her daughter was saying to her. 

That is why it’s a dialogue between people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Instead of celebrating her daughter because she finally realizes the most important part of being a woman, of her always unhappy self, she blames her for not being happy with what she has. Unbelievable! Such is the dialogue of people who are deaf or hard of hearing that we often have. That’s why I say that to understand the other, we need to know ourselves. Otherwise, we don’t even understand our children. I want to end with two songs. The first is from a well-known movie, Barbie, called What Was I Made For? We listen to it.

I read the translation: “I used to float; now I just fall / I knew it, but now I’m not sure / What am I made for / Taking a turn, I was ideal / Seemed like something so alive, and it turns out I’m not real / Just something you paid for [here the question arises and if it doesn’t find an answer, the question will arise again] / What am I made for / Because I, I / Don’t know how to feel / But I want to try / I don’t know how to feel / But someday I might (...) When is it over? All the fun / I’m sad again; don’t tell my boyfriend / He wasn’t made for this [loneliness]. Not even with her boyfriend, and then the question returns] / What am I made for / [...] Because I / don’t know how to feel / but I want to try / I don’t know how to feel / but someday I might / I think I’ve forgotten how to be happy / something I'm not, but something I can be / something I hope / something I’m made for.”

Who will ever understand this girl? All your children and students hear this song because it’s the movie of the moment, but who will talk to them? That’s the advantage of being a teacher, of relating to young people, because they give us no respite. They may or may not tell us, but they are watching to see if they can find someone who can answer Barbie’s question. In this sense, they are an asset to us. They aren’t a “misfortune” we must try to manage but an asset that challenges us. If the game isn’t played like this, we can give them the best grade, but if we don’t answer, we will have lost before we start.

I still remember a woman who cleaned in a school. Because of her job, she had a special relationship with the kids, especially one who was messy. One day, she brought him to me and told the boy, “Let’s see what you say now.” “That I’m nothing but trouble.” It was enough for me to ask him, “But that’s all you are?”. The woman and the boy were so surprised that they told the whole school. One question was enough to awaken his self-awareness when he had reduced it to being someone who only caused trouble. But kids are much more than their problems! They cause problems precisely because they can’t find an answer to what they want. It’s the other way around. Let’s not confuse the symptoms with the cause; the consequences with the origin. If we don’t realize it, they will feel like a “problem.”

That’s why I want you to listen to another song that says, “I am the problem.” It’s by Taylor Swift, which is a hit with young people.

I read the lyrics, “I have this thing that makes me older but not wiser [one can get old but not wise. As they say in Spanish, you can become rotten without becoming mature. Old, but never wise] / Midnights become my evenings / When my depression works the night shift / All the people I’ve cheated stay there, in the room // I shouldn’t be left to myself / They arrive with their prices and their vices / And I go into crisis / I wake up screaming in my sleep / One day I’ll watch you leave / Because you’ve grown tired of my scheming // It’s me, hello, I’m the problem [not the others]. It’s me // (....) [And so] I’ll look straight at the sun but never at the mirror [because in the mirror I see me. I have to run away, I could look at everything but myself in the mirror] / Sometimes I feel like everyone’s a sexy baby / And I’m the monster on the hill [the elephant in the room, we could say...] / Too big to hang out, staggering slowly towards your favorite city/heart pierced, but never dead / Have you seen how I disguise my narcissism as altruism? [One can disguise as altruism that flight from oneself] / (...) One day, I’ll see you go / and life will lose all meaning [that’s why I’m the problem].”

This is the fascinating adventure in which we are immersed. What kind of look does someone who considers himself “the problem” need to discover his dignity and greatness to begin to feel a moment of tenderness with himself? However, we can’t teach this to young people in a simple way. We can learn by looking at our humanity and being kind to ourselves. Otherwise, our reaction to one or the other will prevail. Therefore, if we don’t put before others the attractiveness of a look that allows the other to discover his humanity as the most beautiful, the most valuable thing he has, when someone looks at us like that, we will never be able to say to a young person: “You aren’t a problem! So, good adventure.

Unrevised translation by the author. The article has been published on paginasdigital.es

[1] Giusani, L: El Sentido Religioso (2023), Ediciones Encuentro, Madrid.

[2] Giusani, L: El camino a la verdad es una experiencia (2007), Ediciones Encuentro, Madrid.

Intervention at the convention "Educatori in opera ovvero uomini impegnati con la propria umanità" held on August 31, 2023 and organized by the Fondazione San Michele Arcangelo.
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