Taking the Human in Us Seriously
Simone Riva - Taking the human in us seriously. The story concerns a man who sets out to do the impossible: steal the moon. Growing up with a mother who always mocked his dreams, he eventually became a criminal. The animated film Despicable Me (2010) takes us by the hand into the meanderings of Gru's heart in a sympathetic but very effective way. Tall, with a disproportionate body, dressed in gray, in a gray house, with a (decidedly unusual) gray car, in a gray life. He is cynical, lonely, and friendless. He lives with the Minions (curious, friendly little creatures who let him do anything he wants).
Gru's heart is filled with an unquenchable ambition: to commit the crime of the century and steal the record from his rival, Vector. Suddenly, something unexpected happens: he meets three sisters abandoned by their parents and taken to Miss Hattie's horrible orphanage. They are the only ones who can get into the fortress of Vector, who is really into the cookies the little girls sell from house to house. Gru decides to use them to break in and steal the Shrinking Ray, an essential tool for shrinking the moon, and take it with him. However, something happens to his heart that he has never known before: he becomes attached to the three sisters. He becomes aware of this novelty when he achieves his goal, but he is suddenly unsatisfied. What will he do with the moon if he cannot respond to this new and heavy feeling he feels? Thus, the villain finds himself a father. His desire for an impossible thing has found a fulfillment he could not imagine.
This is the story told by a movie that is for children but contains a provocation that is valid for everyone. Father Julián Carrón describes it this way: "The first people who met Jesus looked at everyone, his wife, his children, his companions, with the encounter in their hearts, with the memory of him still alive. And with this presence in our eyes, we also face everything today: we cannot remove from our lives what has happened to us if it is truly a human experience" (Julián Carrón, Francesco Venturini, Words to Priests. With interventions by Msgr. Luigi Giussani, SEI, 1996, p. 136).
In the face of all our images of reality, in the face of all that has happened to us in the past, in the face of the multitude of dreams that we cultivate for the future, God responds with what is happening now, what makes our hearts vibrate and makes us recognize ourselves as genuinely human. When the day of this discovery comes, everything seems minor and diminished compared to the promise of fulfillment it brings. The many days of neglect we have lived, forgetting our "self," contracting the success of life to some project or illusory achievement of who knows what goal, as happened to the movie's protagonist, come to mind.
Faced with the possibility of rediscovering ourselves as human beings, all projects go up in smoke and are revealed for what they are: crumbs. Thus, the warning that Albert Camus entrusts to Caligula, "Be realists, demand the impossible," conveys the connotation of a call not to give up on oneself. The French of '68 used this slogan in a very different way. Still, now, after the collapse of all illusions, it appears in its most interesting light. Achieving the impossible is what has always interested man most since childhood. Yet, as we grow older, we often mistakenly equate greatness with mere grandiosity. Faced with the real impossibility of achieving them, the terrible veil of cynicism falls over us, and we no longer expect anything new. Until it happens again, we become children and look at ourselves with simple eyes. Christ introduced this possibility into history.
Father Carrón points out in the text already quoted: "To understand what Christ is, we must take seriously the humanity in us, the sadness in us, our humanity as it is now, whatever our situation. So the first condition for being interested in Christ is to feel the human in us. How difficult it is, even among us, to find people for whom Christ is a necessity for life, for living! Not to become a little better or a little more pious, but to live (to live!), to live as human beings!"
There is no more interesting adventure, no more possible impossibility.
Published on Ilsussidiario.net. Unrevised translation by the author. Download.
