Change of mentality

An elderly lady finds in the letterbox the communication of the non-delivery of a registered letter.
Very surprised and out of breath because she was at home and nobody rang and also because she is curious to understand what it is. However, you will have to wait two days to be able to collect the registered letter.

Two days later she goes to the address indicated in the communication. She crosses the city to be told that she has to go to another address, but not on the same day because the opening hours of the service are different. Finally, the next day the lady can get hold of her registered letter.
Five days have passed since that fateful failure to strike the bell. How much energy wasted. What a collection of trifles, omissions, inadequate paid organizational responsibilities. I try to list them simply because I want to highlight that it is not possible to say that it is the fault of others but ours, even if I am not involved in the specific case.
Why didn't the person delivering the registered letter insist on finding out if the recipient was present? Why did you put a pre-printed letter in the hole with an incorrect reference address for collection when you knew very well that the envelope had to be collected elsewhere?

Even more serious: why does the reference public body agree to indicate the wrong address for the collection of mail? Why does the third party agree to deliver the envelope even if it is not the owner of the communication? It could be said that it is a sum of trivialities: certainly not for the elderly person who has experienced this affair with fatigue and anxiety.
I think sadly of all the people behind the steps of this trivial fact: because if work is to be an expression of human dignity, these things should not happen. Everyone should do his piece of work with seriousness and rigor. Everyone should live the actions for which he is, we hope, regularly paid, with diligence and gratification because the recipient is always the person.

The person at the center is not something theoretical but concrete even in the case of certain useless bureaucracies that kill. Living fully the moment of action as a relationship with the other changes life first of all for those who perform it. Volunteering your work is an important rewarding technique that changes society. And everyone notices it. Engaged in politics, in local administration, in personal services, in waste collection, it doesn't matter: from the sum of the change of mentality, of the putting together of our wills, from the passage from me to us, an important answer is played to be all better, for the quality of life of all.

Gianfranco Cattai
NP April 2021