The big break

Stories, faces and reflections in time suspended by the coronavirus.

In times of epidemic, which makes us all semi-hermits, the head does not stop thinking and through closed walls the eyes see. What's left? The essential is that the human person becomes more and more human, that he frees himself more and more.

It almost seems that our heads have emptied and that the epidemic is devouring not only the lungs, but also the thoughts. Yet the new experience of solitude, of almost immobility, of social relationships that have to become deeper in order to survive, have opened and opened horizons that we had forgotten. People who lived next to us like true strangers become friends whose conversation is sought, perhaps through windows and balconies! Nonetheless, we are almost speechless, as if we no longer knew how to live other than the "event" that invaded everything. Thoughts and words have a single subject.

So many things have happened and many have said that, if one day they gather, they would be very surprised at the disorder that can inhabit our collective mind.

It will be good to remember that this is not a special time, but that every time carries within itself all times and the human person remains unique and equal in every circumstance and finds his wealth in everything. I try to follow a thought, starting from a small thing, but not without importance.

They say that air pollution has greatly decreased and I have the impression, looking at the fountain in the cloister of my Roman monastery, that the water in which goldfish also sail is clearer. Even our heads and hearts can find greater clarity, a simplicity that is good for us, that makes us breathe a purer air. It is not automatic and it is not without price or struggle. Fight is what really builds the human person. To be yourself, you need to abandon yourself, get out of your catafalque in which we are locked up as beautiful mummies, who everyone wants to see and admire, but who have eyes and do not see, have ears and do not hear, have a mouth and do not speak, have a heart and do not love. It is necessary to break the case, which preserves the dead so well, to risk the life of the living, who are much less protected and admired, but have the true beauty and ability to be happy, joyful, even happy. As long as you live in the beautiful and precious display case you cannot have all this and you are enveloped in an artificial light and exposed to effects that do not give any taste. To survive in a time of epidemic, which locks us all up at home, we cannot help but find ways to be truly free, get out of the display case and be who we are. Who has the courage to recognize in human poverty that reveals a mixture of great aspirations, fears, memories and dreams, grudges that peep out and frustrations never absorbed, affections that leave us restless and motivate us, in order to to live a life that comes out of itself, of sounds that open us to the encounter and expectations in which the colors of joy and disappointment are mixed? Only a true and humble person, free and who loves himself and knows how to be grateful for what he is.

To get out of yourself, from your own shell that seems to protect us, but suffocates us, in these times of confinement becomes a necessity. Going out naked, as we are, as we discover we are in solitude, to deliver ourselves to others in the beautiful truth of our creation. We have been created fragile, but we are precious; each is a unique piece and precisely the fact that we cannot find our security in equality with others is our fragility, but also our wealth. Precisely in this poverty of freedom and poverty of the future, we find life.

See the focus Reflections in Time of Covid 19