For many of us, the relentless
flow of time represents a challenge, or even an unfair fight, because we can do
nothing to stop it as it passes. Today “time,” as a subjective feeling, seems
to flow by in a hurry. There is never enough of it, nor does one ever arrive
‘on time.’ And even the little time that we are given with which to live, we
spend in anxiety. Moreover, a certain conception of time as something
fragmentary, as if the uninterrupted and accelerating succession of facts,
situations, people and things were completely disjointed, continues to impose
itself. There is no time to stop and delve deep. One is always running, shaken
and dazed beneath a constant bombardment of information. We cannot possibly
take in everything, and often we content ourselves with a superficial
knowledge, resigning ourselves to widely-diffused mediocrity. The only reality
that unites this way of living out time is ‘change,’ understood as a value in
and of itself, as if the only thing that is truly stable and certain is the
fact that everything changes.
In this euphoria of change we
sense the need for deep renewal, a renewal that goes beyond simple emotions, a
renewal that affects our entire person, our way of feeling, thinking and
acting. We long for clarity, to put our lives in order. We feel the urgency to
have a time that is qualitatively ‘different,’ a moment to ‘breathe.’ The
change that our society imposes on us does not satisfy our desires and our
deepest needs. Rather, it serves only to fuel our lack of satisfaction and our weariness. A certain phrase often comes up in our conversations, even among us
friars: “I’m tired; I can’t take it any more.” Vacations, holidays, and weekends
don’t seem to be able to produce in us the desired result. Relationships become complicated, full of conflict, fake and stressful. [to be continued...]
friar Giovanni Nappo
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