Listen to the call of the dropouts

To be a person is to have the capacity to give oneself to others and to know one is part of creation as a whole. The voyage of a human being becoming a person entails a radical attitude of creating spaces of encounter and atmospheres of solidarity that are the result of sharing, of people who are conscious of the fact that communion is the most sublime expression of human nature because it supports itself in the will of assuming the most authentic reality. Nothing farther apart from uniformity and individualism supported in a blind selfishness ballasted when people confuse the means with the ends, when people convert everything into useful instruments as the only valid criterion to obtain a victory that has little to do with success, which demands that people get out of their ego to encounter other people and walk together. Personal happiness to the perfection of the entire humanity, with the maturity process of everything that exists and with the attitude towards the life of a noble poverty that encourages us to live with modesty and to think with greatness.

The powers in turn in universities, in the economy and in politics bombard us with theories and models, and impose upon us doctrines that threaten to drown freedom of choice, freedom of being and of sharing. They don’t even allow us the right to make a mistake. There are people who pretend to know everything in order to organize it. Fortunately, more of us turn to solidarity each day to share other people’s luck with the conviction that, in the end, it must be true that men participate in a common project. It’s precise to save the earth over which we live and in which we breath in a cosmic adventure, like Chief Seattle suggested.

Community is not uniformity, just like universality is not syncretism, but rather the creative dialogue within a healthy pluralism. Unity in a projection for the future forces us to make other people’s needs our own and to bring efforts together to fight for the human condition that demands dignity as a guarantee of an authentic liberty. No liberty to die of hunger. One cannot consider others as rivals or as enemies. “The others” is the truest expression of my personality as a man. To be for others gives us back the originating face and puts us on the way of finding our lost identity. That way we would tune with all those millions who suffer from hunger, misery, pain, marginalization and solitude.

José Carlos Gª Fajardo
Translated by Carlos Miguélez

This article was published in the Center of Collaborations for Solidarity (CCS) on 06/21/2004