“Serve” is a word that in many contexts may seem antiquated. Certainly servitude is not worthy of human beings when it is imposed or suffered due to a situation of poverty or as discrimination.
Instead, the "spirit of service", especially when it is mutual in a community of any kind, becomes evidence of change in social relationships that breaks down old patterns or new hierarchies. Indeed, a service lived with humility characterizes the true protagonists of authentic progress.
Nitin Nohria, senior dean of Harvard Business School, says that in that future that has already begun, being a good leader will require learning humility. According to him, humility must become a key word in the profiles of the next aspiring managers. He's not a fool. He says this because he realizes that the current trend to be increasingly competitive is producing results opposite to expectations. It is creating people who are psychologically fragile, in need of attention, obsessed with appearance, narcissistic[1].
After all, great women and great men are recognized by small gestures, as ancient oriental wisdom also reminds us: «The largest tree grows from a small sprout. The tallest tower arises from a small pile of earth. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step"[2].
To live like this, a conscious and free choice is necessary: no longer living closed in on ourselves and our interests, but "living the other", with his feelings, carrying his burdens and sharing his joys. We all have small or large responsibilities and spaces of authority: in the political and social field, but also in the family, at school, in the community. Let us take advantage of our "places of honor" to put ourselves at the service of the common good, building just and supportive human relationships.
This is how Igino Giordani, writer, journalist, politician and family man, lived in a historical moment marked by the dictatorship in Italy. To express his experience, he writes: «Politics is a handmaid and must not become master: it must not be abused, dominated or even dogma. Here is its function and its dignity: to be a social service, charity[3] in action: the first form of homeland charity." It was probably also in the personal relationship with this man rooted in his time but also a precursor projected beyond barriers and walls, that Chiara Lubich recalled more than once that politics, when it is an authentic experience, is "the Love of Loves ”, because it is the place of the most authentic and disinterested service to humanity in brotherhood.
[1] Michele Genisio “Humility” (in press)
[2] Daodejing,64
[3] Giordani uses the word charity not in the "welfare" sense, as it is usually understood, but in the Christian sense, which indicates the highest form of love.
