The Power Of Contact

Alone or in company? This natural and healthy choice seems to transform itself on our darkest nights into another not reassuring alternative: isolated or dependent? And even in one more, not because false less frequent in our musings: slave or hermit? In reality, these dichotomies are just imaginary torture.

We can always learn to enter into relationship with others until we feel included in everyone’s world and we can always find the space for reflection of our own exclusive company. We can always find moments when we can enjoy being with others and moments when external and internal silence provides us with fulfillment. But if we fill our lives with fear, be it the fear of being trapped by a bond or the horror of the absence of someone’s gaze, we will go through our existence fleeing from one or the other ghost.

We are “social animals”: we need to interact

Personally, I do not doubt our gregarious essence. We need contact and bond with others, and not necessarily as a sign of our weakness, as Nietzsche suggested, but as an expression of an intrinsic need for what is human in us. We grow, we assert ourselves and we are in relation to others, and that interaction gives meaning to our lives. Hungry for your affection and approval, but also for your dissent and criticism. Ambition of his hand and his shoulder, but also the need to know ourselves useful and transcendent.

It is by connecting with that “social” characteristic of the human that genuine, honest and continuous communication is born and becomes valuable , but also when, as we have already seen, cooperation between people, solidarity and understanding of what flows, flows. the other suffers or lives. The moment when our kindest, most compassionate and generous aspect appears, without the need for explanation.

What is the quality of virtual interactions?

However, we live in a world that seems to privilege instant communication over deep communication, which prioritizes immediacy over transcendence, which honors the number of followers that one has before the few friends. Today we live in a world in which virtual communication technology, which has done so much to strengthen ties, threatens to make them difficult.

Everything happens as if the internet, in its successful attempt to bring those who are far closer together, tended to alienate those who are close.

I began to be alarmed by this situation a few months ago, when, sitting at a coffee table, my friend Julia pointed out what was happening at the next table. Five young people (three boys and two girls) who did not reach the age of 18 shared some soft drinks. Each of them had a mobile phone in their hand. Each was in their own world reading and sending their instant messages. None of them said a word, they only shared the physical space of the bar that offered them free Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly, something else ended up disturbing me. One of the girls laughed heartily and said to the boy sitting next to her: “You have to see what you are like!” He, who was next to her, had sent her a message on the phone!

Of course, it is not about stopping the use of technology, or banning chats, or censoring the network (three months ago, a doctor from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, guided a fellow surgeon in Russia online so that he could operate with his technique on a patient from Siberia and thus save his life). It is about adding to the advantages of technology the forgotten wonders of genuine and face-to-face contact between people.

Being able to transmit an idea to a thousand ‘friends’ in a few seconds should not prevent us from enjoying the pleasure of sharing a coffee ‘alone’ with four.

No one can doubt how wonderful and tempting it is to be able to transmit a “deep idea” or “a great phrase” to 1,500 “friends” in one minute and 140 characters, but that should not prevent us from enjoying the incomparable pleasure of sharing a table. having coffee with four friends, talking for hours just about nonsense.

The healing power of our hands

Some time ago I came across a traditional Chinese story that tells of the birth of the art of acupressure, a technique that, through the pressure of the fingers, stimulates the meridians of the body to harmonize their functioning. It is a story that today I want to share with you, giving it a special meaning:

There lived in ancient China a very poor man named Li Wang. Despite his poverty, Wang was known and loved by all his neighbors for his permanent willingness to share his meager food ration with any other unfortunate who knocked on his door and to help the one who suffered, even putting off his own needs.

It is said that one morning when Wang was trying to get some fish for his lunch he was granted a grace, and he saw, shrouded in mist, eight figures approaching him walking along the river bank. Not knowing where that intuition came from, Wang wondered if it was possible that they were the ones he was bragging about … When he got them closer, Wang could no longer doubt: he had the eight immortals before his eyes! Those eight sages who, according to tradition, had achieved enlightenment thanks to their understanding of the Tao and, with it, eternal life.

The sight of these men was overwhelming, but Li Wang plucked up his courage and, thinking that perhaps he should follow them, decided to walk behind them across the river, which the first in line were already crossing.

Suddenly, one of them, noticing his presence, turned to him and said: ”
If you intend to come with us, you will have to leave everything behind, all your possessions and your bonds.”
” That’s simple, ” said Wang, ” because I really have nothing.”
“Very well,” said the immortal. Take this…

Asked to make a bowl with his hands, he poured into the makeshift container a viscous green liquid that he carried in a small bottle that hung from his belt. Wang put his hands to his mouth to drink, but the scent of the potion was so foul and foul looking that he could not help the convulsion that caused him to gag and spill the liquid on the floor.
“You are not yet ready to go our way,” said the immortal. You are still too attached to appearances.

As soon as he had said these words, he turned around and prepared to follow the rest of his companions, who were already crossing the river walking on the water.

Li Wang remained by the river, on his knees, seized by sadness and remorse: the gods had given him a unique opportunity, and he had missed it. An opportunity that had literally slipped through his fingers.
– Give me another chance! Yelled Wang desperately from the shore.
“You don’t need another chance,” said the immortal stopped on the water. T odo you need is in your hands.

There is a power in our hands: the decision to reach out, to embrace those in need, to contain those who are desperate, to give them our warmth.

The figure took a few more steps and disappeared into the mist. Wang found himself alone and felt that all was lost; she burst into tears, covering her face with her hands… it was then that she perceived a jade-green glow in them.

It didn’t take long for Wang to discover the gift that glow gave his hands: the ability to relieve pain and cure disease. Since then, the peasant has dedicated himself to traveling throughout the region, and after a time, as his skill transcended, he traveled to other lands.

Wherever he went, Wang sought relief from those he came across just by touching or stroking them, becoming known and remembered as the King of the Golden Fingers. Some say that, on his merits, he finally found the way to eternal life. Others say that it was not really like that, although they recognize him as one of the fathers of the practice of healing with the hands (finally, another way to achieve immortality).

Not all of us have had access to that wisdom and that technique, but I tell this story to explain that there is a power in our hands. A power that has nothing miraculous, but a lot of magic. It is the decision to reach out, to embrace the one in need, to contain the desperate, to give the warmth of our body to those who feel the cold of helplessness, to accompany those who feel abandoned by the world, even though just for the enormous and selfish pleasure of feeling useful. A proxy, let me say, that, at least for now, we cannot send through our personal computer or our mobile.