Those who choose selfishness and intolerance as their guides lose their way

The world doesn't stop. Events follow one another at a rapid pace, while we are still trying, in a staggered way, to deal with the impacts of Covid-19, which have opened up huge cracks in human society, which now has to try to deal with deep wounds that will remain exposed for a long time to come. Undoubtedly, it won't be easy to understand what has happened and what continues to happen and how we should move forward. Even though we're stunned, we keep going, we keep living, we keep adapting.

In discussions in the corporate world, it is common to hear that today we live in a “VUCA” world, which means volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The abbreviation comes from the English origin (vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). This concept emerged at the end of the Cold War and represents the uncertainties experienced at that time, in which the outcome, which at the time seemed favorable to US forces, changed overnight, meaning that everything that had been planned could change from one hour to the next, thus causing a need to rethink and change strategy.

When we try to somehow connect the corporate term to our sense of daily life, it seems that we begin to understand what vulnerability, uncertainty and the complex and ambiguous challenges we are presented with today really are.

The moment of transition we are going through is making us rethink who we are, why we are here and what we want for tomorrow. The need for change is knocking on our doors. When it seemed that the coronavirus might have already knocked us out with hunger, unemployment and disease, suddenly intolerance and violence are taking on global contours with scenes of horror and suffering with our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and, once again, we are called to rethink relationships and human rights. The earth is shaking in Haiti and thousands are dying. Many more lose their homes. The winds blow hard, and the USA is swept away by Cyclone Ida, which leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. And it doesn't stop there. Climate change is causing even more suffering at the Earth's poles. It looks like we won't have any “peace and quiet”.

The phrase “Stop the world I want to go down”, which gives its name to Silvio Brito's song, is so timely and true... And what should we do now? Like castaways adrift in an ocean of uncertainty, pain and suffering, we are driven to fight desperately to keep from sinking in the icy and dangerous sea that we ourselves have created. Driven by a feeling of immediacy, natural to our choices based on materialism, we want salvation, for someone to save us from the storm, at all costs. We dream of better days, more peace, more balance, but how are we seeking this? How are we doing it?

We want a path, we need to reconnect with the truth and we need to reprogram our lives. This is when we need Jesus so much. He told us: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. To this statement by Christ, we could add many others that would be very useful at this time, but we believe that, perhaps, in the name of this unbridled search for an existential meaning, for an answer, for a ”salvation“, we are often led to repeat misconceptions from a thousand years ago, to reaffirm selfish behaviors that focus on our own well-being, forgetting that we live connected. Or, with violence and intolerance towards our fellow human beings, we want to impose our will at all costs. Of course, we may even want to go to the Father, justifying our thoughtless actions as we wish, but in this way we will be trying to go our own way, and not the way that the Master taught and exemplified.

Jesus also told us: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give it to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
This statement invites us to recover within ourselves the peace of Jesus, which is based on love and unconditional forgiveness, but above all, on the search for inner peace, which is the great guardian against our own imperfections, which helps us to the limit of our strength to overcome our evil inclinations which, sometimes, cloaked even in a desire for better days, drag us into the canyon of belligerence, violence and intolerance.

We can't change the world outside, we can't stop the rapid progress of the necessary transition, but we can react with new behaviors. Will we achieve any “peace” if we still don't shy away from repeated opportunities to sow discord? The invitation that the VUCA world brings us is to renew ourselves from the inside out, the way we react to adversity, suffering and pain, and the password to peace, even in the face of so many difficulties, is the example of Christ.
We must fight to make new, definitive and eternal choices. We need to know how to react to the unexpected with love, tolerance and a lot of faith. Only in this way will we be able to firmly follow in Jesus' footsteps.
As long as selfishness and intolerance guide our reactions to earthly uncertainties, we will be further away from the Way of Christ.