This year at the New York Encounter I volunteered as a guide for the beautiful exhibit on Guareschi and Jannacci: Little World. Minimal Stuff. The exhibit is about what it means to be human. Guareschi and Jannacci, Italian author and songwriter, respectively, express their understanding of humanity through their wacky and un-extraordinary characters. Their characters are the misfits, the common folk, and precisely through these people, Guareschi and Jannacci chose to show us our humanity. Why? Because it is these “simple” people that are most in touch with their hearts, most able to cry, most willing to long for more, and thus, most human. According to these authors, and to us, the characteristic that make us human is our ability to desire and hence the fact that we have a heart.

Over the course of the week before the New York Enounter I started to realize that this exhibit was changing my heart. I’ve always hated the fact that I cry so much and that I am never satisfied with life; I thought of this as a curse. Through the discovery of Jannacci, I began to pray for the grace to listen to my heart, to cry and long for more. But cry to whom? This too has been a struggle for me; who could answer my cry? Guareschi began to show me that Christ is a real presence that can answer to my cry. In his short stories, one of the main characters is the Christ on the crucifix of Don Camillo’s church. For Guareschi, Christ was real, a real man to speak to and to cry to. I found myself talking to Christ as I have never done before.

It started with the most banal things.
One night my shoelaces got tied in a super tight knot. The problem was that I bite my nails and so I couldn’t get the knot out. So I yelled at Jesus, searching for an explanation for why this was necessary. Then I stopped, in awe of what had just happened. My first reaction to my knotted shoelaces was to talk to Jesus! He is a real person I can have a dialogue with, not just a monologue.

The Little World. Minimal Stuff exhibit showed me the possibility to love my humanity and to have a relationship with Jesus as a real man. This exhibit pushed me to use my heart and to long for the sea without fear because I am not alone.