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Buenos Aires, Sunday, January 28, 2007

Father Oscar Pezzarini

To know how to live

Raising this issue, knowing how to live, or what we often call “living one's life” will surely trigger different reations and different ways of interpreting it. For many people it will mean enjoying oneself no matter what, and making the most of life, because “life is short” and it must be lived. In this case my reflection recalls something I read a long time ago, referring to us human beings who instead of “living” try to “live better than others”, and this may be one of the reasons why we cannot reach happiness, or at least avoid living a “sad” life. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, which is to say, we always envy that what we don't have or more precisely, what the other person owns or has achieved, and this way we will never find happiness, we'll never know how to live, I think we will never be happy because we will always be thinking about things we lack, things which often the other person owns, and we don't realize we can enjoy the things we own ourselves and be happy. True happiness lies in knowing how to enjoy that what we have instead of wasting our life worrying about what we lack but some other has, thinking that true riches lie precisely in what we have, what we got by our effort, without comparing ourselves to others, thus filling ourselves with happiness and knowing how to “enjoy life”.

Raising this issue, knowing how to live, or what we often call “living one's life” will surely trigger different reations and different ways of interpreting it. For many people it will mean enjoying oneself no matter what, and making the most of life, because “life is short” and it must be lived.

In this case my reflection recalls something I read a long time ago, referring to us human beings who instead of “living” try to “live better than others”, and this may be one of the reasons why we cannot reach happiness, or at least avoid living a “sad” life.

The same things happen both in our life and in sports, everything is continuous competition where the only important thing is beating the opponent, running in front, and we are conditioned by “exitism”.

In today's sports it's not anymore a well-done job what counts, a developed “tactic”, the effort put into encounters, no one talks anymore of fair, solidary play, where if played by a team everyone puts the best he can and we feel good by having done so, of “having depleted everything” as the saying goes, but what counts is if I started with some advantage on my contender, if I won, if I achieve better results than the other.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, which is to say, we always envy that what we don't have or more precisely, what the other person owns or has achieved, and this way we will never find happiness, we'll never know how to live, I think we will never be happy because we will always be thinking about things we lack, things which often the other person owns, and we don't realize we can enjoy the things we own ourselves and be happy.

I really don't know if we aspire to happiness, or if actually we want to reach happiness sooner and on better roads and with better results than others, in this case we turn into “competitors” in life, where what matters is not reaching the goal, but being the best and the fastest before others, when actually in life what counts and matters is we know how to live it, valueing what we have, achieving our goals without comparing to others.

True happiness lies in knowing how to enjoy that what we have instead of wasting our life worrying about what we lack but some other has, thinking that true riches lie precisely in what we have, what we got by our effort, without comparing ourselves to others, thus filling ourselves with happiness and knowing how to “enjoy life”.

Father Oscar Pezzarini
Provincial Superior of the Work of Don Orione in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Mexico

Father Oscar Pezzarini together with Fr. Leonardo Abregú makes us reflect on Saturdays from 8 to 12 AM (GMT-03:00)with "VENTANA A LA VIDA", the Don Orione radio program he conducts on FM PROVIDENCIA, 90.3 MHz together with some residents of the Claypole Cottolengo (Raúl Romero, María Laura Andrada, Alberto Zoroch, Américo Torres), with the production of Roberto Beluzzo and Ignacio Cavalli as technical operator. You can also listen to FM PROVIDENCIA by clicking here.

Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione 0800-333-6746 in Argentina, or +54 (11) 4268-7722 from abroad.

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