We are entering the third movement of a symphony that began with the editorial of the month of June and continued in July. As to when it will end, however, I cannot guarantee that it will be in the fourth and, in principle, the last movement next month. As with exceptional experiences, it seems that the director has an air of infinity.

It has been a great disproportion to deliver the humble, but very significant, contribution from our beauty entrepreneurs in the Albornoz Palace, headquarters of the Mayor’s Office of Cesena, to support the stylists who have not yet recovered from the May floods in that region of northeastern Italy. It is impossible to describe the shocked face that Dr. Luca Ferrini, Director of Economic Development, had, along with the representatives of Confartigianato and our friends of the Orizzonti Association, when he told all the details involved in the different activities that were organized in Maracay.

This gesture could not have a better backdrop than the “Meeting for friendship between peoples”, better known as the Rimini Meeting. Because what is evident in gestures like this is the power of what is born when a friendship is lived. It is something that arises in a very simple way among a couple of people, but like a drop, it has the power to become a current that goes from the Adriatic to the Caribbean.

In fact, that was the theme of this year’s 2023 Meeting: “Human existence is an inexhaustible friendship.” And deep down it is what we all seek: to be able to live a friendship that not only manifests itself in difficult times but also accompanies us for the rest of our lives. No one can fully understand their needs and even less satisfy them; we always need someone to accompany us, to walk with us towards our destination.

Delving into this topic, Don Luigi Giussani writes in his book The Religious Sense: “If we contemplate a man, a woman, a friend or a walker without the echo of the question, of the thirst for destiny that constitutes it, resounds in us, our relationship will not be a human relationship, and even less can it be a loving relationship at any level: it will not respect the dignity of the other, it will not be appropriate to the human dimension of the other. The structural question has not been engendered by a desire of mine; it has been given to me. Therefore, before loneliness is the company that embraces my loneliness, so that this is no longer a true loneliness, but a cry that recalls the hidden company.”

In my experience, I can say that the beginning of the answer to all the problems of life involves living a friendship, and since these are increasingly complex and do not seem to have an end, I need that “inexhaustible friendship” of which the title of the Meeting speaks. But for it to be so, it is essential that its origin is not only goodness, solidarity, and good human intentions; I need the gift of an infinite friendship made flesh, which can only be given by the director of this symphony.