We are experiencing an era change marked by events that not only have affected our lives in the present but also have come to change our paradigms in the way we work, watch our health and care for others, protect our “common home”, view the economy, migratory processes and even put world peace at risk. We had not yet come out of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war begins in Ukraine, along with the particular situations that each country has to live through.
 
The dramas that come with armed conflicts always touch our deepest fibers because they threaten people’s lives directly. For this reason, it is normal for the war in Ukraine to displace from the headlines other conflicts and problems that are being experienced in our countries, such as the prolonged crisis that we continue to experience in Venezuela. But deep down, all these circumstances raise similar questions:
 
Where does the courage of the Ukrainian civilian population come from, who have decided to stay in their country and bet on a future? Why have so many Europeans turned to humanitarian initiatives to welcome those who have had to leave their country? But in the same way, we can ask: How are initiatives born in so many fellow countries to receive and support migrant Venezuelans who want to work? Where does the desire to stay and learn a trade to work in Venezuela come from, when it is easier to receive emergency aid?
 
There are compelling facts that escape any political, social, and economic analysis. Impact with reality is the most powerful way to awaken our humanity. From the desire for freedom, justice, truth and beauty, to be able to feed oneself, have access to medicine, or be able to work to cover basic needs and fulfill oneself as a person.
 
Recently, I met a woman who wakes up at three-thirty in the morning to get to in-person classes with the aim of training as a caregiver for the elderly, and when she has virtual classes she sits on the street, next to the only local business that has wifi, in order to study. This is a fact that leaves little room for interpretation and analysis.
 
As Luigi Giussani has always stated: in the face of all the power (political, economic, and also military) in this world, there is a point of all creation that is irreducible: the I. For this reason, we have to safeguard that humanity and the genuine expression of the desires that we mentioned before so that in that dynamic each person can find the totalizing response to the meaning of their life.