I'd like to say something that seems obvious but isn't: be present.
Only the heart truly understands and walks alongside another person. My nephew, because of his handicap, is rigid and struggles to adapt to others. Yet that rigidity never stopped him from sensing what a woman he knew needed—a woman who was sick and alone in the hospital. Her condition meant no visitors were allowed. After she was discharged, she told us that my nephew had come into her room, sat down beside her, and said: "Don't be afraid. I'm here." He stayed like that for hours, unmoving. "I felt safe," this anxious woman told us. "No one else had done that for me."
Being present is not driven by emotion. It springs from the desire to be with the other person so that he or she may feel they matter—not for what they do or what they offer, but simply because they are.
This unique "they" can feel they matter only if they are woven into our lives, only if we care for them as we care for ourselves.
Philosopher, 1905–1950. Founder of the journal *Esprit* in 1932 and pioneer of communitarian personalism. when he looked down at the cradle of his severely handicapped daughter, adored God in her. He could only give her all the love she needed and thank her for everything she gave her parents—because in the end, the other is a gift.
Love your neighbor as yourself
How do we accompany another? By learning to love ourselves first. Otherwise, the other will always seem like someone stealing our time, someone we must sacrifice ourselves for. To choose between the other and ourselves is impossible—we are both important. To love ourselves is to hold ourselves with tender compassion, not to judge what we show the world, to hunger for what brings us to life, to believe in the mystery of goodness and beauty buried within us. If I learn, slowly, to love myself, my horizon will only grow wider—and every other person will become part of me. To love ourselves with our weaknesses, to love others with theirs, becomes one seamless thing. When fragility enters the picture, how do we set priorities? We accept what we love; we don't merely resign ourselves to it. We can't deny handicap; it exists and can be exhausting. But it doesn't define the person—and a person can never be reduced to their handicap. There is always mystery at their core. Emmanuel Mounier,Let us feel the need to be together
The other person—sick or handicapped—needs us out of necessity and also for the simple pleasure of being together. Often it is isolation that transforms suffering into something that kills the spirit. Being together changes everything. It isn't enough that the other matters to us. I learned this while sitting with an elderly aunt in her final days. She mattered to me, but I didn't love her enough to need her the way she needed me. Every human being has something to give: themselves, first of all. A person can be cast into loneliness and die because no one receives the gift of their being. Sick and disabled people so often feel they are worthless that they must sense our own poverty—so they can give us, sometimes without even knowing it, what they desperately want to offer. But do we truly trust the other, especially when the image they offer us is not one of strength? If we do, then we will stop looking for their good in what we think is good for them. We will look instead for what they actually need.What do we choose?
We face a choice, again and again: the forces of life or the forces of death. We cannot do everything, but we can choose life. To choose life is "to go where you don't know, on a road you've never traveled." To choose life is to be together. The "we" that we form together, with all our miseries and riches combined, becomes a source of endless, renewed life. Nicolle Carré, 2012Ombres et Lumière no. 185
(1) Philosopher, 1905–1950. Founder of the journal *Esprit* in 1932 and pioneer of communitarian personalism.