I recommend this brief book by young philosopher Michela Marzano to anyone with time to read—and more importantly, the desire to think deeply about something that matters in our lives.
It draws from and expands on a talk she gave at a national conference on school integration, where she received warm recognition from the audience. We have already reviewed her earlier book, I Wanted to Be a Butterfly, in which she describes how she overcame anorexia.
This is a short but powerful book. In just a few pages, Marzano uncovers profound truths about what it means to be human: "Without accepting our own fragility, it is impossible to accept the imperfections of others... How do we transform the wounds we carry into our greatest strength, into what allows mutual trust to flourish... in accepting the other as they truly are, not as we wish them to be?"
I had never thought much about trust before reading these pages—not the trust we need from ourselves and from others. Without it, there can be no real commitment to each other, no solidarity that flows in both directions, no deep closeness with "the other" as they are rather than as we might prefer them to be.
I would welcome a reader's thoughts on this book after taking time to sit with it and reflect on it.
M.B., 2013