LEARN TO LIVE
by Jean Vanier
I nearly didn't make it. I was in Liberia last night and they said I couldn't get onto the plane. But anyway, I did and, since I've made it, I'm still a little bit filled with Africa which I love very deeply.
I spent two weeks in a little city called Man in the Ivory Coast working with family couples in the villages, just little, little people. And when I say little people they are people who are sometimes illiterate, very simple in many ways and they have in them an extraordinary beauty. So, if I wanted to share something with you today, I think it would be under the title of "Learning How to Live". For I think this is what Africa has taught me so simply - how to take time to live, and to be still together.
In many ways this corresponds to much of our thinking for our own communities of L'Arche which, as you know, now are around the world. We have to learn how to live and we can only do this if we sit down and take time to look at each other, listen to each other, and to love being together, even with all our inadequacies. It is important to accept and to love people as they are, rejoicing in the gift of their presence today, not being disappointed because they are not what we would have hoped them to be. This is what community is about, and this is what family is about, to rejoice in the being of the other, as he is, with his qualities, defects and potentialities.
In Africa the style of life is different; in many ways time does not exist. When Bishop Agre, who had invited me to Man, goes to his village and visits his old mother, now and again he looks at his watch. She says to him, "now don't do like the white people". Or, when you ask people, "how old is your mother?" they say, "oh, I don't know"-, because people just don't ask ages. When I asked this of a priest who was talking of his old mother, he said, "in 1910 when the French troops came, she must have been a little girl". In the villages when you ask somebody, "how old is your baby?" they say, "well, she was born two days after our president went to visit the president of Nigeria".
We on the other hand, are so quantative. We fix everything in space and time. We are all so governed by time.
Our programs have a beginning and an end, and then we have something else to do.
We are taken up in movement. That doesn't mean to say we must not program We are obliged to, but we must learn to take time with people, to look at them and to love them. The African family is a very special entity. There is a very deep respect for elders who, in many ways are the carriers of tradition. When an elder speaks, it is the will of God, be he Christian or Islamic or animist.
He is the wiser one and, in a way, the sign of God. And this conditions a great deal of the life of the villages, which are highly traditional, and where everything has a sacred meaning. Little things are important.
In Africa, very few people are rejected from the family circle, except under exceptional circumstances. The physically handicapped, the mentally handicapped, or the old people are kept very much in the family circle. There is no such thing as the small family, husband, wife and children. It is the extended family, the very large family with the uncles and the cousins. If a brother dies and leaves four or five children, automatically, another brother or sister will take these children, and it's not even considered as an exceptionally good deed. You find even young married couples with large families. Bishop Agre told me of a young couple who married two years ago and they already have nine children, five from the side of the girl and four from the side of the husband. The basis of the family is this deep love, welcome and caring for the next of kin. They are open to helping one another and to sharing. This is brought out even further in the welcome of a guest. When you are welcomed into a family in Africa, you are really given the place of honour. The parents will move out of their room to leave you the very best place, because the guest is honoured and nothing is too good for him. This has always deeply touched me. People will spend their last money to provide the best type of food. With great delicacy, knowing that sometimes the food is too strong, they will put less spices in it, and they will arrange that you are given a knife and fork, these funny metal things which we are obliged to use when we eat in our countries, because we never have clean hands. Yes, there is an extraordinary delicacy and gentleness in their welcome. And then, in the villages, as there is no electricity, so, there is no television.
If there are chairs, they are in a circle rather than being clustered around the little box. In the village there is a lot of palaver, a lot of talk. People like to talk, and they sit and talk, and talk. 'They rejoice in little, little things, and, perhaps because they lack material things, they communicate much more with the face and hands and the word, rather than through objects, or things to be done. When the African smiles or talks, his whole face lights up and it’s just like a flashing light. Each time I have been to Africa it is that that comes to me. Learn to be with people. Learn to listen. Learn to rejoice in people. The African is easy going, tolerant and gentle. Rarely will he criticize. That doesn't mean to say that when his clan is attacked and the tribe is wounded'that 'there are no reactions from him. There are. That is why you get very serious tribal warfare as in Angola, But today I .just come with Africa in my heart, with a love for the people and their gentle ways, for the markets that are so fantastic, milling with people in colourful costumes and selling the wonderful fruit that is there.
Our lands, Canada and France and all industrialized countries are very far from this. They are not only far from this because of distance, but very far in mentality. It is really two worlds between the African village and a city like New York, where I was very early this morning. What happens in New York is obviously what is happening throughout all our cities. The very basis of our education is that we must be first.
We are taught that we must seek success individually, for we are in a society where we must compete, or die. This means that we are obsessed by efficacity, by work and by recognition. We want to be recognized, not necessarily for the value of what we are doing, but rather to be promoted. This is success. Success is evaluated in money and power. This is what we are continually being taught right from childhood. Thus, in every field, we are all pushed by the sense of promotion.
We must get on, must have success, power and riches. In contrast to this, I was told that if you take a group of twenty Canadian Indian children and say to them, "I'll give a prize to the first one to tell me what the capital of the Ivory Coast is", the children will mumble and huddle together, and then they will all shout together the answer.
The Indian culture of Canada is different. For them to have one person get a prize, means that nineteen do not. So, it's really rather ridiculous to have one person happy and nineteen unhappy. But it is not just that fact alone. It is also that the one who gets the prize leaves the group and has separated himself from his brethren. This is intolerable to the community to have one who thinks he is better and who will keep the prize for himself.
Furthermore, I remember in a railroad station in Calcutta, there were about ten little children who came up to me and asked for "Rupee, rupee". Sometimes it is perplexing to know what to do. But these children had something so beautiful in them. I took out a note and said to the eldest, "share this with the others". Then this little fellow walked off with the whole gang behind him. They walked out of the station, and about ten minutes later, all ten of them returned with the tallest one at the head and the littlest ones following. He came and sat at my feet and they all sat down.
Then he started distributing the coins in the most beautiful way. The eldest had the smallest coins, but the most valuable, and the littlest had the biggest but least valuable coins. So, the little had big coins and they were happy, and the elder ones had the little coins and they were even happier. But there was a sense of community and of' sharing in that little group of ten children.
We on the contrary have the cult of liberty and of liberalism, with some innate and phobic fear of anything that might smell of socialism and of community in the larger sense. We are told that we must have the signs of success in the quality of our houses, cars and various other ornaments or furniture inside our houses. The whole aspect of prestige and recognition by the neighbours is very, very fundamental in our society which has pushed us to a very individualized culture.
It follows that very quickly the family is fragmented. What I mean by a fragmented family is that old people must be put in old people's homes; mentally handicapped people must have their own residences and physically handicapped people must too. Delinquents must have their place also. All those who are the marginal ones are categorically placed together in residences where necessary specialists can be hired to provide programs to govern their existence, and this permits the nuclear family, husband, wife and two children just to be together about their business.
The children of the family are taken up with children's activities, clubs and youth movements. The wife can join a bridge club, take a part time job or do volunteer work at the local hospital or for meals on wheels. The husband frequently becomes obsessed by this idea of promotion which is very deeply ingrained. He must go up the ladder or he just might go down, and this can be very serious, particularly when they have bought a lot on credit without any money. What if he should lose his job? So, he has to become a slave to the system because everything has been bought before he had the money. Sometimes the husband and wife will be so divided in their activities that there is an even greater fragmentation.
Consequently, people do not have much time to be; and they don't have the time to be with each other or to be with older people or handicapped people who are sources of great richness, if only we can look and take time to be with them. I don't think that what I have been saying is, in any way, a caricature. It is the way of life that our civilization with its values has perpetrated and which is coming through the mass media. We are giving a primacy of exteriority over interiority: We believe it is the signs of riches that are important. We are losing the quality of inner peace, gentleness and welcome. Because we have been cut off from tradition and morality and a sense of God, many of us have lost our sense of direction. We don't know which way we are going, and what we really want for our children and ourselves.
Because we are caught up in this exterior world, we have difficulty sharing. We don't quite know what to talk about.
We can't talk about business when we get home because we are so fed up with it all. The business world is so tense and in many ways so difficult that when we get home all we want to do is to be by ourselves and to hide behind the comic strip or the television. We haven't the interiority to nourish our wives or husbands. We are caught up in a system. And because we haven't the interior nourishment and peace, because we don't quite know what to talk about, then in order to be together, we are obliged to plan outings and things to do. We plan to do things or to invite people in, but in fact this can be a way of avoiding each other. By having so many guests and so many things to do, even good things like social work or political work, we have no time to meet each other. Sometimes we can spend time visiting the poor but not visiting with our wife and children. We are taken up in a world of activities; we have to do and we have forgotten how to be. And because we are always doing, we get into a vicious circle, with the result that relationships begin to break down. In our free time we are taken up by the "little box" with the image, which is very destructive of human relationships, unless after the program, one shares about it and tries to deepen from the meaning of the program. The number of hours that people are spending in front of the "little box" is the number of hours that they are not spending with each other. Sometimes, going into homes during mealtime, I find all the members of the family looking at the "little box" during the meal. This is very very bad for digestion and for liver or ulcer problems. I don't know if the Canadian Health and Welfare Organization will one day talk against television as they talk against smoking. But smoke can be more anti-ulceris if you share in the smoke, than the television, which can quickly create the anguish of constructed loneliness.
On the television we are seeing an image, not sharing with a person. A person you can't shut off, a television set you can.
There is a strength in the mass media which is fantastic. Television can be an amazing vehicle for the truth. But it can, at the same time, become also a source of grave despair. Imagine what it means to watch terrible pictures of children starving, or world catastrophies as one eats a Calgary steak and drinks a beer in the comfort of one's living room, knowing that one can do nothing about the starving people or the catastrophe. It is a very dangerous weapon in the heart of our homes. It is dangerous because it is preventing us from looking at each other and communicating with one another. The television in no way helps us to cope with the terrible inequalities that it reports and that surround us. We are, without any doubt, in an unprecedented situation.
We have a little house down in Haiti and you might have heard that, a few months ago, there was a real famine up in the north. Robert, who is responsible for the little home, went up to the north to see what the situation was. He found a little village, and he asked the leaders of this village what they needed. It was spades, shovels and picks, simple instruments to till the land. They needed food, of course, but mainly they needed just simple instruments. It's an amazing thing that just a few minutes from the United States by air there is a village where people haven't the bare necessities to till their own land. And what is true there is true all over the world.
The Americans and Russians are able to meet in outer space - but are unable to meet on the ground. It is going to be very expensive if we have to all go up into outer space to meet.' The fear of meeting each other is at the heart of the very deep despair that is.evidenced by our constant anxiety - "what to do, what to do?".
We're caught up in a machine and no-one seems to know how to get out of the machine. We're caught in a prison, a prison of despair. This prison is all over the industrialized and over-developed countries. It seems that we are all condemned in some mysterious way to a life sentence where we cannot live and be really loving. This provokes the very deep discouragement of young people, and a very strange "copping out" of the older generation. Parents don't know how to educate today because they don't know what to educate for. They are caught up in a system and they insist that the children get into the same system. Yet they know the system is wrong. It is a strange and harmful hypocrisy. The parents know the system is wrong, yet their children have to go into it anyway. And this hypocrisy is found in many different forms. Not long ago in Quebec, I had a meeting with about six or seven young people, and during the half hour we shared about different problems of young people. Drugs and sexuality, religion and morality, world affairs, the future and the past, all these subjects were brought up. What struck me very deeply, was that three of the young people, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen years of age, had been, or were, on drugs and in great conflict with their parents. All had alcoholic fathers who were terribly against drugs. These young people were obviously confused and angered. One said, "my father obliges me to go to Mass every Sunday", and I said "does your father go to Mass?". He said "no". This is what I mean by hypocrisy and the confusion of people, the confusion of parental education. Maybe it has always been a bit like this. But what is certain today, is that young people are much more aware of what is going on and they are able to express their feelings and vent their frustrations, confusion and despair in a new way.
What do we all really want? I think very deeply in the hearts of each of us, there is the yearning to love and to be loved. This is very deep in all of us; in the heart of the handicapped person, of the prisoner, the delinquent, in the heart of each one of us. We all yearn for love. It is when we don't receive it, or, when we are wounded in love, in this deep part of our being, that we fall into depression or slip into a world of dreams, a world of aggressivity and hate, or a world of hyper efficacity in work.
We have to do this in order to forget the wound that is there. Yet a yearning for meaningful relationships is deep within us.
At the same time we sense our own inability to communicate, our inability to listen, or to be compassionate. We sense our own angers and frustrations and very deep fears and this just augments our own culpability and sense of despair. It's not just the others who are at fault, it's myself.. I feel so deeply my own interior poverty and my own fears. This despair can be very deep, not just because of the outside world in which I find myself and from which I cannot escape, but it is inside me; this deep sense of my own inadequacy. I sense so deeply the division between my aspirations, and what I am capable of realizing. It is this discrepancy between my aspirations, my yearnings, and what I am, or what I am capable of doing, that is essentially despair,
When there is despair, I begin to throw myself into activity in order to forget my pain. I do and I do and I do and one day, I retire. Then, having nothing to do, I fall sick. This is the story of many people who are caught up in the world of doing, because in reality, to do, can be to flee. Doing should flow from my being, but frequently I do, because I am frightened that I do not really exist sufficiently. Maybe in this world of intense noise, I am running away. Maybe I'm terribly frightened of silence, frightened because in silence I meet myself, and I confront myself. Maybe also in the silence I meet my God.'
In the depths of our hearts, what do we all yearn for? Do we yearn to believe that love is possible and that this world is not just governed by some strange diabolical force pushing us to love, but making it totally impossible? This is the philosophy of Sartre. What we are yearning for is not just some poetic, imaginary frilly sensation. Our young people are not fooled by exterior sexuality. They know that it is not love, in the degree that it is an exterior passing moment. What we desire is something much deeper, corresponding to the deepest yearning of our being. Is it possible to find fulfillment in deep loving relationships? There are two things that I think we all want; work that is meaningful and relationships that are deeply loving. When we have the conviction that our work is important and is somehow related to our existence, we find a source of meaning. Where there is-—deep mutual confidence, our fears and distrust are dispelled, and when we know each other well and appreciate each other, we begin to grow in mutual confidence. We become conscious that we are walking along the same path, gradually becoming of one heart, one mind and spirit, like those first disciples of Jesus who shared everything. We all need this. We need to trust people and to know that people will sacrifice themselves for us, and we for them. When we find a relationship like this, fear disappears. We do not need some exterior law, nor ritual, but rather some authentic meaning to the heart; a community where people love deeply and have mutual trust; meaningful work; and the deep interior meeting with Truth, with Jesus. If we have these three realities, we will live.
A child senses when his parents live these truths. He senses when they love each other, sacrificing for each other with a deep concern and showing consideration one for the other. If a child senses in his parents, the reality of the Gospels, if he senses that they really believe what Jesus Christ says about love, about wounded people, and hope and confidence and trust in the Father, he doesn't need much formal teaching. He has experienced a touch of the infinite, and he knows that the Gospels are really true. If his parents, after having eaten the Body and drunk the Blood of Christ, begin criticizing people and talking in a prejudiced way against groups, then the child knows that Mass and Communion are not too authentic. It is a ritual, an exterior reality which has not entered into the heart of their being. It is not possible to eat of the Body of the Crucified One, and then to reject crucified people. The Body of the Crucified One, will automatically lead us to the crucified ones of our world.
This is the sign of authenticity, "They will know you are my disciples by the love you have one for another". And this love is a giving of self, a sacrifice of one's self. There is no greater love than to give one's life for one's brother, the good parent gives his life for his children. The good shepherd gives his life for his flock. This is the sign of authentic living of the Gospels and love of Jesus Christ.
These three realities - loving community, meaningful work and deep interior meeting with Truth, with Jesus; this is what each one of us yearns to live.
Marriage is important, because these deep aspirations can begin to be realized in the couple who have become one, and in their family. There is nothing greater for a family than to learn how to live and to enjoy each other. The whole effort of the Christian family should be this, to learn how to live, to take time to live, and to rejoice in the gift of each one.
The family ought not to flee from this task, either into work, or into social activities. It is so important that we take time to live. We must become earthy people, learning once again to love the details of existence and the little things of life. Jesus is our example. Only after thirty years of living did He go out and begin to teach. It is important to share the little things of life - to have fun together, washing the dishes, learning simply how to be together. Mealtimes are very important. We need to learn to take time to eat together because community is founded around the table. We must learn to spend time there. We're used to doing this in France; we like wine and we eat well! It is important that the meal be a time of happiness, of laughter and enjoyment. So we must pay attention to the details of our mealtimes - what we talk about for instance. We should never have serious conversations during the meal - to discuss theology, liturgy, philosophy or politics is bad for the gastric juices - as any doctor will tell you I The meal is a time for rejoicing.
It’s not a time for trying to teach a child his manners, because in the end he'll get ulcers. If he speaks with his mouth full, it doesn't really matter. Tell him afterwards that, to some people in our society, this doesn't look too good. It's strange that we talk about trivial things like how to use your fork. We seem to have lost something essential. This is not to say that a child shouldn't be educated for society, but there are different ways of doing it.
We must discover our priorities, we must learn to have fun together. For instance, why does the mother spend so much time preparing the meal when there is a visitor? It could be more important that she spend that amount of time when only the husband and children are there - that could be the important time to have a~ special meal. It's important to know how to cook well, to enjoy cooking, to love the details of cooking. After all, it's not the spaghetti that is difficult, it's the sauce! Sauce is an important thing and there are little ways of making it special. We should try to prepare the meal without it taking too much time.
If we are cooking right up to the last minute and then come to the table exhausted and on edge, the meal will be disastrous. The food may be good, but everybody will be unnerved. Try to organize things so that fifteen or twenty minutes before there is time to relax. These days it is important to know how to relax. If it is necessary to do breathing exercises beforehand, do them, but try to just be and to relax for meals. Community is founded around the table, spend time there. Don't always invite people in for meals, but learn to love being together, relaxed, sharing the mundane things, deeply united.
The art of listening is even more important than the art of cooking. To be interested in the other person means that the meal becomes a time of sharing. One can talk a lot about this but it is important to take time to experience it. Some evenings, for example, we should just take time to be together to listen and to share. It is really important for parents to share with each other and with their children. It is important that they speak of things that people frequently don't share about; their work, fundamental things like the finances of the family community, the world of suffering and poverty; the wounds of war, for the children are aware of these realities. Share about these things. It makes the family much more of a community if we really discuss fundamental issues, if we listen to one another.
We're told that forty million people will die this year. We hear about wars and terrorism. It is important to talk about these things so that the children know our real concerns. If we just talk about our golf and our bridge club when our children are being confronted with fundamental realities, something is wrong. To talk about things and share in a deeper way might have very deep ramifications for the family. For instance, we should talk about the question of promotion. Do we all want more and more money, more and more promotion? Do we all want to follow the crowd in seeking new gadgets, new things, more wastage, and so forth?
To have a family is to create a community of love. There are hundreds of little things than can be done to deepen this experience and to build a more loving community in which we accept each other more deeply with greater tenderness and delicacy. This love of ours must reach out; it must go forth in the simplest way. The most precious gift we can give costs nothing. It's our smiles and it's our listening. We don't have to be too intelligent while listening. It is easier to look quite intelligent while listening, than while talking.' But there is an art of listening, and there is a way of smiling at people, which says, "I'm happy you are there and I recognize you as a person". We're not ships that pass in the night. In the simple everyday things, when we shop in stores, when we thank people because they have opened a door for us, we can meet one another.
In the hundred and one little meetings of life, we can look at people in the eyes and smile, recognizing them as persons. This is where love begins, not by doing wonderful social actions with a long face, but by relaxing with people, by learning to be with people. We have to smile and recognize others as brothers like ourselves who suffer and yearn and hope and despair.
The unity of the family should reveal itself in the very simple concrete things of life. We should not aim to do extraordinary things, but to do the ordinary things with love, and with peace, with gentleness and with tenderness. The simple things are important because our life is made up of simple things: -dirtying dishes and washing dishes, dirtying floors, dirtying clothes, washing clothes. Life consists of - eating food, digesting food, letting it go out then beginning all over again, and through all this, there is a relationship. We must learn to live the simple realities.
Before being the hero, be the person, who knows how to enjoy life, to love life and love people. This means simply to inquire about the old lady who is living across the street, and to visit her. It means to wonder about the handicapped child a little further down, to see if one could help the mother in some small way. Can I do something for you? When I go to the store can I bring you a loaf of bread? It is in all the hundred and one little things of existence, rendering service one to another that I begin to experience the deep interior mysteries of love and life.
Then life begins to flower out in a very simple movement of saying "it is good to live". And I find it is good to render service to another, because we are brothers and sisters and I love to be with you and to share with you. And I discover that I love to listen to you because in your simplicity you have such beautiful things to say. If we do this, in our simple everyday life, our lives become authentic. We discover that it is possible to live and to rejoice. It is possible to be trusting and .to live each moment as precious. ‘ One sees quite frequently these words, "Rejoice, for today is the first day of the rest of your life". But to live this, and to rejoice in all the little things, which can become gifts, is to live life fully. To sweep a floor can be a gift to the family, because I believe the people are important. To wash their clothes, and to do all the little things in the house can be a gift for the family so that the family has what is necessary to deepen and grow in love. This gift rests in my attitude toward the task, which is an attitude of willingness to work lovingly and humbly for those that I love. This is what our children need to see and experience. This is what the world needs to discover; people who rejoice in life and who do simple things lovingly and joyfully. How important it is ta live with what we have, rejoicing with what we have, rejoicing in what we are, with the people that are here, with my children as they are today, my husband, my wife, my friends, the neighbours. These are the ones that have been put along my path by God and with them I must grow in love.
This love is for something else. It is to go forth and to show people that we believe in Jesus Christ, and that we know He is watching over us and guiding us.
It is to say that we don't have to be worried about tomorrow. If each of us, according to our charisms, our gifts, and our possibilities, could just carry in our beings, this source of love, Jesus Christ.' If we could give it to others, not by preaching, but with our hands and our smiles.'
Gradually and peacefully this growth together will lead us to our more unfortunate brothers throughout the world, the wounded, and the sick and the hungry. It will mean that, in some little way, I become committed to these brothers in some activity. But this activity should not hurt the deep love and relaxation and peace of heart that I experience in my home and in my love for Jesus Christ.
The activities of love and the commitments to movements and organizations must flow from the family growing in love and from a deepening knowledge of Jesus Christ.
This is what prayer is all about; learning to live in Him, relaxing in His presence, happy that He exists. To love and let Jesus Christ love in us, is to learn to live. Our God is a God of joy. "I say these things to you", says Jesus, "so that my joy might be in you and your joy might reach its plenitude". So frequently we've failed to recognize the joy of our God.
We must find that our joy springs from love and from unity, unity with each other and with Jesus Christ.
The family is where this unity begins. May each of us discover that our priority is there, where we live, with those particular persons who surround us. Let us ask Jesus to teach us to rejoice in simplicity and "dailiness", to discover the beauty of everyday relationships where true love is born, and nurtured, so that we might begin to grow into the fullness of life and love to which we are called.
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Source: Jean Vanier, Monograph No. 4: Learn to Live. Edited by Sue Mosteller. (Richmond Hill: Daybreak Publications/PrintOne, 1978)
