Coordinates of human life
The human being is a spatiotemporal being. He occupies a space for a time, so that, as it happens in the universe and nature that surround and involve us, there is nothing stationary or permanent about human life. We cannot stand still in time or in space: life implies movement, a process, a becoming, a path, a change.
By the way we use and situate ourselves in space or relate to it, we can be settlers or tourists; the gospel, however, exhorts us to be pilgrims.
Settlers, tourists and pilgrims have in common the fact that they do not originate from the place they inhabit during their lifetime, but they have distinct ways of relating to their environments.
People were created to be loved, things to be used. Only the pilgrim embodies this truth in his life: that is, for him things are a means, so they are to be used and not to be loved, whereas people are an end in themselves, so they should not be used for any purpose, but loved simply because they are people.
Settlers have as an aim to get rich as quickly as possible. The end is things because they are enamored with them; people are rivals to be eliminated or used as means to achieve the end of being rich. They will probably leave a place after they have exploited it sufficiently, as well as the natives who live there.
Alternatively, tourists live focused on themselves and their experiences, so the goal is themselves and the pleasurable experiences they are having and accumulating. People are things and things are people. He is like the person who says he loves his pets and relates to them as if they were his children or friends, that is, he uses the same terminology he uses with people as he does with his pets, and in so doing he is objectifying people and personifying things or animals. The important thing is the pleasure that both things and people provide him.
The place where we live
With the Industrial Revolution, the mechanization of agriculture, the expansion of trade, and globalization, the Western world, and later the developing countries and the poorest countries, experienced unprecedented development at all levels: increased production, increased population, increased consumption, increased energy needs, increased means of transport, especially planes and cars, to the point that each family in rich countries has more than one car. Pollution and environmental deterioration have been the inevitable consequences of this mass development.
Our planet however did not increase and as such, the results of this rapid and excessive expansion soon became apparent, especially because of the "use and throw away" philosophy that has been prevailing for several decades. The concept of recycling is only recent and has not yet entered the minds of many, which is quite strange since recycling has always been the philosophy of life on our planet. Its inhabitants, however, have lived and many still live by the “use and throw away” philosophy – since it is cheaper to buy new than to fix what is broken. Cheaper for who? For the economy or the planet?
This planet is our common home. Human beings have yet to find a way to colonize other planets, so we either take care of the only one we have, or we commit cultural and ecological suicide, degrading the conditions of habitability to an unsustainable level.
The idea of sustainable development emerged at the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is simple to know whether what we are doing is sustainable or not: we need only to ask ourselves if we can keep doing so and so over and over again, indefinitely. The first instance to ask is the environment - does it compromise the environment for generations to come? Secondly, we must ask whether it leads to economic growth.
And thirdly, we need to ask if this economic benefit is good for all or only some, whether it promotes peace, justice and social stability. So far, the wealth that some produce is proportional to the poverty it causes, that is, the more wealth the more poverty.
Development viewed solely as economic growth has destroyed the environment and caused profound social inequalities. For development to be sustainable, it must be three-dimensional, that is, the aspects of social justice and environmental protection must be as important as economic growth.
Settlers
Veni vidi et vincit, as the conqueror Caesar Augustus would say, the settler comes to conquer and possess both people and things. He conquers and exploits everything and everyone without scruples: the planet’s resources without caring about the ecology. In this sense, he has the mentality of the donkey that said, "After I die, let no more grass grow on earth”. He also exploits others, regulating himself by the only rule he knows: profit and personal self-interest.
The settler comes to stay or settle for a set time until he exhausts the resources to acquire the wealth he seeks. During the time he is not moving about, he clings to things and people like a tick. He may make friends with people, but it is always a self-interested friendship, he is a false friend because he does not put himself at the service of anyone or any human cause; on the contrary, he puts others at his service.
In the Bible, the settler is represented by Cain who is a farmer and therefore, sedentary, who has stopped searching, stopped travelling, and lives settled in life as if he has already reached the Promised Land, enjoying everything that life gives him as if he would never have to leave it behind. God rejected Cain and accepted Abel who was a shepherd, a wanderer, a pilgrim, detached from everything and everyone.
The settler lives installed in having more and more, he lives his life amassing, unreasonably increasing his means of living, mistakenly thinking that by having more means he will live longer or better. Settled in this world and in this life as if he would never have to leave it, he ends up dying without ever having lived, that is, without ever having known what life is really about. He did not cultivate the concept of being, but of having, not eternal life, but temporal and finite life in pure worldliness.
Tourists
Unlike the settler, the tourist lives superficially. Everything has the same value to him, whether things or people. He tries to have fun, he is not interested in owning anything or anyone, just photographs of everything and everyone, videos and memories of the places he visited that gave him pleasure or even joy.
For the tourist everything is a landscape and, being a passenger, the value of things is measured by their potential to amuse or satisfy his five senses. Therefore, everything that is exotic, erotic, unusual, eccentric, that produces strong emotions and causes his adrenaline to flow is what he considers valuable.
The tourist does not penetrate reality, he sees the world as if it were a theater or a movie that amuses him, but he neither knows nor is interested in what goes on behind the scenes. He does not commit to anything or anyone, he seeks fun and flees from anything that has to do with suffering and commitment. The tourist in space corresponds to the vagabond in time: he does not commit to anything or anyone, he is superficial.
The settler lives installed on having, the tourist lives installed on pleasure; things have value depending on the enjoyment they give and he looks for ever more sophisticated and refined pleasures. The past is photographic, the future is not yet. He is not anywhere, he enjoys the here and there, he lives centered on himself.
Superficial and snobby, the tourist reminds me of the story of a couple on their honeymoon who was sailing in a small boat through the Amazon River; they were so engrossed in the beauty of the rainforest that they lost touch with true reality. A hole developed at the bottom of the boat, and the it started to sink; meanwhile from the river banks crocodiles started to dive into the water towards the scene, the wife commented, "Oh honey, this is all so beautiful and chic that even the lifeguards are from Lacoste!"
Pilgrims
That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Acts of the Apostles 10:37-38
Jesus, as the model of being human, is to be imitated not only in what he said and did, but also in how he behaved in relation to things and people. He went about the world doing good, he did not fix himself in a place where he had already gained fame and popularity, as his disciples intended (Mark 1:38). Nor did he stay with those over whom he had already gained power and wanted to make him a king (John 6:15).
He was committed to the Kingdom of God and its justice, Jesus lived not attached to anything or anyone, he went about the world doing good, sowing the seeds of the kingdom without fixing himself in any one place.
Once upon a time there was a man who went every day to fetch water from the river with a bucket in each hand. One of the buckets had a hole in it, so it reached home with only half the water. For this reason, the damaged bucket felt sad, inferior and even ashamed in front of its peer. Upon mentioning this to its owner, the latter smiled and said, "Have you ever noticed that the path on your side is full of flowers and there is none on the other side? Since I knew you were damaged, I planted flowers on your side and you were in charge of watering them every day..."
On our pilgrimage westward, towards the sunset, like the disciples of Emmaus, let us allow ourselves to be reached by Jesus, let him be our companion on the road, let him explain the scriptures to us and tell us the meaning of things. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, let us go in, inviting him to supper with us, to stay with us and He will break bread.
Not settlers, but rather immigrants who go to explore the way of the pilgrim, catches here and releases there, like the leaky bucket that drops water and leaves behind flowers; leaving something of himself wherever he goes. A parish priest from Loriga during his Easter visit visiting the homes of all his parishioners, rich and poor alike, collecting the money given to him in the house of the rich and leaving it in the house of the poor. In this way, on Easter Day he would trail through his parish leveling the wealth, being a factor of equality.
The pilgrim does not own things or persons like the settler, nor does he use and throw them away like the tourist; he is not settled in the here and now like the settler, nor does he travel through disinterested like the tourist. In his journey, he commits himself, giving himself totally to people and concrete human causes, but since he does not seek to be loved, but to love, he gives himself without being tied to the people he loves.
Many of the pilgrims of Santiago were playwrights who left music and joy wherever they went. Our language, the Galician-Portuguese, was born from these songs about friendship, love, mockery and cursing. Furthermore, the Portuguese way of the Camino de Santiago is embellished with Romanesque bridges and churches; the French way with churches and large Gothic cathedrals.
A rabbi was visited by a pilgrim from the Holy Land, and on seeing that he lived very simply, asked, "Rabbi, where are your furniture? The rabbi stared at him and answered, "And where are yours?" "Mine?" replied the pilgrim, "I am a pilgrim”, and "So am I”, answered the rabbi ...
Pilgrim's grammar
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:27-28
Since he does not seek to possess, the pilgrim does not use possessive pronouns, either with people or with things.
With people – He uses relationship pronouns. So instead of saying "my father", he says, "to me, he is a father, because this same person to my mother is a husband, to my grandfather a son, to my uncle a brother, to the boss an employee, etc."
With things – He uses administrative pronouns, for he is aware that in reality we are not owners of anything; of all the resources we claim to possess, including "our" life, we are only administrators, and of this administration we will one day give account to the true owner, who is God, the Lord of everything and everyone.
Personal pronouns - There are only three: I, because I recognize myself as a person who is free and independent of everything and everyone, with rights and duties. YOU, my equal whom I consider an alter ego and, because he is like me, I must love him as I love myself. WE, as in the divine trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, in the human trinity, the child proceeds from the father and the mother, and in the trinity of personal pronouns, ‘we’ proceeds from the union of ‘I’ and ‘you’.
Discriminative pronouns – These are the remaining pronouns called "personal", because in whatever context we use them, they discriminate. ‘He’ and ‘she’ are people who are not in my relational circle, which is not good because I should be open to everyone; the ‘you’ plural are others who are not from our group, who are not like us, and ‘they’ sound still even more distant than the ‘you’ plural. God is the Father of all, we are all his children, therefore we are all brothers and sisters.
Narcissism of small differences – It is what Freud calls the differences that we artificially seek, as if, to defend our idiosyncrasy, we have to annihilate that in others... There is much more what unites us than what actually divides us; if there was an extraterrestrial threat at any given moment, all of us, inhabitants of this planet, would forget those small differences and become what we always have been and always will be: one big WE.
Conclusion – The settler installed on having, lives accumulating things; the tourist installed on pleasure, lives accumulating pleasurable experiences. The pilgrim can be rich like the settler and enjoy life like the tourist, but he is not attached to anything or anyone, because he leaves a little of himself in places and with people he encounters.
The pilgrim is not attached to people or things like the settler, nor is he live without commitments like the tourist. The pilgrim is committed to people and to human causes to which he devotes his life without being attached to and dependent on anything or anybody.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC