A life with no meaning and no goals

My name is Latando Simanjuntak. I’m studying at a private University in Medan. I met the Focolare Movement in 2009. At that time, I was living with a cousin of mine. In our Batak culture, because I’m older than him, I’m considered like his older brother. However, at that time my cousin wouldn’t respect me and many times he would make me feel uneasy. He even sent me away from their house.

My life then was very messy. After school, I’d never go back home but stay at a “billiard house” with my friends until dawn. I even started drinking and getting drunk, and was being indifferent to the fact that my friends were using drugs at my presence. I didn’t know what loving meant, and I never went to church. I felt that my life had no meaning and no goals.
One day I got to know the Focolare Movement through a friend. That’s when I started to learn about loving and about doing the will of God. In Focolare I’ve always experienced the concrete love of the others to me. I realized that I had to change my bad habits and start to live out what I was learning.

Sometime after that, my uncle – the father of “that” cousin –called me and asked me to help my cousin who was having some problems at the university. Right away I thought, “Well, you sent me away from your house, and now that you are in trouble, you come to me for help...”, but then I remembered my commitment to love. So I met my cousin and together we went to his campus to talk to one of his professors. This act of love was fruitful because he was given another chance to start his studies. 

In another moment, when I called my family, I learned that my parents had had an argument over something very simple that turned out to be something big that led my mother to leave home and go to live with my sister. As a son, I felt that I had to do something to bring peace back into my family. I talked to my father and encouraged him to love more and remember all the good things that my mother has done for him. On the other hand, I talked to my mother and asked her to forgive dad and try to see him with “new eyes”. At the end she agreed with me and decided to go back home. I was very happy to see my parents in good terms again!

These are small but beautiful experiences that make me understand more and more that this is the true life. By trying to put into practice this new way of life, I feel really free and my life has acquired a new meaning.