A
young Italian girl gives up a promising career as an engineer to learn how to
put the person with his dignity at the center of everything. An experience
shared during LoppianoLab 2014
«Last
year I was fortunate to have participated in a workshop of the Economy of
Communion in Loppiano. There my eyes were opened: up to that moment I was still
in the process of deciding on “what shall I do”, without asking myself “who am
I”. I understood that work is a vocation: I had, therefore, to find my
vocation, that which would make me happy.
I
was concluding my university studies in biomedical engineering. In October,
2013 I graduated from the Polytechnic University of Turin, after presenting my
thesis at the Polytechnic University of Lausanne in Switzerland. I spent 5
years at the Polytechnic, lessons 8 hours a day. I would study at night,
spending entire days without building any true relationship with my
colleagues. In certain famous environments, individualism is very strong, there
is the fear of being overtaken and the professors also transmit the “anxiety of
being the top”.
After
many sacrifices I was going to graduate on schedule, having achieved the
highest grades. There was a big probability that I would also be granted the doctorate
in Switzerland with a high salary, a house by the lake and great friends who
were waiting for me there. It was a fundamental moment in my life, wherein I
could decide on very important things for my future.
But
something frightened me: the attachment to a career and to money. I wanted to
have the instruments necessary to be able to work, I would say, “against the
current”. During times of crisis, young people like me have a difficult time in
finding work and I didn’t want to close myself up in my career without looking
at anyone else. It was with this state of mind that I arrived at the EoC
workshop full of many questions. I didn’t find all the answers, but I found an
atmosphere of openness, where entrepreneurs, professors and youth were all
together, all equal, as we looked at Italy today with all its challenges.
I
understood that having a lot of money would have been the first obstacle to my
happiness which for me means something entirely different. This was confirmed
when I went to the Philippines, before beginning my doctorate that I knew I was
granted while I was on the plane! This
was a social trip that I had already planned, wherein I experienced first-hand
a culture that was quite different from mine.
I
arrived right at the moment of the strongest typhoon in the world, super-typhoon
Yolanda, in November 2013. The Filipino people, even if they are often struck
by similar tragedies, had that dignity that made me also feel that … I had
everything I needed to be happy! I understood the difference between “poverty”
and “misery”. “Poverty” is what I saw in the Philippines, whereas “misery” is
poverty without trust, without hope, which I saw in the faces of many of my
Italian friends due to the (economic) crisis. Here in Europe depression and the
psychologists enter into the picture… It’s true, there is a crisis. But we
still have a roof over our heads and even daily meals. The dignity that I
discovered in the Philippines is a lesson that will be useful for my working
career.
Because
of this, I gave up a career in Switzerland and now I am working in Loppiano, in
a company of the Economy of Communion that was started to form young people not
only on a relational-social level but also through work. Here I don’t work as
an engineer, but I do manual labour, since automatic equipment does not exist.
I work with clay, using my hands. And I feel that, in order to be a good
engineer, after years spent studying, I also need to know what an ordinary labourer
does. Maybe for some it seems like I am wasting my time, but I would like to be
that engineer who, when he looks at the labourers, knows that he is looking at
persons with their dignity, and who puts them at the center of his own work». (Maria Antonietta Casulli, 25 years old,
Italy)
Great story and experience, thanks for sharing Maria Antonietta! I am performing a PhD in Germany in Natural Sciences and I am well aware about the "misery" she means, and also about living for the work and for the self-benefit, without looking around towards the people that need our help. Many of us have a high qualified education, or are on the way, and should be mandatory to use this knowledge to contribute to progress, to peace, to education, to an United World. Very good luck and courage Maria Antonietta! I am willing to join this cause as soon as I have the opportunity. Greetings from Freiburg. Daniel Alvarez
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