Dear Reader,

On December 5-8, 2017, the World Youth Alliance (WYA) and Centro Internazionale di Animazione Missionaria (CIAM) hosted a Youth Synod Colloquium in Rome with exceptional youth leaders from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia who have completed WYA’s foundational training in the dignity of the person and now serve as national committee leaders and trainers in their own countries. The colloquium addressed challenges of cultural and political upheaval, while still addressing the personal questions of vocation and what it means to choose to live in counter-cultural ways, through commitment to a vocation, commitment to self-giving service, and the intersection of the personal and public challenges that these options raise.

The richness of the philosophical and theological work of Saint John Paul II, heightened by his deep love and care for youth, provided the foundational readings for the study seminar. The intention was to assess the effectiveness of Saint John Paul II’s philosophical anthropology as a universal language for discussion of the human person and vocation, as well as to evaluate its effectiveness in engaging inter-religious dialogue. At the conclusion of the colloquium, the participants noted the universal nature of Saint John Paul II’s philosophical anthropology, and the power that these concepts and language provided to them in articulating common experiences, challenges, and vocational struggles.

I’m delighted to share with you the essays of the participants and a reflection from Fr. Ezra Sullivan, OP, professor of moral theology at the Angelicum, who joined the seminar to provide important content and additional reflections to the youth participants. He gave a paper on natural philosophy as a foundation for understanding categories of moral action and the formation of virtuous habits.

We would like to thank CIAM for the collaboration and the youth participants for their meaningful contribution. Please enjoy reading the publication.

Best,

Lord Leomer Pomperada President World Youth Alliance

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fr. Ezra Sullivan: Anthropology and Morals 3

Doreen Nakato: The African Youth and Marriage 13

Cynthia Wangari Maingi: Learning to See Again 23

Joseph Habamahirwe: The Role of Family Today 31

Sarah Ogbewey: Reflections Of Self 41

Hichem Ouertani: A World Youth Alliance Lifestyle 53

Said Ousaka: A Personal Reflection of WYA Impact on Reference to 63 John Paul II’s Ideas

Angel de la Flor: The Purposes 72

Anne Mimille Guzman: Weightless Waiting: Finding Affirmation Whilst the 83 Struggle to Become

Satria Rizaldi Alchatib: Universalizing the Culture of Human Person: 94 A Love Essential From Marriage Life

Laksh Sharma: Perspective 104

Aseel Awwad: The Original Plans of God 111

2 Fr. Ezra Sullivan: Anthropology and Morals World Youth Alliance, Rome Forum, 6 December 2017

“There was once a tree … and she loved a little boy.” Thus begins Shel Silverstein’s book, The Giving Tree.1 In less than sixty-five pages, he unfolds a story that has spoken to the hearts of millions of readers in more than thirty different languages. But the book remains enigmatic. Some have listed The Giving Tree as among the best books ever written for youngsters, whereas others describe it as “one of the most divisive books in children’s literature.”2 Why is the story so controversial? Why have people proposed to ban it from schools? The answer will help us on our journey to understand the nature of human beings and morality.

I will recount the basics of the story for those who have not heard it before; for those who have, I invite you to remember and join me in the retelling.

There was once a tree … and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. […] And when he was tired he would sleep in her shade. And the boy love the tree … very much. And the tree was happy. But time went by. And the boy grew older. And the tree was often alone.

Over time, the boy decides he’s too busy to play in the branches of the tree: he wants money. So he takes the apples and sells them. And the tree was happy. After some time, he returns and he cuts off the branches to make a house. And the tree was happy. After more time, he returns and says he’s old and to play. So he cuts down the trunk of the tree to make a boat. “And the tree was happy … but not really.” After even more time, he returns again and the tree laments that it has no apples, no branches, no trunk to give. “I wish that I could give you something,” it says, “but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump.” “I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.” “Well,” said the tree, “an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.” And the boy did. And the tree was happy.

Before we get to discussing metaphors, analogies, or any moral of the story, I would like to look at the action of the characters minus the anthropomorphisms. If we consider the activity of the tree and the boy, some similarities and contrasts present themselves to us.

We can note first that there some things the boy and the tree both share: they are living beings. The illustrations depict the boy aging through time: from a lad of seven or eight, to a teen, then a young man, and finally an elder of eighty or so. The age of the tree is less clear; it is already mature when the

1 Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 2 Elizabeth Bird, “Top 100 Picture Books #85: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” May 18, 2012. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/05/18/top-100-picture-books-85-the-giving- 2 Elizabeth Bird, “Top 100 Picture Books #85: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” May 18, 2012. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/05/18/top-100-picture-books-85-the-giving- tree-by-shel-silverstein/ 3 story begins. However, we know that trees, indeed, all living thing grow and develop through time: that is part of what distinguishes them from non-living things such as the rocks and the boy’s hat. Plants adapt to their environments in creative ways: the roots of a cypress will grip the face of a cliff while its branches grow down-windward, and a patch of moss ekes out life in the depths of an ill-lit cave. Growth, of course, implies nourishment, and this entails natural reproduction: “For anything that has reached its normal development and which is unmutilated […] the most natural act is the production of another like itself,” Aristotle observes.3 The tree produces fruit whose seeds will develop into other trees. Meanwhile, the boy eats apples and tumbles in the weeds with a girl, hinting at reproductive desires.

The differences between the boy and the tree are telling. The boy moves wherever he wills, but the tree is fixed, literally rooted in place. If the tree were to pick up and amble about, it would no longer be a plant. Neither does the tree have powers of sensation: when branches are snipped, and her trunk is sawn off, there is no pain. In contrast, animals have a natural spontaneity and flexibility that transcends that of plants, while retaining the perfections held by plants and non-organic matter: animals possess powers of nutrition and reproduction, and, in addition, sensation and locomotion. Suppose we place a dog in the story. Fido would be able to eat, sniff, walk, and feel excitement, just like the boy. But the boy is not a tree, and he is not a dog.

This leads us to consider what the boy is, and how that is different from what the tree is. St Antoninus, a Dominican bishop of great influence in Renaissance Florence, invites us to ask along with the greatest thinkers in the West: “What is a human?” In the view of Antoninus, one can rightly call a human “a little world,” but also “like dust that is blown by the wind.”4 Of great dignity but somehow fragile and subject to the storms of life. We can notice that what the boy is does not change over time. He remains a human being throughout his life-span: despite physical changes such as growing taller, gaining wrinkles, and so on, he continues to be himself. Likewise, the tree remains itself over time, and doesn’t change into a different kind of thing. No matter how one prunes and shapes the tree, it cannot become a boy even if it is carved up to look like one: it takes a fairy godmother and the effort of virtue to transform Pinocchio into a real boy.

“Whatness” is the intrinsic principle that what makes a boy “this” kind of thing as differentiated from other kinds of things, such as trees, apples, and dogs. Living things exist as organized wholes, and what they are somehow limits and directs their growth and shape and activity. Even more than a symphony orchestra, a living being possesses a singular harmony among all its parts, a harmony that ensures unity and organization, so that the being continually strives to remain what it naturally is through time and circumstances. It moves, assimilates nutrition and oxygen, reacts to stimuli, grows, and reproduces. These activities are first of all aimed at the maintenance and survival of the organism, not something extrinsic to itself. These activities are for the sake of the whole organism, not merely one of its parts. “Oneness of purpose like this cannot be the outcome of a mere aggregation of material particles, such as molecules, atoms, protons, electrons, and so forth. Rather, it gives unmistakable evidence of a special kind of unity, biological in character, brought into being and maintained in the face of an amazing complexity of forces

3 De Anima, 415a28. 4 See Antonini Florentini, Summa Theologica (Verona: Seminarii Apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740) I, tit. I, c. 7. 4 at play.”5 The boy will not grow any which way, nor will he continue to grow forever; and while parts of him change, he maintains a biological unity that give shape to characteristic activity for what kind of creature he is.

“What are you?” you might ask the boy. If he’s playful, he might bark and say, “I’m a dog!” But if you say, “Oh, that’s too bad. Doggies don’t get to eat dessert and human food.” Then he might pout and insist that he’s actually a human: “I was just pretending,” he whimpers. If you wanted him to treat his sister better, you could point to her: “Is she a doggie?” The clever boy would know that the right answer is that his little sister isn’t a doggie, but a person like him. Put more philosophically, we would say that the boy and his sister share a “whatness” in common with all other human beings, for they are members of the same species. Aristotle called this “whatness” or thinghood phusis; ordinarily we translate it as “nature.” Different things possess different natures. The tree has a nature, the dog has a nature, the boy has a nature. These constitute three natures, not one nature, arranged hierarchically from less perfect to more perfect, so that the more perfect contains the powers of the less perfect. The tree possesses plant- nature: it grows and reproduces. The dog possesses all the basic powers of plant nature, plus those of animal nature: it grows, reproduces, moves about, and senses things. The boy possesses all the powers of plant and animal nature, plus those of human nature: he grows and has the power to reproduce, to move about, to sense things, and certain distinctly human powers. When philosophers attempt to sum up what a thing is, they provide characteristics that distinguish it from other, similar things. Humans can be called “featherless bipeds” or “an animal that laughs” or “apes that think too much of themselves.” But the best definition includes the thing’s genus and species. Hence, one can hardly do better than to define as human as a “rational animal,” that is, an animal with the power to reason and to choose.

Now what makes a nature natural? In other words, what are the intrinsic principles or causes that makes a thing to be what it is, and not something else? After all, a boy is not a dog just because he says so; nor is he a boy just because I say so. He possesses a unity and nature that comes from within and is not imposed on him from without. This unity, of course, is fragile. An exterior force can act upon the material and return it to a state of disorganization, so that the atoms, molecules, and larger parts no longer have a principle of unity or life. After a tree is ground up into wood chips, or after the boy’s heart no longer beats, their material reaches a state of disorganization, it no longer retains the principle that made it what it was. Hence, although physicality is an intrinsic aspect of the boy’s nature, his material body cannot be the primary cause of the identity he retains through time. By itself, the material would be a lump of undifferentiated carbon. Only when it is organized with an intrinsic, stable cause, does that carbon have the shape and activity of a living, breathing, active boy.

We find, then, that there are at least two different sorts of principles operating at the same time for the boy and all organic beings: first, that out of which a thing is made, which we can call the “material”; secondly, the form that the material takes. For inorganic material, form is merely shape, an arrangement of parts, as in the shape and shapeliness of a marble statue. For organic material, there is an exterior shape in addition to an interior something. It is this inner principle that makes the material exist as a certain thing, so that it develops into different shapes over time, possessing certain consistent properties and manifesting itself in characteristic activities. That which makes the boy to be what he is, is not static. Unless acted on exteriorly, a rock will retain its same shape indefinitely. The boy, though, by some interior

5 Robert Edward Brennan, General Psychology: A Study of Man Based on St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952), 56. 5 cause assimilates material so that his fingers grow to a certain point, and helps his synapses retain a reverberant relation to his mental life. There is something within the boy with a force, a power that continuously makes him exist as a boy, and his existence is dynamic. From within comes an energy and impulse to run around, play in the tree’s branches, eat apples, build houses, travel the world, contemplate life, and generally do things that humans do. Likewise, there is something that causes a tree to be what it is, and to do treelike things so long as it retains this intrinsic cause of its being, life, and activity. We might call this a principle of natural dynamism. Or we can adopt the classic language of philosophy. In the words of St. Edith Stein, “Living beings are capable of transforming and ‘incorporating’ in themselves foreign material elements and of bringing forth new structures of their own species. The formal principle which commands such a superior formative power is called the soul by Aristotle and the scholastic thinkers, while the material structure that is molded by this form is designated as the body.”6 Living things manifest different innate properties common to their species and therefore they must possess in themselves different actuating principles that organize them, that give them unity, consistency, and indeed existence as certain kinds of living things: these actuating principles, these substantial forms, are called “souls.” In this view, trees have plant-souls, dogs have animal souls, and humans have rational souls. Our concern here is human souls, what makes them special, and how that relates to human dignity and virtue.

Once I was talking with my cousin, and I was surprised to learn that there is a running joke with some of her friends. They will claim that “Gingers have no souls.” Then she will insist that she knows at least a few gingers with souls, namely, my two nieces who have lots of fiery red hair—and even me, with my reddish beard. Do I have a soul? Am I a human by nature? Shakespeare’s Shylock, who was Jewish, and reputedly sported red hair, asked a similar question:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?7

Here we may take Shakespeare’s inductive method as our own. We observe first what a thing does, then we can infer what powers it possesses, and finally what kind of being it is. Our gaze upon the world, and upon the human and his activity, will help us to penetrate more deeply into his essential being and nature, for the body is the “epiphany of the person.”8 Shylock notes that he has “hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, and passions.” Let us consider each of these in turn.

6 Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being : An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt (Washington, DC: ICS 2002), 244-5. 7 Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene I, lines 1292-1301. 8 Elio Sgreccia, Personalist Bioethics: Foundations and Applications, trans. John A. Di Camillo and Michael J. Miller (Philadelphia: National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2012), 140. 6 Our hands are sheathed in furless skin with opposable thumbs. This arrangement, this dimension of the human body, enables us to grasp and utilize an infinite variety of tools, so that we can call our hands as the “tool of tools.”9 By means of our hands we can employ any tool within our grasp. With our hands, we also point to things that we see, and to which we want to attract the attention of others: “Look at that! Do you see what I see?” Following Aristotle, the medieval thinker St. Thomas Aquinas lists sight as one of the five external senses, along with taste, smell, hearing, and touch. These senses are faculties or powers that a person possesses and uses when his body receives certain sense impressions. Different sense-organs are directed toward their proper sensory objects: our tongue and mouth sense tastes, our noses pick up smells, our eyes gaze on visible things, our ears tune into audible sounds, our skin feels whatever is tactile. Note that the function of our sense organs is one that requires both the body and the soul operating in harmony. The open eyes of a corpse lying in an autopsy room do not see anything: the bodily organ must be actuated by the living principle of the soul, and united to the rest of the body, in order to do its work.

Whereas our external sensory powers are familiar to all of us, probably less well-known are our internal sensory powers. They are internal because their function is not of an organ that lies on the surface of the body. Rather, the brain is their primary organ, for it refines the data received through the external senses.10 With the help of Aristotle as well as Jewish and Muslim philosophers, Thomas Aquinas identifies four internal sensory powers.

The first is what we can call the unitive sense.11 By it, we are able sift, sort, and unify our sense impressions as they are present to us, making them into a perceptual whole. For example, we can see something yellow and roundish; then pick it up and feel and smell it; then we can peel it and taste it: the unitive sense combines these distinct sensory impressions so that we know they belong to the same object, a lemon fruit. Second, we can call up interior images of things that are not immediately present to us and affecting our sense organs; this is the work of the imagination. Third, we can recall images of sense impressions of things past; this is what memory does. Fourth, we can make a quick, gut-level estimation of whether something or someone is going to help or harm us; this is the product of the estimative or cogitative sense.

Observation and reflection reveal that both humans and higher-level animals possess the internal sensory powers in ways that are adapted to their specific needs. Dogs, for instance, undoubtedly dream and thereby manifest having imagination and memory; they also automatically estimate whether a person approaching is a friend or foe. Consequently, these cognitive powers are not what make humans human. Neither are what Shylock calls the “affections [and] passions.”

Living as a human is more than information processing. Aristotle observes that “[w]here there is sensation, there is also pleasure and pain, and where there is pleasure and pain, there is necessarily appetite.”12 He means not merely a physical hunger for food or drink, but a longing for some apprehended good. Appetite is derived from the Latin ad-petere, literally, “to seek after” something. We naturally seek

9 De Anima 432a2. 10 Terese Auer, The Human Person: Dignity Beyond Compare (Nashville, TN: Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation, 2008), 53. See ST I, q. 79, a. 2, ad 2. 11 For the following account, see Brennan, General Psychology, 159-60. 12 De Anima, 423b24. 7 after what we perceive as good for us and we avoid what we perceive as harmful to us in the concrete situation. As soon as we perceive a concrete something through our external and internal senses, and form an estimation about its potential benefit or harm, we start to incline toward or away from it. Accordingly, Aquinas argues that we have two basic sorts of sensory appetites. The “desiring” appetite seeks for simple sensory delight and whatever seems capable of maintaining one’s life. The “aggressive” appetite seeks to overcome obstacles to one’s sensory delight, and to strive for goods difficult to obtain. When these appetites are moved by our perceptions, we experience emotions or what scholastic philosophy calls “passions.”

In ordinary language, we say that a person has a “passion” for something when his love for it is so ardent that it bursts forth into enthusiasm. And, when two people are “passionate” for each other, we say that they have “fallen in love.” This accurately describes passion as primarily emotional, and emotional love as something that happens to us. Aquinas uses the word “passion” similarly but more broadly: he states that a passion is any bodily emotional feeling, because we passively experience a feeling as something that happens to us. We cannot summon or banish our feelings at will.13 We simply feel them. Furthermore, he astutely notes, the feeling of love lies at the root of all of our other emotions: it is the first in any series of emotions, and it causes all emotions in some way.14 Love is first because every movement of our appetites is on account of some end or good thing loved.15 Even hate arises from love. Undoubtedly, hate is the contrary of love; on the emotional level, it is the rejection of something that we perceive as evil or harmful. But notice: we reject something as harmful to us because it is out of harmony with a good that we desire more. Fido the dog barks at stranger danger, because it loves its own safety and the safety of its master. A child “hates” certain loud noises, and shies away from them, because he instinctively protects himself from what signals potential physical threat.

Here we cannot go into great detail regarding Aquinas’s wise and wide-ranging account of the passions. What is of primary concern is to underline that emotions are natural and quasi-automatic responses outside of our direct control. If a person mocks you in public for something that is not your fault, it is only natural to experience a strong feeling of emotional dislike and anger. The feelings are good because they are ordered toward the preservation of your good reputation. But note that you can choose different ways to respond to your feeling: you can run away; you can convince yourself it does not matter; or like Shylock you can seek revenge. Different actions will be more or less reasonable, depending on a number of factors. The first blush of our emotions, however, are not morally good or bad in themselves. What is good or bad is how we respond to our emotions, and what we do to cultivate the right emotions.

Now we come to the human powers of intellect and will, that is, to deliberation and choice. In common with all animals, humans receive impressions of the world through their exterior senses, which in turn affect their interior sensory powers. Unlike animals, though, we are able to extract or abstract the “essences” of impressions received. Our intellect is able “to consider the nature of the [intelligible] species apart from its individual qualities represented by the phantasms [in the imagination or memory].”16 The highest cognitive power in humans is therefore manifested in the ability to understand, judge, and reason about what we have perceived with our interior and exterior senses, and what we have felt with our

13 See ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1. 14 See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1. 15 See ST I-II, q. 28, a. 6. 16 ST I, q, 85, a. 1. 8 emotions. On account of his intellectual power, we are able to act not only by feelings or imagination, but also by reason. With our intellect and will, we possess the freedom to transform ourselves through our own choices. This is freedom for good or evil, the freedom to order this or that chosen object toward a good or evil end.17 This can also be called “moral freedom”, or as Servais Pinckaers calls it, “freedom for excellence.”18 Eliminative materialists see the human being as an object of concern and something-to-be- acted-upon exteriorly. For them, the human is purely material, only a heap of carbon subject to the random winds of chaos. In contrast, Aquinas argues that the human is above all a subject, an acting person who shapes himself through his fully-voluntary acts. As Daniel De Haan has explained, “Through the efficacy of the will, the person transcends the natural determinations of the physical order and becomes the sort of person who chooses and performs certain axiologically specified activities,” thereby becoming responsible for the activities that he wills and the shape they give to his person.19

Virtue is the result of cultivating habits that accrue not only skills, which involve shaping the exterior world, but interior quality of character that entails shaping the self. A habit, understood in the wide Thomistic sense, is the result of a person’s conscious efforts in repeated choice and action, such that she may have shaped her desires, her emotions, and even her own powers of choosing and thinking. Insofar as these desires and behaviors, etc., are the results of one’s free choice, they are new and they transcend the inclinations and limitations of instincts and reflexes—indeed, they transform those lower movements into something qualitatively different, which can be evaluated on a moral level. Thomas maintains that, “a habit is like a second nature, and yet it falls short of it.”20 This is because, whereas the nature of a thing cannot in any way be taken away from a thing, a habit may be removed, though with difficulty. Hence, the presence of a “second nature” assumes the existence of a prior and more fundamental “first nature” that can be changed to some extent. If one attempts completely to circumvent “first nature,” if one ignores its fundamental laws, the person will not survive. The human body can never be adapted to having all of his head and limbs chopped off and his trunk severed in half: it would result in death. “The life of nature involves self-modification,” Félix Ravaisson argued, but the change that a thing undergoes from an exterior force becomes more and more foreign to it, whereas the change it has brought upon itself becomes more and more proper to it.21

To the extent that the “first nature” of a thing is respected, that far will the person flourish. It follows that, “habit does not simply presuppose nature, but develops in the very direction of nature, and concurs with it.”22 Hence, the human agent is one who fully engages himself by developing the best habits, especially those of contemplating the truth and choosing the authentic good. Every self-shaping always bears a relation to reason, which is “right” insofar as it enacts “first nature’s” laws of authentic human flourishing. We must insist that the “nature” of humans that must be respected is not merely the

17 De veritate q. 22, a. 6: “[L]ibertas voluntatis […] quantum ad ordinem finis, in quantum potest velle bonum vel malum.” 18 See Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Mary Thomas Noble, 3rd ed. edition (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), esp. 354-78. 19 Daniel D. De Haan, “Thomistic Hylomorphism, Self-Determination, Neuroplasticiy, and Grace: The Case of Addiction,” Proceedings of the ACPA Vol. 85 (2012): 99-120 at 100-1. 20 ST I-II, q. 53, a. 1, ad 1 21 Editors’ Commentary in Félix Ravaisson, Of Habit, trans. and ed. Clare Carlisle and Mark Sinclair (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Group, 2008), 84. 22 Ravaisson, Of Habit, 31. 9 biological nature alone, but the structural metaphysical reality of the person as a whole.23 Human dignity is inestimable and therefore is ruled not only by physical or biological laws, but moral law, which is something that fits with personal dignity, and is discovered and actualized in choices made according to right reason. Through many moral choices, a person develops what Aquinas calls “virtue.” According to the medieval thinker, virtue is perfection of intellectual and volitional habits that direct a person toward his proper end and therefore affect his whole person. It follows that, “virtue makes the one having it good and makes his work good […] and thus it is evident that it is the disposition of the perfected for the best.”24 But what is best?

From a purely objective perspective, we know that whatever is best for humans must also be the most fulfilling for those who are disposed to receive it. This does not mean that the best is whatever we think will make us happy, or what makes us feel happy for a moment but does not ultimately satisfy. The Giving Tree gives us a clue as to what “the best” for man is not. Here we can note the difference between the intention or goal of a person, including his motives for acting, and the object the person choses. The book never explicitly tells us about the boys intentions; presumably he was pursuing whatever he understood as happiness. What is clearer is the exterior object to which the boy’s actions were directed. At first, the little boy simply enjoyed playing around the tree and pursuing whatever his simple desires wanted. As he grew up, though, the little boy wanted a relationship with other people. So he looked for love and found pleasure. That was not entirely fulfilling either: so get got busy and starting looking for material goods to fill the gap: “I want to buy things. […] I want money,” he told the tree. He sold the tree’s apples for cash. That too was insufficient. Then he thought that a family, wife and children, would make him happy. He would no longer be focused on himself; he would think of the good of others. He lopped off the tree’s branches and made a house. But no wife is perfect, children will always disappoint, and in the heart of man there is a desire for an infinite good, an unfailing fountain of joy. The boy despaired. Unable to discover whatever was best, he sawed the tree’s trunk off and built a boat to get away. At least then he could distract himself from his sadness. But this led further down the spiral, for as Pascal observes, “The only thing that consoles us from our miseries is distraction, yet this is the greatest of our wretchednesses. […] Without it we should be bored, and boredom would force us to search for a firmer way out, but distraction entertains us and leads us imperceptibly to death.”25 At last the boy returns; now an old man. He sits on the tree stump and says that he is tired. The story closes with him staring off into the distance. “And the tree was happy.”

Was the boy “happy”? What would that mean? Bracketing the anthropomorphisms, some commentators read the story as an environmentalist parable: the boy represents selfish, exploitative humanity, and the tree is nature that continues to give until its resources, life, and beauty are exhausted. The old man plopped on the stump manifests no understanding or concern for how he has used and abused the tree. There is some merit to this interpretation, and I think good lessons about materialism and proper care for nature could be learned here, there is more to consider.

The anthropomorphic depiction of the tree is surely significant. The tree is a “she”; she is mature and patient; she hugs the boy, feeds him, and plays with him when he is small. Then he runs away and

23 See Sgreccia, Personalist Bioethics, 486. 24 Aquinas, Quaestiones de veritate, q. 1, a. 1, c. 25 Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, trans. Honor Levi (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), Pensée no. 33. 10 returns only when he wants something. She keeps giving and is satisfied so long as she can give of herself. The narrator always refers to him as a “boy”, even when he bent and wrinkled. Consequently, the story seems to depict a mother-child relationship. If so, the moral is dark. In the words of one reader:

It perpetuates the myth of the selfless, all-giving mother who exists only to be used and the image of a male child who can offer no reciprocity, express no gratitude, feel no empathy-an insatiable creature who encounters no limits for his demands.26

And another: The boy, now an old man, sans wife or children or any evidence of having lived a life, returns to the maternal tree/stump and sits. The tree is happy at last. In an odd way, the tree is victorious— she has the boy with her and they are both wrecks but they are together—but it is a pernicious sort of victory, bought at the expense of her “treeness” and the boy’s humanness. This isn’t a happy story. It’s a sappy one.27

“Treeness”, “humanness.” We’ve encountered those terms before. They connote the specific natures of the things. The second author above is indicating, that in The Giving Tree, neither the boy nor the tree have flourished according to their natural capacities. The boy chose objects and behaviors that in themselves were insufficient to achieve his personal flourishing. In other words, his actions were objectively disordered from his happiness as measured by his nature. Had the boy exercised skill, he could have shaped the tree to flourish even more—instead of exploiting it as he did. And he exercised his intellect and will rightly, he could have shaped himself by acquiring virtues, which are perfective habits. Instead of following his passions head-long, the boy would have developed prudence. With prudence, the boy would have perfected his practicality by taking counsel regarding how truly to be happy; he would deliberated and judged among various means to lead to his highest end; and he would have chosen the best means he could. Alongside prudence, the boy would also have developed the virtue of justice by perfecting his will by giving to others their due. He would have treated the tree appropriately, for instance. Through justice, a person transcends egoism, for by justice a person seeks an equality between what he can give and what a recipient ought to have. Likewise, the boy would have not been without fortitude, the virtue that moderates one’s aggressive appetite, so that he would have pursued the good even in the face of difficulty. It is not always easy to endure the rollercoaster of life; not always pleasant to persist in the face of setbacks, dead-ends, and disappointments. With the virtue of fortitude, the boy would have not been overly sad and tired at the end of his life, but invigorated with energy channeled toward the right end. Finally, and perhaps most pertinently to the boy of our story, the virtue of temperance would not have been neglected. Pleasure is good and natural, for no one can live without some bodily pleasure.28 Nevertheless, pleasure should not be sought for its own sake; it should rather be experienced as “the enjoyment of the good,” a well-ordered fruition consequent on a virtuous act.29 We naturally find pleasure in doing good, so that we might be more firmly attached to the good on every level of our being. Since we

26 Ellen Handler Spitz, "Classic children's book,” American Heritage, vol. 50, no. 3 (May–June 1999): 46. 27 Jean Bethke Elshtain, contribution to “The Giving Tree: A Symposium,” First Things (January 1995). https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/01/the-giving-tree-a-symposium 28 ST I-II, q. 34, a. 1. 29 ST I-II, q. 25, a. 2; q. 34, a. 2, ad 2. See Kevin White, “Pleasure, A Supervenient End,” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Tobias Hoffmann et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 220- 38. 11 are rational animals, the pleasures that befit us are those that exist in accordance with reason grasping the truth as something good. When sensory love is habitually misdirected toward a particular harmful object, when it is not tempered by prudence, and when a person does not courageously endure the sting of hardship, a disordered attachment to a particular good is formed. That attachment can become an addiction. In contrast, one who possesses temperance is free from disordered attachments, for he learns how to appreciate pleasurable goods rightly; and so his interior life is unfettered from selfishness and his soul is accordingly rendered more beautiful.

If the boy had acquired the moral virtues, would he then be happy? To answer this question requires us to ask what happiness consists in and whether it is within our reach. Very briefly, Aquinas would argue that happiness does not consist in possessing acquired virtue. Rather, happiness is the reward of perfect virtue, and this can only come from outside of ourselves. Alone, we can cultivate farmland, invent technological wonders, develop personal skills, and even shape ourselves into pretty virtuous people. But there will always be something thing, for we find ourselves weak, debilitated by evil outside of and wickedness within. There is some sickness of soul that prevents our full flourishing, and we cannot cure it. This sickness turns us in on ourselves, so that like Narcissus, we become captivated by our image and forget in whose image we are made. Virtue, as all things, are measured by their relation to the ultimate end, which is the highest good. Moral virtue, in a way, is still about self-shaping, seeking the good of the ego. The highest virtue is focused on Another, One who is fully good, One who is worthy of all our thought and love, for He created us, and He is Truth and Goodness itself.

It might be wishful thinking, but I would like to think that the final picture in The Giving Tree leaves room for hope. Perhaps the story may have a truly happy ending. We see the boy sitting on the stump, a bent old man. The pose resembles Auguste Rodin’s monumental statue, The Thinker, but with a crucial difference. The figure in The Thinker rests his chin upon his hand; he is gazing down and within, no longer looking at the world. In contrast, the boy in The Giving Tree has his chin up; he is looking into the distance, with the posture of one who still lives with hope on the horizon. Such can serve as the beginning of the contemplation of God, the beginning of prayer, the beginning of a new life.

12 Doreen Nakato: The African Youth and Marriage

Doreen is an active member of the WYA National Committee in Uganda. She has helped organize the 2015 WYA Barbeque in Africa and participated in the 14th International Solidarity Forum in New York. Doreen is the recipient of the 2018 Viktor Frankl Award, an award that recognizes WYA members for their praiseworthy efforts in pursuing the mission of promoting human dignity.

Introduction;

The youth remain the biggest percentage of the population worldwide. However, the African youth have the potential to be a great motivation for Africa’s development, provided that appropriate measures are put in place for them to be understood and not judged. The dynamics of life have changed and so the approach ought to change. World Youth Alliance advocates for human dignity at all times no matter the circumstances. On the other hand, the readings of John Paul II encourage us to appreciate our humanity as initiated by God. These two are crystal clear. Therefore, the youth ought to appreciate and value their humanity so as to establish good relationships leading to marriage.

Every human is born with the intrinsic value that ought to be respected and upheld. This relates back to the creation story of man being created in the image and likeness of God.The youth today are faced with lots of challenges, that is: poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce, media, bad governance, civil discrimination to mention but a few. With these challenges, I would be right to state that the 2018 Youth Synod on Faith, Vocation and Discernment is timely in order to help address such challenges. With the gift of faith, one can easily discern one’s calling and hence live a purpose-driven life. Discerning one’s vocation entails discovering one’s mission in life. It varies from persons to persons. It is crucial that this essay examines the calling to marriage among the youth in Africa.

The world’s population being majorly of the youth includes those from Africa. Africa is one of the seven continents of the world and popularly known as the “Black Continent.” It is the second largest continent with an average population being the youth. Africa is known for its huge cultural heritage. I hail from Uganda which forms part of East Africa. The East African Community is made up of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda,Burundi and South Sudan. Uganda has an estimated population of about 40 million people. We are among the most hospitable and generous people in Africa. Uganda is endowed with traditions ranging from costumes, food, language and practices; and generally, Africa as a continent with different traditions/ cultures.

Human rights and human rights laws are commonly advocated for, however, World Youth Alliance (WYA) has enabled to learn and recognize that the intrinsic dignity of the person is the foundation of every human right.The readings of John Paul II in addition have enabled me appreciate God’s intention for my life and the guide to my daily endeavors as youth.

13 The African Youth/Young People;

The United Nations for statistical purposes defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years, without prejudice to other definitions by Member States[1]. The African Youth Charter[2] however refers to ‘youth’as persons between the ages of 15 and 35 years. The definition of the youth as regards this essay shall in particular refer to that of the African Youth Charter; a Constitutive Act of the African Union.

In an article,“Africa’s youth population can lift the continent”[3], it was stated that Africa is young – and it continues to get younger as populations around the world are getting older. With over 40% of its working age population between the ages of 15 and 24, it is the youngest continent in the world. There are almost 200 million youths in Africa and, according to African Economic Outlook that number will double by 2045. In a list compiled by the UN in 2012 of the 10 youngest populations in the world, eight were in Africa. People under the age of 25 in Uganda, Chad, Niger, Angola, Somalia, Zambia, Mali and Malawi made up more than 66% of each country’s population.

It is indisputable that the youth have the potential for Africa’s development. Development should embrace all spheres from economic to the social aspects hence community and nation building. Africa like the rest of the world is getting technologically advanced and the youth are embracing all that it brings. However, there are areas that are left wanting and of which is marriage among the youth. In the African setting, marriage was a community affair. It was the parent’s role to find their children suitable spouses unlike today where the youth initiate relationships.The youth are quick to establish relationships due to what they watch and read and whether these relationships lead to marriage shall be discussed herein. Detailed below is the examination of marriage among the African youth;

The Institution of Marriage;

In Genesis 2:18, God said, "it is not good that man should be alone." It was from this that God created them ‘male and female’, to complement each other. Therefore, marriage is an institution of God - the Creator’s design for love; the first source of the certainty of man's vocation as a person created, in the image of God himself. The word “vocation” has its roots in the Latin word ‘vocare’ which means “to call”. A vocation is a calling. The Second Vatican Council clearly stated that we all have a call to holiness. But within that universal call to holiness, there are two main “states of life”—marriage and celibacy for the Kingdom of God[4]. It is not that all the youth are called to marriage. The youth need to discern their state of life and to live it fully according to their calling.

Fr. Bryce Sibley goes on to state that the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “the vocation to marriage is written into the very nature of man and woman as it comes from the hand of the Creator”.[5] Marriage is something to which every human person is called; it is the “default” vocation for all humans. So marriage, at its most basic level, is a natural vocation, a call written into our very DNA, into the very structure of our being. The married person is called to give himself totally to one person in love, while the celibate is called to give himself to all. It is always good to pray and discern one’s God-given vocation (whatever state of life one chooses) in order to find fulfillment in life. Our life vocation is a treasure buried in a field, the pearl of great price. The grace is in the calling and we are encouraged to pursue it at whatever the cost.

14

With the foregoing, marriage is a vocation that youth look up despite its challenges. The youth are anxious of married life and only to discover the realities later on. It is important to discuss in details what marriage is and its components because with good marriages come great families and communities.

The African Marriage vis-à-vis Marriage Today;

It is notable that times have changed over the past two decades and this has also seen a change in marriage patterns even in developing countries.Today, most young people are marrying later compared with earlier generations. Among women, 27 percent of 15 to 19-year-old women in the developing world were married in 1970-1989, compared with 21 percent in 1990-2000[6]. In Africa and more so in the past, women’s role was only seen in the management of the homestead and this explains why many were married off at a tender age; below the age of 18. However today, reasons are advanced as to why women are getting married at a later stage and one being career development. Women empowerment has greatly reduced the number of cases of early child marriages in Africa with the youth having a choice of when and marriage and with whom to get married.

A research conducted by the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS), “Less Ugandans interested in married life” shows that marriage patterns are changing, with the institution attracting less people today than it did two decades ago[7].The UDHS report further shows that marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched or those who eventually marry do so at much later dates in their lives.This has had an impact on marriage since the youth get to enter the marriage institute with a mature and independent mind. The hard economic times have pushed the youth to first secure economic stability before establishing families. It is human that every parent would love the best for their children and this has forced the youth to post pone marriage at a later stage.

In Africa, customary/ traditional marriages that are potentially polygamous are legally recognized. Men are allowed to marry more than one wife. Some communities are still embracing this though the youth are settling down for Christian/ monogamous marriages.The customary marriages are celebrated in accordance to norms, traditions or customs of a given couple. In such marriages, parents and or relatives play a vital role.The pertinent issue in such marriages is the payment of the bride price and once paid, the marriage is finalized.

The youth are influenced by different factors for their decisions to marry. These decisions vary from individual to individual though some cut across and these include;

Reasons for marriage;

a) Love and for companionship; It is written that "a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."[8] Marriage among the youth is for companionship; the unifying factor being love.Love is a force which joins and unites.Love is the fullest realization of the possibilities inherent in man. Love is by its very nature not unilateral but bilateral, something, between two persons, something shared. Fully realized, it is essentially an interpersonal, not an individual matter. Love between persons is essentially a creation of

15 human free will. Human beings, created as man and woman, were created for unity. It also indicates that precisely this unity, through which they become one flesh, has right from the beginning a character of union derived from a choice.

It is through freedom that the youth are able to make life choices including that of marriage. Man as a social being was given the freedom to enjoy all that was created. It is this freedom that man longs for in his humanity. Man’s freedom is the ability to choose to do good or bad. As human beings, freedom is the means by which, exercising both our reason and our will, we act on the natural longing for truth, for goodness, and for happiness that is built into us hence the fulfillment of human destiny[9]. Man must consciously discern and choose between good and evil, between life and death. It is therefore the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit.The capacity to think and choose is what distinguishes the human person from the rest of the natural world. A life lived in freedom, is a life truly lived humanly leading to growth in virtue[10].

b) To establish a family unit; The only way through which the youth can establish families is by being married. It is from marriages that families are established. Child bearing is a great component of marriage. The role of the family in a community cannot be under estimated as it is believed that charity begins at home. In the African setting, marriage was seen complete with the bearing of children and childless couples always suffered criticism and discrimination from the relatives and the community generally. Currently, this is solved through adoption where fostered children are given a chance to belong to a family.

c) Independence and to gain a sense of maturity; The youth marry for independence and to gain a sense of maturity. At the time of forming and starting their own families, the youth believe that it is time for parenthood and to carry out the responsibilities that come with it. This confirms the nurturing of the family and fostering a social climate favorable to integral development, solidarity and mutual respect being one of the WYA’s main ideas. It is also true that good marriages make great families; the youth world over ought to aim at this.

d) For economic security and sustainability The youth marry for economic security and sustainability. The economic times are hard and some believe that by being married to someone, some of the expenses shall be catered for. Poverty and unemployment are the major causes especially where some youth have failed to find gainful employmentand neither do they want keeping under their parents’ roof. This has forced many into cohabitation commonly known as ‘presumption of marriage’. Marriage loses its initial plan where couples ought to complement each other than to simply look at what to gain from it. One wonders what would become of a marriage once the economic benefits are not met. Killing of spouses in the name of inheriting the deceased’s estate is common especially where one looks at the other as a source of income.The youth intending to settle down ought to be encouraged to contribute to their marriage both physically, socially and economically. It indeed pays that both parties contribute to the good of marriage and offspring in the long run.

16 e) Societal demands; Societal demands have pushed some youth to marriage even where they seem not sure of the calling. With the pressure to settle down, many weddings are celebrated nowadays but few last test of time. Some young people are getting married because their friends are getting married while others fear that the biological clock is ticking. The youth fail to realise that marriage is an individual affair and that God’s timing and plan for each one of us is the best. Marriage is not about how many weddings or friends are into it but a personal affair that one needs to live according to God’s laws. Of what benefit would it be for one to be married just because society demands so and only to discover that one needed more time (God’s timing is the best!) or even not meant for marriage. This calls for prayer and discernment in order to discover God’s calling for one’s life.

f) Public image; The youth have a lot of freedom to do as they please and with the liberalization of sex, many engage in premarital sex before the celebration of marriage; conception out of wedlock. Some youth get married because the bride is pregnant and they would want to save the face. This has had its positive and negative effects. Despite their short coming, the couple is able to have their union blessed and invite God at the center of their relationship. On the other hand, if the marriage is celebrated because of the pregnancy and once the fruit of the marriage is borne, the couplet ends to lose interest in marriage at an early stage and instead the marriage becomes a prison. This calls for proper counseling of the young couple.

In Africa, despite the reasons for marriage, marriage is a celebration and ought to be guarded from falling part no matter the circumstances. The African cultures fully embrace marriage.

Marriage challenges among the young people;

The marriage institution is faced with many challenges today than in the past. These range from economic, traditional, religious and political reasons.

First and foremost, there is lack or insufficient marital counseling. It starts from how relationships are formed and natured and the guidance given to the youth. In Africa, marital counseling is deemed as ‘airing’ dirty linen in public. Pertinent marital issues are not addressed in order not embarrass the couple. It is true that marriage is confused for dating and courtship by the youth. Many of them do not get to understand what marriage entails and hence its sanctity being abused. Marriage has lost its original meaning as ordained by God due to the promiscuous nature of mankind. In a Christian teaching, marriage is a sacrament and ought to be guarded as sacred.

Pope Francis in Chapter 4[11] states that the ‘joy of love’ in marriage has to be cultivated, reborn and renewed as marriage is invariably a mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief, satisfaction and longings, annoyances and pleasures. A man and a woman whose love has not begun to mature, has not established itself as a genuine union of persons, should not marry, for they are not ready to undergo the test to which married life will subject them. This institution of marriage is necessary to signify the maturity of the union between a man and a woman, to testify that there is a love on which a lasting union and community can be based. Take away from love, the fullness of self - surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.

17 Marriage is a choice and with a lot of freedom among the youth, many have entered relationships for the sake of it. Pope Francis further writes that freedom of conscience is the basis for the freedom to choose the set of values and beliefs in an individual life, but this freedom relies on the fact that truth precedes freedom; that our choice of value and belief systems is an attempt to respond to living and acting within the parameters of an objective, prior truth. Freedom of the will is possible only if it rests on truth in cognition. Love is often confused with lust and it is true that the heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. For love to be beautiful it has to be whole and complete, it must be “fully integrated”, meaning it must incorporate incorrect order of priority all the elements of a true love. It is unfortunate that the world generally believes that love can be reduced largely to a question of the genuineness of feelings. Love in the full sense of the word is a virtue, not just an emotion, and still less a mere excitement of the senses.

The liberalization of sex is greatly affecting youth marriages today. Sex is for pleasure. Sexual relations outside marriage automatically put one person in the position of an object to be used by another. Premature tenderness in the association of a man and a woman quite often even destroys love, or at least prevents it from developing fully, of ripening both internally and objectively into a genuine love. The many vices in our communities are a result of failure of self-mastery. In Uganda and Kenya, the governments are being sued for failure to implement laws on ‘safe’ abortion[12]. Currently, Uganda would like to implement a law on sex education to children as young as three years provided they are in school. One wonders if sex education is a priority to a third world country in Africa and more so the target group.

The youth fail to realise that the unification of the two persons must first be achieved by way of love, and sexual relations between them can only be the expression of a unification already complete. The dignity of the person demands control of concupiscence. If the person does not exercise such control it jeopardizes its natural perfectibility, allows an inferior and dependent part of itself to enjoy freedom of action, and indeed subjects itself to this lesser self. Pleasure as opposed to pain cannot be the only factor affecting my decision to act or not to act. Quite obviously, that which is truly good, that which morality and conscience bid me to do, often involves some measure of pain and requires the renunciation of some pleasure. Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial.

Pope John Paul II[13] stated that a love which is not “fairest”, but reduced only to the satisfaction of concupiscence or to a man’s and a woman’s mutual “use” of each other, makes persons slaves to their weaknesses. Sexual modesty is not a flight from love, but on the contrary the opening of a way towards it. The spontaneous need to conceal mere sexual values bound up with the person is the natural way to the discovery of the value of the person as such.True love is a love in which sexual values are subordinated to the value of the person.The value of the person is always greater than the value of pleasure[14]. Man is by nature capable of rising above instinct in his actions. He is capable of such action in the sexual sphere as elsewhere.

Poor family background has affected youth marriages today. A lot has to do with their childhood.The family is the most basic unit of society, a school of deeper humanity hence learning what it means to be truly human. One experiences the unconditional gift of self and enduring love from the family. Pope Francis also noted that it is within the family that children (youth) first learn about human values and the wise use of freedom. Charity begins at home; home is the first school to impact the youth with the desired skills so as to overcome the hurdles of life. However, it is unfortunate that some of the youth have not had such a

18 nurturing due to different family problems like single parenthood as women liberalization has created a new era of women being happy getting and raising children alone, absenteeism and or death of parents, poverty and domestic violence to mention but a few. I was taken aback when a certain young lady was asked how many children she would like to have and her response was:“As a single mother or a married woman?” This depicts a lot about single parenthood even without the death of the spouse and the type of generation that is being raised.

St. John Paul II states in Love and Responsibility[15] that it is true that young people are coming to marriage without being affirmed. The incidence of people who have not been affirmed, who have not been loved unconditionally for their own sake, is very high. This gives rise to various kinds of symptoms: deep senses of insecurity and inferiority, forms of depression, forms of behaving inadequately, inability to organize one’s life. All these symptoms are directly related to lack of affirmation from one or both parents — who often have suffered from this same lack of affirmation themselves. Today, people often enter marriage with one or both “lungs” missing — one is the maternal affirmation lung and the other is the paternal affirmation lung and this has greatly affected marriages. There is need for self-discovery and to seek guidance and counseling such that couples enter marriage fulfilled.

There is a lot of anxiety about marriage among the youth today; high expectations and different realities of marriage. Having not had their expectations fulfilled, the youth lack patience and endurance to sustain their marriages. Many opt out while others seek divorce which unfortunately is granted by courts of law. Pope Francis also acknowledges marriage as being a dynamic process that advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God, growing and maturing over time. It is indeed true that what God has joined together, no one shall put asunder. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “between the baptized, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death.” It further states that “the Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble”[16].

There is also the issue of mixed marriages where the couple is practicing different religions. This has caused a lot of tension and misunderstanding in such marriages to a point of separation and divorce. How can such couples be helped without inflicting more harm?

The technological growth has endowed mankind with myriad advantages. However, it has also resulted in some unintended consequences on marriages.Technological advancements and in particular the use of mobile phones and internet have accelerated marital problems.The media on the other hand has the ability to influence young people’s perceptions and their views on particular issues including marriage. The media reports highlighting the dark side of love and marriage for example; high divorce rates, infidelity, stalking, domestic violence, etc.have caused fear among youth as regards marriage.

19

Way forward;

Despite the above challenges, marriage among the youth is still highly regarded. The youth need to be given an opportunity/ platform to address marital issues such as; Ø Creating and strengthening youth groups to provide support services to young people through effective counseling. Ø Youth seminars and conferences should be encouraged to enable and guide young people in building good relationships and hence making good life choices. Ø Governments through their concerned ministries should prioritize youth issues in their development agendas so as to address youth issues and make marriage an enticing institution to join. Ø Organizations and churches could establish professional counseling departments as a way of helping young people grow spiritually, emotionally and socially. Ø The parents/ guardians should be encouraged to live an exemplary life as they are influential to the youth. They play an important role in the young people’s lives as regards marriage.

Conclusion;

In all, marriage is a sacrament that I too aspire to celebrate at a given point in my life and I am certain that with God’s grace it shall come to pass.

With my Roman Catholic background and having attended a Catholic High School (St. Joseph Senior Secondary School, Naggalama, Mukono, Uganda) for six years and finally pursued my Bachelor of Laws at Uganda Christian University, Mukono for four years, I have learnt to seek more of doing God’s will and to practice my Catholic faith. I have learnt that religion (no matter the faith) plays a big role in someone’s life and like it goes, “the fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom.” Having reference to God has enabled me live according to His commands and avoiding the vices in my community.

In light of the above, I remember signing the “True Love Commitment” card in my high school. These have really molded me into being the person I am today because I always reckon the words on it especially the notion that ‘true love waits.’ As a youth, I have come to appreciate that life offers me a lot; positive and negative but not all that is before me, I should partake of. I ought to use my freedom wisely because it comes with responsibility. I might choose to act in a certain way but the consequences are beyond my reach. Therefore, I have chosen to be the change that I would like to see by striving to live an exemplary life through my daily actions in all spheres of life. In addition to attending career programs, I endeavor to attend seminars and retreats to enable my spiritual growth as well. Through these different forums, I have been able to discover myself and choose my vocation carefully.

It is true that we are called differently. My twin sister, Maureen has found fulfillment in the religious life and she is happy with her calling. This confirms that one will always find contentment in their God-given vocation. After careful examination of God’s will for my life, I have no doubt that I am called for marriage. It is at this point that I am really praying and discerning about my life partner that God wills for me, and at the opportune time, we shall celebrate the sacrament of holy matrimony. I cannot tell the time and neither can society dictate when I should get married but I trust that His timing is the best! I always say that if God called me for marriage, He best knows my suitable companion because I pray for a marriage that will give

20 Him the glory and honor. My husband will be my best friend, that we shall be able to love each other no matter our weakness and raise a family together, “for better, for worse.”

It is not an easy road living according to God’s commands and more so waiting upon the lord for the right person because persons have different intentions. Living a chaste nowadays is like walking on water because pre-marital sex seems okay, however His grace is sufficient to see me through! I have my own principles during dating and basically dating the Christian way, in case one does not measure up to them, I pull out. Certain thoughts come to mind; why am I in this relationship and why with this particular person, is my partner getting married to me as Doreen for a common good of us or is getting married to Doreen as a lawyer for other benefits, is God happy with us? These are some of the questions that are guiding me.

I have personally had my experiences as a youth and I feel obliged to share the same with the fellow youth. Being passionate about them, I engage in youth seminars/ conferences in order to encourage them become better persons. As a committee member of the Missionary Youth Movement (MYM) at St. Francis Parish, Parklands, Nairobi (Kenya) and a member of the Pro-Life Movement, Kampala Archdiocese (Uganda), I have on several occasions interacted with the youth and visited schools and it is interesting what I hear from them regarding their families generally. It has taught me a lot about parenting and what to look out for in the raising of my children.

Many lessons are drawn from the youth experiences that good families exist though many of the families have challenges and majority of their decisions are based on their childhood if not family background. The children are not given time as the parents are workaholics. Their esteem is not built. I look forward to nurturing of my children religiously and morally by passing unto them values that will enable them become good and better leaders. I would not trade nurturing of my family with anything on earth, no doubt! I believe that what a child acquires in childhood affects them in the future whether positively or negatively and so I would not give the devil a chance!

Therefore the youth have the capability to make the world a better place given room to exploit their potential and this is what Africa needs. I believe that many of the youth issues can only be addressed once families are given their right position in communities through the promotion and protection of the sanctity of marriage.

[1]http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/youth-definition.pdf [2] http://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/pdf/au/african_youth_charter_2006.pdf [3]https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/investments-immigration/africanews/africa-s-youth; released on 07 May 2015 [4]http://www.hprweb.com/2012/07/discerning-marriage-as-natural-vocation [5]Catechism of the Catholic Church (1603) [6] https://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/marriage.pdf [7]http://www.monitor.co.ug/SpecialReports/More-Ugandans-less-interested-in-marriage-life/688342- 1727438-12lg0xqz/index.html; Saturday March 23 2013 [8]Ephesians 5:31 and Mark 10:9 [9]Chapter 3 of WYA’s Track A Training readings [10]Freedom of Excellence identified by George Weigel, WYA; Track A Training

21 [11]AmorisLaetitia [12]The pending court cases against the Attorney Generals in the respective countries. [13]In his 1994 Letter to Families [14]The Theology of the Body pdf, page 179& 183 [15]Chapter Two; Affirmation and Marriage [16]Number 2382

22 Cynthia Wangari Maingi: Learning to See Again

Cynthia is currently the Regional Programs Assistant of WYA Africa. Among her many WYA involvements prior to this was helping organize the 2016 Youth Summit, the 2016 Africa Emerging Leaders Conference, and the 2016 Furaha Camp. She has also attended the 2017 Dignity Forum and 2016 Advocacy and Movie Get Together, both of which were hosted by WYA Africa.

This essay is written for the CIAM-WYA colloquium held to give a voice to a representative group of youth from different parts of the world to interact, speak on their experience and learn more about World Youth Alliance’s cultural impact, and Karol Wojtya’s readings on living the fullness of life, vocation, and self-gift in our lives and commitments. I begin by looking into the work of the World Youth Alliance, and its key principles; and then discussing the way in which Wojtya, whose writings are key for this colloquium, demonstrates some of WYA's fundamental values and finally connecting all this to my experience therefore bringing out the essence of the title for this essay.

World Youth Alliance champions the idea of a world whereby all Human beings are valued. Our contemporary society is currently plagued with a trail of human misery and degradation. Our perception of the human person has been misconstrued and our value as human beings blatantly disregarded. This is experienced in all our day to day interactions. WYA brings a clear understanding of the human person whereby all human beings have intrinsic, inviolable and objective dignity. By virtue of having dignity, all human beings are worthy of respect and honor; regardless of the different circumstances we may find ourselves in. The value of the human person should be at the center of every economic, social or political discussion. All policies should be geared towards improving the lives of human beings.

This is the culture that WYA is currently inculcating. The correct understanding of the human person should act as the guide to all the decisions made concerning him. The Certified Training Program (CTP) brings out the human person to be a struggling and caring being, whose value is revealed through his relationships with others. Man is in constant struggle for peace. We struggle to find true answers on who we are, why we exist, and if we matter, amongst other things. The search is said to begin within man’s inner being, and only until he achieves this peace can he live in harmony with those around him. This means that man has to acknowledge this struggle first, then through mutual subjectivity, awareness and acceptance of the struggle will allow him to accept that those around him are struggling as well.

WYA work is in three major areas, these are; advocacy, education and culture. In advocacy, we as the youth, are empowered to know the roles we play in influencing policy. Education seeks to create awareness on the intricacies that come about when discussing the human person. The Certified Training Program, Regional Internship, the Fertility Education and Medical Management program and Human Dignity Curriculum are geared towards this goal. Culture is aimed at making affirmation of human dignity a lived experience; this is through art, music, and even film. WYA has had a great impact in policy since the day of its conception; when Anna Halpine stood up to oppose the propaganda being spread about the needs of the youth. Deletion of parental rights, abortion as a human right and granting sexual rights to children are not agendas aimed at propelling the youth forward. Right from the Certified Training Program, WYA builds a culture where everyone is reminded to consider the position of the human person in our every discussion.

23 The CTP has within it the themes of the Objective value of the human person, Freedom, Culture, History of ideas and International law and human rights. There are intense readings on why WYA subscribes to certain schools of thought, articles from authors such as C.S Lewis on objective truth, Charles Malik on man’s struggle for peace, and George Weigel on the two ideas of freedom. The readings refer to historical happenings such as the holocaust, and the period of apartheid, where human beings are seen to be capable of unspeakable atrocities. Going through the regional internship every individual is given the platform to learn about this philosophy that acts as a foundation for WYA’s work.

The world is currently facing terrorism, corruption, and racism. At the root of these issues is the internal battle of the individual propagating this tragedy; right from the value they place on their own lives and the lives of others. In chapter two of the Certified Training Program we are able to see that, human dignity, which refers to the value in every human person; is inherent and objective, because it is true even outside our individual biases. This is an objective truth, and should guide the way we interact with each other, and who we are as human beings. Our norms and values are based on this truth. It is the very foundation of our morality. Without this truth, our whole belief system, what we consider as right or wrong, and who we are, is null and void. C.S Lewis says that our approvals and disapprovals are recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order and therefore in this way our emotional state can be in harmony with reason. Human dignity is a value that should be respected, and everyone, old or young, should affirm and acknowledge it.

The CTP has enlightened me a lot concerning freedom. Chapter three brings out George Weigel’s writing on freedom, which is an in-depth comparison of the different definitions of freedom brought out by Isaiah Berlin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and William Ockham. He begins by exploring Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. Isaiah refers to the idea of Negative and Positive liberty and argues that negative liberty is the ‘freedom from’ while Positive liberty is ‘freedom to’. His thoughts on negative freedom are that individuals have the freedom from interference by the state, into their personal matters; that the purpose of a liberal political community is to create a situation where individuals are left alone to do what they want, for as long as their actions do not interfere with the liberty of others.

Isaiah Berlin states that positive liberty is the freedom to realize some greater good in history. He argues that subjecting human beings to a dictatorial use of political power, in the name of liberating them, and in an attempt to realize some higher historical end, inevitably leads to repression. Berlin is keen to express the danger of the kind of liberty that drove totalitarian regimes in their pursuit of tomorrow’s progress at the expense of today’s peace. George Weigel praises him for bringing this to light, but argues that freedom is not a matter of will alone.

William of Ockham’s champions the freedom of indifference. His definition of freedom has no goodness, truth or happiness attached to it. He defines freedom to be a matter of choice. He argues that freedom is a matter of an individual’s will; that there is no common human experience, only particulars. This understanding of freedom detaches human beings from one another as there can be no common good between them, if everyone operates on their own particular willfulness. This leads to a situation where freedom is driven by self-interest and takes away the objectivity of morality. This freedom does not acknowledge God as being the superior authority, freedom becomes an instrument used to fulfil an individual’s interest even at the expense of others. These ideas, as history has shown, have consequences.

24 St. Thomas however, pioneers the idea of freedom for excellence. He refers to freedom of excellence as an outgrowth of virtue; that it is the only means by which we are able to exercise both our reason and will, and are therefore acting on our natural longing for truth and goodness. This process is gradual, and we can acquire the value of excellence through learning from those who live wisely. Our capacity to think and make informed decisions distinguishes us from the rest of the natural world. Freedom unifies us and directs our efforts towards the pursuit of happiness and achieving our ultimate goal which is truth. He brings out the importance of the gradual growth in the ability to choose wisely and well, the things that are for our common good. These thoughts appeal to a person’s reasoning, and in a sense they require a change of mind. There is a saying that goes ‘The eyes are useless, when the mind is blind’

World Youth Alliance is shaping a world where the youth; who make up quite a significant percentage of the world’s population, are enlightened on who they are and the potential that lies within them. The fact that we are given an opportunity to actually have a voice at the UN sittings, speaks volumes into how much power we have to ensure that our issues are addressed. The youth in my country, Kenya, are facing issues such as drugs and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies, HIV and AIDS, and are involved in crime as a means for survival. The current political climate in Kenya after the elections has brought out how power- hungry individuals use the youth to propagate their own selfish agendas. The youth in my country are paid off for the sake of selling their votes, and mobilizing supporters for a particular regime. These are the same youth whose actual needs such as educational support, and employment are completely ignored.

This way of life if a huge factor that goes into determining who these young people end up being in the future. The challenge thus lies in teaching young people how to detach themselves from the negative experiences they’ve had, and educating themselves more about who they really are, who their fellow human beings are, and how these two relate. This will give them the ability to see themselves in a new light, and find more meaning in the path they choose for themselves; we may be born as victims of circumstance, but living as one, is a choice. This redirection of energy should be towards giving oneself to a greater cause. Karol Wojtya’s writing is key in this very situation; where a young person begins to rediscover who they are and what their mission in life is. Discovering one’s calling is a gradual process and requires a really deep inward and outward poverty pre-requisition which teaches us empathy, survival and humility. I have come to understand that every person in this journey needs to have an education on self- possession, an openness to reality and acknowledgement of the value of the other.

Being involved with WYA has changed my perception of who I am, and how I view my life. Readings from Joseph Piper ‘Only the lover sings’, on learning to see again, brings out the fact that poor perception endangers the integrity of man as a spiritual being, and that it is the source of man’s restlessness, stress and enslavement by his goals and purposes. This is true because above all, man struggles for the integrity of his being. This reading relates with Karol Wojtya’s writing on distinguishing one’s calling in the sense that discerning one’s vocation needs complete detachment from oneself, so they are able to see the world afresh. We are taught to see through authentic and personal observation, to have a deeper and more receptive vision, intense awareness and openness to things that are otherwise often overlooked. In my journey of ‘learning to see again’ my experience with Karol Wojtya’s work has been one of enlightenment. His writings on vocation and self-gift have sparked in me a desire to asses my life decisions that regard to fulfilling my true passion, which is working with children. I have had intense moments of introspection, where I sought to relate my love for children, with the experiences I had growing up, and looking for the deeper meaning in this vocation. The essence of this passion derives from the fact that I was able to

25 identify even as a child that I had such insecurity, lack of confidence and poor self-esteem because growing up, I did not feel that my worth was affirmed. My understanding of marriage and family had been stained by my parents’ divorce, which happened when I was about two years old. I had always battled the feeling of hopelessness and had grown resentful of the circumstances I had to live through. I had grown to be quite cynical of the institution of marriage, and even family. Truly the richness of the person comes from his relation with others. I now realize through the intense sense of care and protection I feel for these needy and orphaned children, that the goal of life and humanity is love. Karol Wojtya’s thoughts on authentic and unconditional love; on how it is more than just a feeling, have made me understand the kind of atmosphere children need to grow in. The work I do in children’s orphanages in Kenya is therefore my way to ensure that despite how I grew up, the kids I interact with need to know of their infinite value. It is only through giving myself to what I consider to be my life’s mission is that I’m able to heal and find fulfilment in my life.

The Colloquium has been a platform for us to have a deeper understanding of a vocation. It is important to first understand the essence of the human person even before we delve into defining his calling. Human beings exist only in relationship; this means that no human capacity is attainable to the utmost level, without interaction with other human beings. The manifestation of one’s calling relies on his relationship with those around him, this is because one’s vocation individuates them only by binding them to others. Every individual is thus able to contribute to something greater than himself. Wojtya writes on the objective meaning of work, which he describes to be the results of it, while the subjective meaning refers to the person being able to realize himself through it. Vocation is not randomly chosen, it is given to us, and it enables us to live out our personality.

Karol Wojtya who was very popular with young people, wrote the book ‘Love and responsibility’ so as to inspire them and give them guidance on how to live and love. In relation to living the fullness of life, his letters to Teresa state that everyone lives above all for love; and that the ability to love authentically and not necessarily out of great intellectual capacity, constitutes the deepest part of a personality. ‘Love and responsibility’ is an eye-opening piece on the sanctity of love and how it connects human beings. A concept that can only be grasped once one understands the person as a unique being who has free will.

Wojtya writes that man is on a constant quest to achieve truth and goodness; that his rationality naturally identifies goodness and he is automatically pointed towards that direction. Human beings were created to find pleasure in doing what’s good, so we may be firmly attached to doing good. Virtue is that which makes us good, and involves harnessing all our passions and directing them towards achieving a good end, grasped by reason. Our existence revolves around striving to attain goodness; a goodness that cannot be separated from truth. Love and responsibility thus rests on the idea of the above described man. On Dignity, he writes that it is important to live our sexuality in a way that upholds and affirms the other person. Authentic love has been described to lead us outside of ourselves and into affirmation of others. Love is seen to be the fullest realization of the possibilities inherent in man. That our objective need for each other gives us purpose for living. He states in his letters to Teresa that it is a great achievement when we bring out of people the values within them that would otherwise have perished without us.

Human dignity in the Certified Training Program is proven to be an objective and inalienable factor in every human being. Karol Wojtya takes note of the fact that one must be able to recognize the value of another person first, in order to love them; otherwise without willfully acknowledging the other person’s worth,

26 loving them is impossible. Love is a product of will, and in a paraphrased version of Nelson Mandela’s words, Love comes more naturally to human beings than hate.

Wojtya speaks strongly against the distorted representations of love that are used as excuses for objectifying others. I am convinced beyond reproach that as human beings; we are the best versions of ourselves when we commit our lives to the service of those around us. Each person has the responsibility to affirm the dignity of all human persons through their actions and ideas. Wojtya champions the full preservation of human dignity; he stresses the fact that there is no way to acknowledge the dignity of the person without taking into account his purpose and spiritual character.

Karol Wojtya’s thoughts on friendship make a lot of reference to Aristotle’s view. Aristotle championed the belief that there are three types of friendships. One based on utility, the other on pleasure and the last on virtue. Friendship based on utility is the kind that only survives in a situation where both parties are mutually benefiting from each other. This is only ideal until one party decides to pull out of the friendship because they are no longer getting anything out of said relationship. This is the case in a lot of today’s relationships. Mutual benefit may seem like a good enough reason to be in a relationship with someone, but in the long run, we all learn that there is more to life than constant pursue of selfish gains.

Pleasant friendship is one where the connection between two people only lasts for as long as they are getting pleasure out of it. The parties involved enjoy each other’s company, and affection. This is the only driving force of their relationship. As soon as the situation changes, the relationship ceases to exist. Aristotle goes ahead to talk about the final and most desired kind of friendship. The virtuous friendship; where both parties are committed to pursuing something outside of themselves, which is beyond their own selfish interest. Here, one is only concerned about what is best for his friend. Wojtya says that the awareness that one is performing certain actions, should bring with it a sense of responsibility for the moral value of that action. This ensures that any risk of utilization, where one assumes that the other person is only there to satisfy an emotional or psychological need, is done away with. This has a lot of relevance to the relationship I have with my friends because, we are literally living for ourselves and for each other. We make decisions based on what is best for one another. My friends have sacrificed so much to support my passion, they have given of themselves financially, emotionally and have even physically come with me on donation drives to the children shelters, and actively made the visits so successful and meaningful. I support their dreams in all the ways I’m able to, just to ensure that they are living fulfilled lives as they pursue their dreams.

It has been quite interesting to learn more about what authentic love in marriage and family entails. I couldn’t help but wonder whether there are people in these institutions who are actually experiencing what Karol Wojtyla has written about. It just felt unachievable at first, but I now know better. On marriage, family and relationships he states that mutual respect between persons is founded on the acknowledgement of each other’s intrinsic dignity. His reference to the understanding of each person’s unique qualities, is given in support to the presentation of an accurate view of the sacred relationship between man and woman. He says that a person in a man-woman relationship will suffer utilization unless the full value of the other as a person forms the basis for the relationship. The relationship is only authentic when the individuals share a common desire to love one another. When one party does not view the other as a means to an end. Marriage is a sacred commitment of mutual respect, where issues of subordination are nullified by the fact that these two people have the common desire to love each other. Marriage is a

27 vocation in the sense that the people in this commitment have this platform to be shaped by the person they are committing to.

In the case of the family, both the father and mother work together to create sufficient providence to their children. Children are the materialization of love. Every individual in the family has their role to play, but these roles are interdependent. The family is seen to be the school of deeper humanity where everyone learns best, what it means to be a human person. Marriage, family and relationships at large are institutions that only prosper when the parties involved do not treat each other as mere instruments to achieving selfish interest. Human beings have the free will to do good; for themselves and others. Human beings have the intellectual capacity to think twice about their actions before they carry them out. Throughout his writings, Wojtya brings out our interdependence, and how acknowledging and respecting each other worth, is our only hope for survival.

Pope John Paul II’s ‘Theology of the body’ brings out the themes of freedom, truth, gift, communion, dignity and love. In this writing, he brings out the purpose for our existence, and what living a meaningful life entails. He states that man cannot live without love; that a communion of persons occurs when two people freely give themselves to each other and accept one another in love. He says that true love consists precisely in this mutual self-gift; that without love, man’s life remains incomprehensible for himself, and it is senseless. The freedom of the gift is seen to be a response to the deep awareness of the gift. That through this truth and freedom, authentic love is built up. His writing in ‘Love and Responsibility’ and ‘Theology of the body’ brings out the essence of our identity; where love is every human person’s innate vocation.

The gift of self means living in a way that promotes the good of everyone. This definition of self-gift gives rise to a deeper understanding of relationships, sexuality, friendship and marriage. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (written in his magisterial Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body), brings out concepts such as the spousal meaning of the body, and the joy found in embracing God’s plan for sexuality. He pioneers the transformation of self-seeking sexual urges into a drive for self-giving love in marriage. The objective aspect of genuine love is much more than just an inner look at each person’s emotions and desires. It is much more than the pleasure and enjoyment one receives from the relationship. Wojtya’s argument brings out the difference between the personalistic and the utilitarian views of marriage and sexual relations. The correct understanding of a relationship is in one which the well-being and self-realization of each partner are of utmost importance to the other. It is only in this way that the true full purpose of marriage can be realized. The utilitarian view, whereby a sexual partner is an object just to be used for satisfaction of self-interest, holds no possibility of fulfillment and happiness. Wojtya states that divorce, artificial methods of birth control, and sexual perversions are all in various ways incompatible with the personalistic view of the sexual self-realization of the human person.

In Love and Responsibility “Justice to the Creator”, Wojtya speaks of each person as belonging to God and goes ahead to explain that using another person is an offense against God. Wojtya says that it is precisely in love that the human person reaches the fullest realization of his potential, and thereby fully develops their being. Wojtya shows how in marital relations, the body serves as a means for a deeper union between spouses. John Paul II speaks of sexuality and the ability to participate in the act of creation of a new human person as a great gift from God: human persons engage in the physical act that provides God with the opportunity to create a new immortal soul. Sex in marriage is brought out to be sacred.

28 Pope John Paul II describes in his writing on ‘The Theology of the Body’ that our primary vocation is to become self-gift. Becoming self-gift means that God has entrusted to each and every one of us the task of giving ourselves in love to Him and to one another. I believe that human beings are the best versions of themselves when they commit their lives to serving those around them. Primary vocation is lived out through a specific calling to be of service.

The understanding that we exist for each other, is affirmed through our own unique vocations. We each have a different calling to serve, however our lives are still quite interdependent. Our vocation should be driven by unconditional love, selflessness and a passion for one another. I consider my vocation to be in humanitarian work. This allows me to give myself completely to serving my fellow human beings, and committing my time to make the lives of those around me better. I am very passionate about children, and have had quite the exposure to the lives the orphaned children are leading in my country, through engagement in voluntary service around the children’s orphanages in Kenya. Children have been a passion of mine since I can remember. In relation to the concept of freedom, I aim to pursue such great heights in order to live out my vocation to the best of my ability. Working with WYA has exposed me to programs such as the Human Dignity Curriculum, which has a focus on teaching children about their infinite worth and the dignity of those around them too. I am constantly seeking out learning opportunities that provide a platform to be more knowledgeable about the rights of children, and everything that entails their proper development. This to me is the best way to use my freedom excellently, in relation to living out my vocation.

My role model has been a lady at one of the homes I volunteer in, Margaret Muturi, a retired police officer, who converted her home into a children’s shelter. Her story, despite it being really heartbreaking, is one of hope and resilience. She inspires me to do more for those in need. She started off quite small, but as the need arose, she took in quite a number of children. She has sacrificed so much of her life to raise these kids, get them the education they need and even medical attention. The one thing that stood out for me in this particular home, is the amount of love the children are shown. Every child knows that they are loved and they mean so much to this lady. You can very easily see this even in their interaction with her. I often think to myself, that this is the exact work she was called to do. If I am able to impact a child’s life, even in just a small way, then I know I have done something worthwhile.

Wojtya talks about self-gift in friendship. Friends give us the opportunity to be selfless in our actions, to be kind and loving to someone other than ourselves. We are introduced to a world where the needs and well- being of another person matter as much as our own do. We are given the chance to sacrifice our own comfort for another person, when their situation calls for it. Friendship is a chance for all humanity to learn to see the other person’s worth, and to respect it. My experience with regards to friendship has been quite interesting. My friends have become like family to me. I have been able to power through several difficult milestones of life with the help of my closest friends.

One instance in which my friends really supported me, was when I moved out of my father’s house to start my own life. I had so much fear and anxiety about what life would be, now that I did not have the surety of a place to live, and provision of other basic needs. All in all, I felt really strongly that I owed it to myself, and to my future, to seek out platforms for growth. I had this feeling that whatever I am destined for, is ‘out there’ and I needed to go grab it and start working to accomplish my purpose. My friends gave me a place to live, emotional and financial support, until I was finally in a place where the situation had become 29 better. They have been my shoulder to cry on and greatest support system in times of hardship. They have also been with me when things were going well. We each play these roles for each other, because we genuinely care for one another. We have the best intentions for one another, and are always concerned about each other’s well-being. This is not to say that there haven’t been any challenges along the way, but we are able to tackle them together.

World Youth Alliance is shaping culture through our realizations of our vocation, better understanding of family, friendship, marriage and has played a huge part in broadening my perspective on the concept of the gift of self, human anthropology and the theology of the body. Being a person whose life mission has been geared towards working with Children’s orphanages, I have always felt the need to defend this passion. My interaction with WYA has given me a justification to why I have always felt very strongly that children, orphaned or not, need to be protected.

The readings from the Certified Training Program and Karol Wojtya writings on Human Dignity have influenced me to think about the children I interact with as human beings who need to be aware of their intrinsic and objective value; that inasmuch as I conduct donation drives to cater for their physical needs, I have to factor in the psychological aspect. I need to make sure that they grow up knowing that despite their circumstances, they have human dignity and are worthy of respect and honor. I know that this work is what I’m called to do, and I do it with love.

WYA has changed my approach to life completely; by making me aware of the responsibility I have towards myself and towards those around me. This knowledge governs my every decision as I live my life, and in all my commitments. People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves. This intense awareness of who I am, and what my development as a human being requires, informs the work that I do for the children I work with. The knowledge I have acquired at WYA and even through the CIAM conference, has made me reflect on what I am doing right, and what I need to improve on. I am constantly asking myself, with every action that I undertake, ‘Is this the very best use of my freedom?’ ‘Are there more ways in which I can give myself to my relationships with others, and to my vocation?’

30 Joseph Habamahirwe: The Role of Family Today

Joseph participated in the CIAM-WYA Youth Synod as an African representative from Rwanda. He has been involved as a delegate in the 2015 and 2016 Emerging Leaders Conference hosted by WYA Africa.

Introduction

On 22 November 1981, Pope John Paul II wrote his exhortation on the family entitled Familiaris Consortio (“The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World”). This reflection based on the conclusion of the Church’s 1980 Synod on the Family addresses the issues of human relationship, human dignity, marriage and family.

My essay will focus on the role of marriage and the family in the society. I will reflect on current threats against marriage and the family in a global perspective and in light of Familiaris Consortio. This exhortation remains a document of reference with regards to marriage and the family. It offers clarifications that can help these divine institutions which constitute the heart of any society.

I shall also reflect on human dignity since family is composed of individuals. The relationship between people in marriage and the family should remain faithful to the principle of human dignity which marks the foundations of the rights of individuals.

Marriage marks a community of persons. As human beings, married couples go through joyful as well as sorrowful moments. Thus, they need to be able to celebrate together and suffer together as they look for ways to overcome various challenges. Unity is needed in marriage and family. Furthermore, Love remains the essential element for a sustainable marriage and family.

My essay shall also reflect on the rights of everybody within a family. In various societies, women have been affected by lack of freedom and therefore denied their rights. Such a situation needs to be addressed even by the youth, especially those planning to build their family since prevention is better than cure. The role of women in society is not limited to procreation and taking care of children at home as some societies such as in Africa seem to affirm that. They also have a right to get involved in public functions.

Each has responsibilities in marriage and the family. Their responsibilities as I present them in this essay are for the good of the family. Man, children and woman are complementary each of them offers his/her contribution the way he /she can. Their harmony surely influences the society and contributes to its development.

I have decided to reflect on Familiaris Consortio because of the current situation of marriage and the family in different places of the world. I consider that the youth cannot be excluded from such discussion since young people live in families or will have a family. Even those who have decided not to marry or get married because of their vocation, they will surely face those challenges in various ways.

Myself I have not decided to have a family yet, even thought I think it will be my vocation to choose. But I have met friends and neighbours who have built their families and have told me their challenges today. Also, as a nurse by profession, I have met married couples who had difficulties to accept each other

31 especially in moments of health challenges. Here, I do remember a woman who came to my office when I was working as a nurse in 2009. This lady had seriously suffered for longtime. I requested for HIV test. Unfortunately, the test was positive. The lady had HIV/AIDS. Then, I asked her to come with her husband. The husband came and I also requested for the same test, which was also positive. The couple started shouting to each other. Everyone was accusing the other partner. From that day, I started reflecting on marriage and its challenges.

Such situations have motivated me to get interested in marriage and the family since they mark the foundations for a happy society.

1. Current threats against marriage and the family

The awareness that marriage and the family mark one of the most precious of human values[1] has led Pope John Paul II to address the issues that contradict marriage and family. The main issues raised by the Supreme Pontiff are related to the independence of the spouses in relation to each other, misconception of authority between parents and children, transmission of values, high rate of divorce and recourse to a new union, abortion and contraception. As a nurse, I have encountered a good number of women willing requesting for abortion. Of course as a nurse who cares for human dignity, I have always refused to participate in such a crime, by educating them. I do not know however, if all women I have encountered have not aborted since they are many. What I am sure of is that some of them have not aborted and are now happy and love their children. The majority of them are students. In fact, one of the causes of abortion for such students is the fear of rejection by their parents. I have grown up in a society where being pregnant before marriage is not glorious. Thus, some parents go on rejecting their daughters when they are pregnant before marriage. Sometimes, they refuse to continue paying for school fees. Also, there is a kind of “perpetual” shame for women who get pregnant before marriage, because the society does not appreciate them in general. As a result, some women prefer abortion for the sake of their future.

Those who plan to build a new family often accept pure civil marriage without religious marriage and celebrate the sacrament without living faith but for other motives. They reject moral norms that guide human sexuality. I have not done a deep research about the causes of the refusal of religious marriage by some young people willing to start their families. However, I have shared with some of my friends. They have come to me to have my opinion. The majority of them refuse religious marriage because they do not want to spend a lot and remain poor after the ceremonies. Poverty then constitutes one of the causes of such a situation. But poverty should not be totally blamed. It is not a must for a wedding to be very festive. There is a need for a new understanding to change the mentality. People ought to use the means they have.

The issue of poverty is general in African or developing countries. In fact, families struggle to find means for survival, such as food, work, housing and, medicine, and even the most elementary freedoms[2]. Such conditions surely contradict human dignity.

Still other threats emerge in developed and well governed countries. The Pope points out excessive prosperity and the consumer mentality, a certain anguish and uncertainty about the future which lead to lack of generosity and courage to build a good quality of human life.[3] Such situation generates a pessimistic attitude about life. Family experiences pressures from mass media which bring confusion and 32 uncertainty in terms of values. In my view, the pressures from mass media cannot be limited to developed countries. Today the influence of mass media touches every corner of the world. Developing countries also face this problem especially in cities.

For this reason the Pope invites married couples and young people who plan to build families to know how to interpret the signs of the times in order to save the society. There is need for wisdom so as to discern the good and the bad against marriage and the family. Thus, the Pope suggests the existence of the “new humanism”. Such humanism needs to guide any form of research in order to promote human dignity.

2. The plan of God for marriage and the family

2.1. The human person created in the image of God Pope John Paul II reminds us the fact that God created the human person in his image and likeness. The image of God is love. Therefore, the human person is called for love. Such vocation ought to be expressed in marriage and the family.

Love is a means of total self-giving and marriage constitutes the only place in which this self-giving is made possible. The conjugal love responds truly and totally to the vocation of love. The Pope stresses that the conjugal love is not dictated by any imposition of form, rather, “it is an interior requirement of the covenant.

Still, love is challenged in societies where people are materialistic. In Africa, some people accept to marry each other not because of love but because of various interests such as the wealth of one of the couple. Such marriages are fragile. It seems that the relationships between women and men have become a sort of “investment”. Certainly this scenario should not be generalized, but it does not help to build strong families and societies.

2.2. Marriage as a community of persons Familiaris Consortio considers marriage as “the foundation of the wider community of the family since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children.”[4] Procreation is a gift. Such a gift makes parents more responsible.

Marriage makes people belong to each other. Thus, it creates fatherhood and motherhood, filiation and fraternity. The awareness of such “belonging” strengthens relationships in the family. Therefore, the family is called to become a community of life and love. It has the mission “ to guard, reveal and communicate love.”[5] In order to fulfill its mission, the family ought to accomplish the following tasks: forming a community of persons; serving life; participating in the development of society; sharing in the life and mission of the Church.” [6]

Pope John Paul II presents love as the foundation of communion. It is the principle and power of communion. It is only love that can sustain the family. Surely love implies fidelity.

33 With regard to fidelity, a good number of couples do their best to remain faithful to their partners. However, I have stayed in some countries of Africa, such as Rwanda, Cameroon and Kenya. I shared with some of my friends who have started their families. However, I am not proud of what I heard from them. Cheating on each other seems to have become “normal” in some societies. But it seems to me that some factors contribute to such a scenario. For example, in some countries such as Cameroon, polygamy is accepted by the law. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, fidelity refers to the faithfulness between a married couple i.e between one man and one woman (wife and husband).The question remains as how to reduce infidelity in nations where polygamy is legal.

2.3. Unity of marriage Marriage forms a kind of unity one that makes it the first communion rooted in complementarity between man and woman. The couple must be willing to have a common project and accomplish the mission of the family and become more indivisible and indissoluble with the help of God. Unity and indissolubility constitute the main characteristics of marriage. Marriage forms a mutual gift of two persons. It marks an intimate union. Thus it imposes “total fidelity on the spouses and argues for an unbreakable oneness between them.[7] For this reason, the Catholic Church emphasizes the doctrine of indissolubility of marriage. Indissolubility of marriage is required not only for the good of children but also for the fulfillment of God’s plan.

For the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament and a vocation. Christian spouses ought to remain together forever despite the challenges. Married couples are then requested to bear witness of indissolubility and fidelity.

In my view, the concept of indissolubility is of great importance since it might help to build a less frustrated society. Children of divorced couples might encounter education related problems. The presence of both the mother and the father is indisputable for the children to grow with adequate maturity. Unfortunately some individuals do not take indissolubility seriously. As a result, the divorce rate increases in various societies.

2.4. Conjugal love as a foundation of broader communion The communion between husband and wife extends itself to other members of the family. Thus, family becomes a “school of deeper humanity”. Family members ought to care about one another. Education remains an essential element to foster such humanity. Each benefits from such education.

Communion needs to be nourished by the spirit of sacrifice. Some attitudes remain of great importance within any family: openness, understanding, forbearance, pardon and reconciliation. Such attitudes contribute to avoiding selfishness, discord, tension and conflict which might lead to violence.

The attitude of openness lacks in some African societies where woman is considered as inferior to man. I had a chance to share with some friends of mine. They fear their husbands to the extent that they do not tell them anything they want. There some simple actions they cannot take by themselves. Surely such a fear does not promote communion within a family.

34 2.5. The rights and Role of women Pope John Paul II addresses in particular the issue of rights and role of women. The Pope stresses the equality in dignity and responsibility of women and men. Such equality respects the uniqueness of each. The dignity of man and women entails “the inalienable rights and responsibilities proper to the human person.”[8] The Pope reveals the signs of the dignity of women in the Bible. Jesus redeemed humanity through a woman: the Blessed Virgin Mary. He manifested respect towards women. Among his friends there were women. He entrusted them to announce His resurrection. Thus the Apostle Paul writes to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”[9] In this part of my essay, I will reflect on the rights and role of women in African perspective in the light of Familiaris Consortio.

2.5.1. The role of women in the society Some societies such as African ones limit women to caring for children and doing domestic activities without public impact. Fortunately the mentality has changed in most societies.

Thus, women can access public functions. The maternity role of women is irreplaceable. Therefore, it should be harmonized with other kinds of work. The work of women at home must be recognized and respected by all. Here, the Pope reminds that women have the same rights with men. Therefore, they are able to do the same work. The involvement of women in public functions should not divert them from their femininity which contributes to human fulfillment.

Still, the participation of women in public functions is not fully understood by all men. In fact, it has happened for some men not to allow their wives to look for jobs but to stay in the house and take care of the children. Probably for some men, house women are unlikely to cheat on them. But can marriage survive if built on suspicion? The truth is that such a suspicion limits women’s freedom and does not help to build a sustainable marriage. Here, women are not different from house helps (girls)! In my view, forcing a woman not to work contradicts human dignity. It does not contribute to human fulfillment. Instead of being a place of joy and happiness, marriage becomes like a prison to women. For this reason, there is need to change the mentality in order to create a marriage that gives hope for the future of the family.

2.5.2. Offenses Against women’s dignity Pope John Paul II laments the mentality “which considers the human being not as a person but as a thing, as an object of trade, at the service of selfish interest and mere pleasure.”[10] Unfortunately, women constitute the victims of such a mentality.

This mentality generates some consequences such as “ contempt for men and for women, slavery, oppression of the weak, pornography, prostitution in an organized form – and all those various forms of discrimination that exist in the fields of education, employment, wages, etc.[11]

The truth is that in various places, women are utilized for self-interests. Here, I think of some places in Uganda where some business people employ women as sex workers. Ladies are hired and used for prostitution. They are paid monthly for that as if it is an ordinary job. Thus, they are treated as objects to make money. Such a situation should alert every person who cares about human dignity. I felt sad when I

35 saw that kind of human enslavement. Probably World Youth Alliance should inquire and offer its contribution to stop such an offense against women dignity in Uganda and other similar places.

Also, some categories of women are particularly discriminated. For instance, “childless wives, widows, separated or divorced women, and unmarried mothers.” [12] With regard to childless wives, discrimination stems from an African belief that considers childlessness as a curse for married couples. The woman is seen as the source of such a curse. However, the society forgets that the man can also be the source due to various reasons such as biological.

3. The role and rights of family members

3.1. Role of men In the family, the vocation of man is to be the husband and the father. The man should recognize the fulfillment of God’s intention through his wife. Thus, “it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a helper fit for him.”[13] Here, a helper does not mean simply an assistant who is not equal to the master. Rather, man and woman are equal in dignity. The man is not a master to his wife. A wife is not a slave.

The man fulfills his fatherhood by loving the wife as the mother of children and by loving his children too. It should be known that the place of the father in the family is irreplaceable. Thus, the Pope recognizes that “the absence of a father causes psychological and moral imbalance and notable difficulties in family relationships.[14]However, the oppressive presence of a father too causes difficulties in the family.

The truth is that man should work for harmony in the family by being responsible. In this regard, he educates and promotes unity and stability in collaboration with his wife. The challenge to this truth however, is the fact that today’s society does not seem to allow the presence of man and wife together for a long period. For example, in a context where the husband and the wife work in different places far from each other.

3.2. The rights of children Familiaris Consortio recommends special attention to be given to children. Parents need to develop a “profound esteem for their personal dignity, and a great respect and generous concern for their rights.[15] A special attention should concern the smallest children. Pope John Paul II reminds us that the concern for the child ought to begin even before his birth. There should be acceptance, love, esteem, many-sided and united material, emotional, educational and spiritual concern”[16] for children.

3.3. The elderly The elderly should not be treated as useless in the family. The rest of the family members ought to treat them with respect. Pope John Paul II considers them as a source of wisdom and witness to the past. They should not be put aside.

The teaching of the Pope finds its expression in African cultures in a particular way. Generally speaking, the respect of the elders is a common aspect in African contexts.

36

In my opinion, the respect of the elders as a source of wisdom should not exclude the fact that they can make mistakes as human beings. Therefore, they should also understand the youth for new learning.

3.4. Educating role of parents in general Education is one of the most important aspects of parenting. By educating children, parents help them to live their fully human life. Education is an obligation. Furthermore, as Pope John Paul II states, “parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children.”[17] Thus, they have to create an atmosphere where children will grow up happy and capable of cooperating with others. For this reason, family remains the first school of social virtues.

Parents cannot entirely delegate their role to educate their children for it is irreplaceable. There is always a uniqueness of education from parents compared to external educators. Here, we encounter a challenge in today’s society where some parents leave their children to house-girls. Parents should be careful so as not to delegate fully the role of education to house – girls. Furthermore, it has happened for such house –girls to mistreat, even beat the children when their parents are not around.

Parents have to educate their children by loving them and training them to the values of human life. Such values are for example a sense of true freedom, justice, and true love. In this regard, Pope John Paul II qualifies family as “the first and fundamental school of social living.”[18] Such a social living would surely help children to care about human dignity.

Another aspect of education consists of sex education. Such a kind of education should be done at home by parents themselves or in educational centers that the parents can control. Chastity too constitutes an essential element in child education. Such an education helps to understand and respect the human body. The human being is both spiritual and physical. Thus, he has to be considered as a whole. Any kind of information given to children should be linked to moral principles.

Still, the educational role of family does not exclude other sorts of educators. For this reason, family should promote collaboration with other various agents of education. In this regard, the tradition of education in Rwanda, my country fits well with the teaching of Pope John Paul II. In fact, traditionally speaking, every child was considered to belong to the entire community, not only to his parents. Thus, any adult person would be allowed to give corrections to a child found in errors. This kind of understanding surely can help to build a good society. Unfortunately, the mentality has changed because of too much restriction and the culture of individualism.

Education also involves religious beliefs or faith. Therefore, family should cooperate with religious groups or churches.

4. Family and society development The Second Vatican Council defines family as “the first and vital cell of society”[19]. Pope John Paul II reiterates the same definition. Undoubtedly, family is the heart and foundation of society. In my opinion, the implication of such a definition seems to be practical in everyday life. The analogy used to describe

37 family as a ‘cell’ fits well with regard to its role. In fact, cell is the fundamental or basic element of the body. If cell is damaged so is the human body. Then, if family is damaged so is society.

In my view, a society which does not work simply reflects families which are not working. From this statement, we can conclude that the future of any society depends on the importance accorded to family. Society becomes harmonious because of family. Thus, as Pope John Paul states, family is “the place of origin and the most effective means for humanizing and personalizing society.”[20] People need to take family seriously in order to build a serious society.

Family role cannot be limited to procreation and education even thought these two elements remain its most fundamental roles. Rather, it has also to play social and political role. In this regard, family needs to get involved in social activities to help the poor and needy. Family too should be open to a wider society and other families. Here, we find the necessity of hospitality.

Family should also be open to political intervention. For this reason, Pope John Paul II states: “Families should be the first to take the first steps to see that the laws and institutions of the State not only do not offend but support and positively defend the rights and duties of the family.”[21]But does this statement apply to countries governed by dictatorships? For example, in most of countries of Africa, there is no freedom of speech. The courage to denounce evil seems to be suicidal. Furthermore, experience has shown that those who try to speak out the truth find themselves tortured by dictatorial, corrupt and brutal governments. Scandalously, the Church seems to be silent in such situations. Does such attitude of silence encourage families to get involved in political interventions? It seems that the Church as an institution is in a better position to face such challenges first in order to encourage families. Otherwise, it would seem that the Church just want to run away from problems when she says that families (lay people) should be involved in political interventions and not the clergy. If it is not possible for the clergy to get involved in political interventions, then the Church should get involved in protecting and supporting those involved. More practical support becomes necessary in such situations.

5. The role of the society Given the importance of family to the society, the society has the task to respect and foster family. Society and family are interconnected. State as a form of society has an obligation to respect family and not to interfere in family affairs when family can manage them correctly. There exist functions proper to family in such a way that the State cannot take them away. Thus, the State has to encourage family initiatives and make sure that family is well economically, socially, educationally, politically and culturally.

With regard to the functions proper to family, some issues need to be addressed especially in the contexts where the State wants to control everything. For example, some governments interfere in family planning and force married couple to give birth to a given number of children rather than allowing couples to decide in freedom.

Conclusion and recommendations This essay has been a reflection on the role of marriage and the family in society. The motivation was the observations from various societies especially in Africa where marriage and family face particular challenges. 38

The merit of this exhortation is to present everyday realities that marriage and family face. Also, the exhortation offers concrete solutions to such concrete challenges. Given the fact that marriage and family are essential to build society, they should be taken into consideration and given priority for any governmental decision.

The youth can offer contributions to build a future with harmonized marriages, families and therefore harmonized societies. In this regard, World Youth Alliance members in the world are called to participate more fully in such a project. Many places in the world abuse women in various ways. For example in Africa, a married woman can be chased away by her husband any time. For this reason, women need to be protected laws that defend human dignity. Advocacy for women needs to be strengthened to make women live a comfortable and secure life. Personally, WYA ideas have made me more committed to protecting human dignity in marriage and in the society in general. It is a motivating force for me to defend women’s dignity threatened by some cultural elements in Africa. Also as a nurse, I have become more attentive to women’s right and dignity because I have seen the way they suffer especially through maternity. Familiaris Consortio can help to purify some cultures which believe that man is superior to woman.

We have reflected on some threats presented in a particular way by Familiaris Consortio, an exhortation issued by Pope John Paul II. One of the difficulties faced by marriage and family is divorce. Its high rate is alarming in such a way that some young people fear to get engaged and respond to the vocation of marriage. For this reason, by participating in restoring hope and confidence in marriage, WYA members need to increase efforts and train the youth on marriage and family.

We need to approach the youth in a concrete manner so that the message can have a positive and rapid impact for marriage and family sustainability. So many people in the “Third World” have not been to school and therefore they need another way of receiving our message. A part from conferences, I think about using movies and songs which seem to be easier to transmit our message so as to build a culture that protects marriage and family. We also need to translate r WYA Certified Training Program in our local languages so that people who do not speak English or French can receive our message.

My essay has also reflected on the role and rights of each in marriage and the family. With regard to parents, education remains an obligation and cannot be totally delegated. Unfortunately, many couples delegate this role because of work conditions. We need to reflect on how such situations can be reversed.

I have shown how family as cell of society needs to be protected by governments since its collapse means the collapse of society. It should be given priority in order to build a harmonious society.

39 Bibliography Jerusalem Bible, The, London, Longman and Todd, 1985. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, Libreria Edirtice Vaticana, 1981. Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem, Libreria Edirtice Vaticana, 1965.

[1] Familiaris Consortio, n.1. [2] Cf. Ibidem, n. 6. Generally speaking poor countries have a kind of governance that limits freedoms of people. Lack of freedom affect families since everybody belongs to a family. [3] Idem. [4] Ibidem, n.14. [5] Ibidem, n. 17. [6] Cf. Idem. [7] Ibidem, n. 20. [8] Ibidem, 22. [9] Gal 3: 26-28. [10] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, n. 24. [11] Idem. [12] Idem. [13] Gen 2:18. [14] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, n. 25. [15] Ibidem, n.26. [16] Idem. [17] Ibidem, n. 36. [18] Ibidem, 37. [19] Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem, 11. [20] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, Art. 43. [21] Ibidem, n. 44.

40 Sarah Ogbewey: Reflections of Self

Sarah is a WYA member hailing from Nigeria. In the 2015 Emerging Leaders Conference held at Strathmore University, Kenya, she delivered a talk and call to action entitled “Harnessing Emotional Energy for Fueling Positive Social Change” as a leader representing Nigeria.

PERSONAL REFLECTION

[Regarding the cultural impact of the WYA, ideas related to WYA and the readings of Karol Wojtya that I have read (Love and Responsibility, Theology of the Body, etc.) regarding living the fullness of life, vocation, and self-gift in my own life and commitments]

Contained within these pages are my reflections on concepts and aspects that strike me the most as a young woman, leader and trainer. I write first on the thoughts that cross my mind when I encounter the history of the World Youth Alliance in its Certified Training Program; then I reflect on my reading of Karol Wojtya’s concept of love and responsibility and I interpret this into a concept I call the “seed battle”. I further analyse some internet statistics in our present time and interpret this into how much – and what type of – information is consumed by the Generation X and millennials (youth presently with the age maximum of 35).

In the closing pages of this reflection, I discuss the dimensions of my work in my community that I have dedicated a large portion of my time to; and I talk a little on how it is a form of Self-Gift.

Reflections on the World Youth Alliance History

One cannot write about the cultural impact of the World Youth Alliance without thinking about the world we find ourselves in today. From my encounter with the principles of the World Youth Alliance, I have come to find a great similarity between these principles and the Bible; this discovery thrilled me. For the purpose of this essay, I will draw out only 3 points of such a similarity from principles that Anna Halpine stated in the pink flyer[1] which she shared to delegates at the 1999 Cairo Conference for Population and Development.

· Anna writes: We endorse and live the principles of sexual restraint and responsibility…

Bible writes: … the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord… (1 Corinthians 6:13 NKJV)

41 My reflection: Since the body does not belong to me, I must treat it the way the owner has prescribed, with responsibility, requiring restraint.

· Anna writes: …And reject the promotion of unlimited sexual rights which lead to illegitimacy, disease and disillusionment…

Bible writes: …Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed… (Romans 12:1 NKJV)

My reflection: The world is proposing unlimited sexual rights, but I assertively reject this. When I assess the context of both sentences, Anna’s strong assertive tone “… (we) reject…” resonates with the instructive language of the Bible’s “Do Not”.

· Anna writes: We implore parents to exercise their prior rights and responsibilities to direct the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions and not to relinquish these rights to the governments and to UN agencies.

Bible writes: …Train a child in the way that he should go… (Proverbs 22:6 NKJV)

My reflection: Children are first called children because they are off-springs – they spring forth from parents who have a responsibility to train and nurture the child/offspring. The government is not the primary institution in charge of nurturing and training the child/offspring.

Reflections on Self-Gift

Going back to my readings in “Witness to Hope”[2], Karol Wojtya is a man that wrote extensively about love and about gifting of one’s self to another in marriage, family life, human relationships and human dignity. In his writing “Love and responsibility” which according to the author was born out of pastoral necessity, “love” is an expression of personal responsibility, responsibility to another human being, and responsibility to God. The wake of World War II bore the challenge of the sexual revolution and its promise of liberation when it exploded in the developed world. Karol Wojtya, a man of the Catholic faith was confronted with the communist campaign against traditional family life and its secondary effects on sexual morality, permissive abortion laws and state-sponsored campaigns for youngsters to experiment with sex. These views were opposing to the teachings of the Catholic Church for marital chastity and procreation within marriage, furthermore these teachings […the primary end of marriage (and, equally, sex) was the procreation of children, and the sexual dimension of marital love was relegated to the secondary “ends” of matrimony, which were somewhat primly expressed as “mutual consolation of the spouses” and “a remedy for concupiscence.” Combined with the fact that the Church’s marriage law adopted a rather impersonal view of sexuality, the net result was a presentation of human sexuality that tended to focus more on legal prohibitions than on love…] poorly positioned the Church to respond to the challenges of the sexual revolution.

42 Therefore, Wojtya sought to reposition the church in order to respond to these challenges. According to Wojtya, the spiritual adviser’s task is not only to command or forbid but to justify, to interpret, [and] to explain the ethics of marital chastity and sexual love which the Church derived, primarily, from the New Testament. As a teacher and leader, he knew that rules of sexual conduct were important, however in a modern cultural climate where every precept was questioned thoroughly and even viewed from an individualistic point of view, men and women would not embrace those rules unless they understood them as expressions of fundamental moral truths and as a road map to basic human goods. Such a good is human, and the moral truth most closely bound up with the world of humans is ‘the commandment to love’—for love is a good peculiar to the world of humans. Wojtya thus argued that the best way to approach sexual morality was in the context of “love and responsibility”.[3]

In creating understanding of sexual love in marriage, since the Catholic Church had initially taught that the primary aim of marriage was for procreation, Wojtya sought to explain love. The act of sex in marriage is one of the acts of love. Wojtya’s sexual ethic taught that love was the norm of marriage, a love in which both the procreative and unitive dimensions of human sexuality reached their full moral value. If the fundamental bedrock of marriage is love, “how, he asked, can men and women become responsible lovers, so that their sexual love embodies and symbolizes a genuine freedom? (A freedom different from that promised by the sexual revolution and liberation). How can our love become a fully human love?” A commitment to “loving rather than using” had considerable implications for sexual goodness extended from an expression of responsible sexual freedom. Wojtya argued that the moral imperative to avoid “using” others is the ethical basis of freedom, because it allows us to interact with others without reducing them to objects by manipulating them; or reducing them to mere biological additions to the peaks and troughs of the hormonal rhythm. Since another purpose of marriage is companionship in life’s journey of purpose, destiny and vision, Wojtya added that one should understand sexuality in this way: I cannot achieve my destiny by myself; cutting myself off from others by reducing them to pleasure-objects. To achieve my destiny, I must “meet the freedom of another person and depend on it”. I must meet this freedom in love, and responsibly, in marriage[4].

The Seed Battle

Karol Wojtya, whose writings I became more familiar with due to its extensive use by the World Youth Alliance’s training curriculum also bear many similarities with the Bible, not because this same man is the man we refer to as Pope John Paul II, but because this man’s interpretation of the Bible (as a Catholic priest) holds many truths with regards to our society today. By reading his works, I have found myself exposed to new concepts that enable me to verbalize impressions and convictions when representing the ideals of my organization (that works to reduce corruption in leadership by influencing young people and teaching servant leadership to them). It is difficult (not impossible) for a child who was born in a certain environment to change the status quo; the most important reason for this is that the child may not even be aware that the status quo is wrong. For example, corrupt practices like handing bribes to police officers to facilitate the keeping of law and order, might seem like an easy way to pacify a corrupt police as opposed to been thrown in jail for crossing the road at a “no-crossing” point that does not have a “no-crossing” sign; in response to this, the police man claims that – ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

43 I am not trying to digress from my initial write-up on Karol Wojtya, I am only trying to explain the world I find myself in, so that I can relate the impact of his writings to my thought process. Now, living in the kind of world that I lightly described in the last paragraph, and working as a change agent would involve a deep study and understanding of the human thought processes and “change” as a phenomenon as affected by the economy, age, growth environment (for children), culture. The more I work and seek to understand (especially aided by the writings of Karol Wojtya), the more experience and exposure helps my work. Standing on the side where I encourage morality and attempt to practice it too, I have taught that restrained sexual exposure was the right way to go (even though I struggled to practise it at first), I knew that unlimited sexual expressions were negative but I could not find the words or concepts to convincingly explain this. Karol Wojtya helped me explain this:

The nature of sex involves opening up of one’s self physically (bodily) and incorporeally, which in turn causes a myriad of implication to the well-being of the whole man. Wojtya’s key philosophical move, which he adopted from Thomas Aquinas and explored through phenomenological analysis, was to distinguish between a “human act” and an “act of man.” An “act of man” is mere instinct. Sexuality as an “act of man” does not rise above the level of animal sexuality, which is also instinctive and wholly impersonal. A “human act,” on the other hand, includes “judgment”, which gives that act its distinctive moral texture. A “human act” expresses my freely rendered judgment about something that is good. Love is thus the “human act” par excellence, and ought not to be reduced to the simple emotion of attraction. Attraction uncoupled from judgment reduces someone else to an object of desire. The ‘other person’, not simply the ‘other body’, is the true object of a sexual act that is a truly human act. And the goal of sexual expression is to deepen a personal relationship, to which the mutual gift of pleasure contributes. In freely giving myself sexually to another as an expression of love, I am being myself in a most radical way, for I am making myself a gift to another in a way that is a profound expression of who I am. The “Law of the Gift”—for Wojtya, the basic moral structure of human life—is powerfully confirmed by a careful analysis of the ethics of sexuality.[5]

Man is a free higher being (higher than plants and animals), free to ‘choose’ how to act, however in this freedom there must be a code of conduct that guide ‘choices’, there must be a guide book that tells about choices and consequences, many guides and rule books exist, but what is existentially necessary is the concept of not hurting another human who is existentially just like you, surviving and living like you; because the same way you treat another person also shows that you can also be treated in exactly same way. The mind of man is vast; it has thought many great thoughts and many poor thoughts; however there always exists a divide between those who think morally great and those who think morally poor. As man is made up of a body, soul and sprit, there are morally great bodies, souls and spirits as well as morally poor bodies, souls and spirits. In the realm of the soul and the spirit, there needs to continually be an affirmative action by the morally great to hinder the morally poor. Same also applies for the realm of the body, in which we live; I have chosen to stand on the side of the morally great and I too must combine my quota of force to keep the side of the morally great intact. The morally poor seek to pervert every morally great concept. I was appalled when I went on the internet to “Google” the term “Sexual Restraint” and the images that came up on the search were the direct opposite of what I knew the term to mean. Sexual restraint to me meant restraining oneself from flagrant and unlimited sexual activities. In contrast, the images that I saw showed objectification of women and a few images of men. I imagined a youngster who

44 had just encountered the term “sexual restraint” from my point of its meaning, seeking to get clarity from the internet, he/she will be fed the direct opposite of what the word was uttered or written to mean. The morally great must not be unaware of the extreme methodologies of the morally poor. There must be a continuous vigilance to curtail such excesses. The battle must be real to us just as the air we breathe. We must “actively” “go out” not “idle” in our “comfort zones”. No! Do not idle, this battle is real. It is a battle to save man-kind from moral poverty, degradation and accompanying self-destruction. It is a battle to preserve humanity for the next generation; living beings are wired to procreate, to produce seed; life must be preserved for seed to flourish and for the furtherance of great human discoveries and exploits. We must not sit back and watch our world snatched from our lightly clenched fists, we must not gaze with glazed eyes wondering with physical and mental lassitude, at what our world is becoming. Sitting still and watching never gets the job done, the same power and ability the morally poor have to destroy, is the same power and ability and much more that the morally great have to restore and build up. Why is it much more? Within man there is an innate (in-born or in-seed) ability to build-up. The real battle therefore lies at the “seed-level”. Once the existential nature of man which is “to build-up” is perverted, there is no longer a need by the morally-poor to pervert man, man will be born perverted, the work of the morally-poor is therefore less, and their activities reproduce themselves by the natural law of procreation; In contrast the work of the morally-great increases exponentially. Thus in order to strategize for this battle, we must take the war to the seed-level. “The battle at the seed level” will be reflected on in more detail at my post-synod write-up, after I have gleaned more information.

Reflections of Karol Wojtya on “Theology of the Body”

The extensive writing of Karol Wojtya makes it impossible to finish reflections on it, in the writing of one essay. The reading of excerpts of his writings; to my mind, was like the gentle unfolding of a delicate flower, releasing its sweet scent, wafting gently into the chasms of my mind and awakening a knowledge that seems new but in another way seems like I have always known; maybe it is an in-born knowledge that just awaited the right trigger to couple and arouse it. As I have just begun reading, I have a strong need to comment, that study of some of these writings has helped mould and refine my thought processes even in a short span of time.

According to George Weigel, the writer of the biography of John Paul II – Witness to Hope,

“They [Theology of the Body series by the Pope] are highly compact theological and philosophical meditations into which the Pope tried to fit as much material as possible into a fifteen-minute catechetical talk. The difficulties notwithstanding, however, these texts repay careful study.”

Original Unity of Man and Woman

My reflections here is in an attempt to give a cultural or societal context to these writings, because except we as youth can relate these writings to our context, there will always be a barrier in understanding; and consequent non-use of the beneficial content therein. I stand representing some views from my community,

45 country, and maybe West-Africa. The reflections below may hold true for all other societies and countries in the world, but I cannot conclusively say so.

A popular saying goes thus - “majority of the world’s problems begin with sex”. I also found this write-up on a male friend’s Facebook page[6] which supports that saying: Sex: Possibly the main reason year after year we budget trillions yet no significant improvement in infrastructure.

You may not believe it but Nigerians pay more for sex than any other people in the world. The biggest business in this country is sex. We Nigerian men can't stop having sex, and we don't have sex with single partners. We love to have sex with everyone and anyone. As soon as government releases cash for any projects, intense looting will resume. Politicians, civil servants will swoop on the money until they cart away everything. That's also how they would invest most of it on our women having sex. An average politician consumes more sex than men in a whole county elsewhere. And then our women, they won't rest until every penny returns abroad. They will buy foreign hair, foreign nails, foreign eye lashes, foreign bags, foreign shoes and foreign phones. Each of these products is produced abroad and the cash released for our infrastructure quickly moves to China, Taiwan, Korea, USA etc. The remaining would have been used to pay for hotel rooms, the hotel use it to buy foreign bed sheets, televisions, foreign soaps, electric bulbs, and other foreign gadgets to attract more men to have more sex and transfer more money to foreign lands.

We have ejaculated our airports, rail lines, seaports, hospitals and schools away to other lands.

The “yahoo boys”[7] would have been helping us repatriate some of these money's if they too were not having sex like minks. Their own is even worse. The moment “maga”[8] pays they're off to the top clubs in town or anywhere they'd see more sex.

The cycle happens again and the money returns where it is not put into good use.

Castrate 50% of Nigerian men and see this country turn to Dubai.[9]

The concept of sex has gradually become perverted; according to many, sex has become the reason for corruption, poverty, dehumanizing acts and abuse of human rights. Many link abuse of power to abuse of sex. Sex has become the topic of conversation on the mouths of many young and old alike. Why is sex such a popular topic? What makes its idea so intriguing? Why has it been attributed to the fall and the rise of many?

Google internet search (as at 28th November 2017) of “sex” “money” and “god”, shows “sex” having the highest entries with 3.3 billion results; “money” followed in second place with 2.8 billion and “god” had about half the entries of “sex” at 1.8 billion search results.

By extension, Karol Wojtya’s writings on sex will be 200% probably more popular (searched and/or read) than his writings on “God”. Take note that these writings will need to translated to understandable language to the greater population of the world who use the internet.

46 Information as at November 2017 shows that the median age for the world is 30 years at an estimated population of 7.6 billion, and the median age for Nigeria, my home country is 18 years at an estimated population of 191 million.[10] Both ages (18 and 30) fall under the “Generation Z” and the “Generation Y” respectively. From Wikipedia; a 2007 survey showed 94% to 97% of the Generation Y (those born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s to early 2000s) owned an internet-compatible computer or mobile phone; and a 2015 study showed that 75% of 13-17 year olds who belong to the Generation Z (those born between mid-1990’s till date[11]) use the cell-phone daily and have wide spread access to the internet. This cohort (Generation Z) is also known as the Internet generation.

From given data, these are the two cohorts (Generation Y and Z) who use the internet the most. The people of the world and Nigeria, both in youthful median age (30 and 18 respectively) write/post information on “sex” twice as much than they write/post on “god”.

Therefore, to pervert sex in the world and maybe pervert the world too, the most effective way will be to pervert the internet. Hopefully to restore sanity, the way to go will be to sanitize the internet as well. I think the internet is both “an end” (a reflection of society) as well as “a means” (a tool for change). However, I cannot help feeling that the internet content is more strongly an (on-line) reflection of the (off- line) activities of our society, than it is an instrument to reach our society. On further contemplation, I would say that true positive change comes from positive human interaction.

My Further Reflections on the Sexual Act

Form my general readings, it seems like “sex” is “tied into” everything man does, as also stated by my friend on his Facebook post. I am not perplexed any longer (I was at first). I received more clarity as to why from the writings of Pope John Paul II as explained in his biography – Witness to Hope. Sex affects the entirety of our being or human existence because:

1. Sex provides an end to the human search for identity: Everyone wants to know who they are, they want to answer that question of “what am I?” not just by words. Words are insufficient to respond to the world’s pressing needs and challenges. Something about sex provides an answer.

The author of Witness to Hope expatiates on the Pope’s first cluster of addresses in the “Theology of the Body”:

“…he (Pope John Paul) reflects on Adam’s wondrous sense of solitude, which reveals important things about the human condition… Adam experiences himself as being-alone because there is no other human creature like him. Thus, for John Paul, the “complete and definitive creation of ‘man’” only occurs when God creates Eve, and Adam recognizes Eve as a human creature like himself, although different. His joy at this discovery suggests that this 47 aspect of our “original solitude” is overcome by that remarkable process in which I am genuinely united to another while finding my own identity not only intact, but enhanced…”

2. Man reaches the fullness of himself as the image of God. Have you ever wondered what the highest feat that man can achieve can be? It is to become an image of God. Man can become the image of God in the moment of communion between man and woman. George Weigel explains again in Witness to Hope:

“…This (finding my own identity not only intact, but enhanced) John Paul contends, is what “creation” is for—and that tells us something important about who God the creator is. Men and women are images of God, not only through intellect and free will, but above all “through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning. . . . Man becomes the image of God . . . in the moment of communion.”

Man becomes, at the moment of communion, the image of God – the most powerful existential being; hence all the world’s wealth pales in comparison to the richness and power of this communion; and the entire world’s wealth is sought after so as to be able to access a moment as this. Thus a man can give all his wealth away to a woman just to be able to attain to this image.

3. If sex is viewed as a means of selfish personal gain, human flourishing will never be fully attained, thus the human mind and body will constantly be impoverished and will consistently seeking fulfillment. The impoverished man will seek fulfillment by sexually using persons of opposite sex, even siblings and other family members or even a sexually immature child; yet he still will not find fulfillment. Some may search for fulfillment from persons of the same sex; some search for fulfillment from animals and some from inanimate objects. Such a man or woman is depraved and is a purulent sore to humanity’s existence. From the Witness to Hope, the writer says:

“…the stories of the creation of the human world in Genesis reveal that human flourishing depends on self-giving, not self-assertion. Mutual self-giving in sexual love, made possible by our embodiedness as male and female, is an icon of that great moral truth.

"HOW AND WHY" OF MY CURRENT CHOICES

A constant and recurring theme of the World Youth Alliance’s teaching is to preserve human dignity in all life’s choices that we make. I support and appreciate this notion.

I have made the vocational decision of chastity before marriage, the “why” of this has been fully explained above, but I must state in summary that chastity before marriage holds a peace that cannot be possessed otherwise. This peace allows you the clarity of mind to focus on gifting yourself to other fruitful courses.

48 For a fruitful course, I have committed myself to work for good/servant leadership in Nigeria. I have been privileged to learn from the teachings of great men like Julian Kyula at the World Youth Alliance Africa Emerging Leaders Conference 2015; Prof. Anigbogu of the Institute of National Transformation, Nigeria; David Ogbueli of the Golden Heart Foundation and Dominion City International; Jemimah Mbaya; Moyo Akin Ojo; Shallom Ndukwe; Peter Daniels of the Destiny of the 3rd Millennium.

The principle of self-giving has helped me approach my work from the angle of a problem solver who seeks to understand the problem from the point of view of the distressed. I understand that it is not okay to stand outside and judge another person, it is always better to place oneself in the position of the person you seek to help so as to be an effective change-agent. Perspective is crucial to every process.

As the path of my life progresses, I find myself active in the fields of community development even though I am a Pharmacist by profession. 2 major projects have marked great successes in my life:

1. I have developed security peace-building projects aimed at reaching grass-root communities in violence-prone regions; this project has received the financial support of international organizations. The US Embassy Diplomatic Missions in Abuja funded my project for 2 years (2016 and 2018). I decide to carry out this project with as much dignity as I can muster, eschewing corruption and espousing discipline, so that the funds allocated for the project activities are utilized judiciously to solve the challenges they have been assigned for.

2. I have also developed a child’s right project (in keeping with the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of a Child) aimed at reaching 1200 children in a tour of 6 secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. The US Embassy Diplomatic Missions in Abuja funded my premier child-rights project for 2017.

In all my work, I do not use foreign values (simply because I receive foreign funding) that have no essence to my culture; I ensure to incorporate family values; integrity; dignity; acts of good-works and constant self- empowerment. These are the values of my organization. As we work by these values, we (I and my team mates) learn to become better positive change-agents.

I run two (2) of my own organizations: one non-governmental not-for-profit and another for-profit strategy solutions company. I busy myself by solving problems - in my community and - for other profit-making businesses.

I do a lot of analytic thinking and sometimes imaginative thinking. This helps my work. For example I was asked to write about my work in Peace and Security, I penned down this below:

Sitting on the balcony of an apartment on the 7th floor of a building in a Nigerian Military Barracks on Victoria Island, Lagos – I am a visitor in the home of my sister and her husband – I get a clear view of the expansiveness of the Atlantic ocean; I wonder at the peacefulness of it and imagine 49 war torn nations who would be receiving a barrage of Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and without the luxury of the serenity I feel right now. Jolted out of my reverie, by this thought and many others that pervade my reality back home in Northern Nigeria, I know that there must be continuous effort to work pro-actively to build and sustain peace, and I want to support this effort.

To make this effort a continuous reality, I have to be more grounded in intra-national and inter- national issues of security and peace, war and conflict. In my work in Northern Nigeria, I have observed the pain and frustration that come with war; no human should be made to live in such a situation especially if wars and conflict can be prevented by humane and right social practises like avoiding corruption, provision of basic amenities or having the right mind-set towards another human being. The solutions to avoiding conflict that I just elucidated sound easy, however the reasons why they are missing in many conflict-rife zones is an interesting area I would like to research on. I want to be a researcher and to assist in research work. I always add the research component in my community development work, either by questionnaires forms or verbal interviews. I have always believed that solutions are best proffered in policy and practise if the problem is well understood. Research is not a common practise in the policy framework in my country, many times research work is claimed to have been done, but the resulting policy or solution never seems to fit thus leading to a breakdown in function. This is always very saddening to observe especially when a basic research effort would have averted the breakdown that more often than not leads of loss of lives and disabilities.

Belonging to a solid system or community of like-minds will help me achieve my goals of becoming a consultant in peace and security, war and conflict; this will also give me a strong voice so that I can help influence my community towards “Pro-active prevention of Conflict” and “Propagation of Peace”.

The trans-continental and inter-national nature of the World Youth Alliance is also an interesting concept to me. I have always wanted to tell the Nigerian story to non-indigenes; this is a narrative that would shock many. Nigeria like every other “colloidal[12]” nation has been misunderstood by some and loved by many. Nigeria is an interesting place, an enigma; if used as a case-study, the knowledge gained there-in, when applied can help maintain World peace, certainly Nigeria’s peace.

While I am thinking on peace-building, I am thinking of the concepts that must be put in place for peace to remain. What bleeds my heart the most is death of people due to insensitivity of others when they practise corruption, theft and embezzlement of funds that should have been used for social amenities like hospitals, fire service equipment, health service emergency apparatus and other useful services. It seems futile to try to change the activities of the old and aged, working with the youths in their formative years seems like a more fruitful venture. I like to help the younger generation find their bearing and make positive decisions especially teaching them on how selflessness through self-gift promotes a higher quality of community life than self-love.

50 Youth development has always been my passion, when tutored rightly they have the energy and capacity to drive the sustainability of my community. Millions of dollars to improve services for health, security, power for the benefit of the citizenry have been embezzled by public servants. According to UNICEF, every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds & 145 women of childbearing age. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the under–five & maternal mortality rate in the world. This can be attributed to poor health facilities, poor policy implementation & insurgencies. Presently, most of the people perpetrating these acts have become desensitized. Young adults are becoming more indoctrinated into these corrupt systems; thus the need for a reorientation of our moral value system. Sequel to the Boko Haram insurgencies in Northern Nigeria and leveraging on our experience in engaging youths in the NGO (A Woman’s Heart Foundation – AWHF) I co-founded, I designed a project in Kaduna State (the former Northern protectorate during the British colonial days and still a prime seat of power in Northern Nigeria). We worked in 4 Local Government (LG) areas (2 predominantly Christian and 2 Moslem) strategic for their location as trigger-points for past crisis.

We engaged Community Leaders (Hakimis) & LG Chairmen, asking them to nominate youth leaders (50% male & 50% female) to attend trainings on Peace & Reconciliation Facilitation as Peer Educators. We also engaged the Nigeria Police & Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), asking their heads to also nominate participants (50% male & 50% female) to attend trainings as Conflict Resolution Strategists. We put the Civilians & Security Agents into the same space (both onsite & online) to engage in peace-building dialogue, interphase with each other & build relationships. We obtained the services of charismatic youth teachers, involved the media (radio, television & online), & got a partnership with Kaduna State University. Prof Abiodun Alao of African Leadership Centre, Kings College London supported this project & trained the participants also. This 2016 project had an impact on 700 youths. In all our projects we gave an equal opportunity to women.

As a woman, nurture and care come natural to me. As a person, I find that I am naturally innovative and insightful, passionate about teaching others. I believe my personality and my value system make me passionate about solving societal problems. I understand that when there is so much poverty, in order to survive, it is hard to keep from some forms of immorality. At these times, one draws on inner Strength as well as support from family, friends and mentors. Not every person is blessed to realize their potentials, thus the need for support systems to be built by change agents. After realizing I had a passion for people, I also realized I had a passion for leadership. Nigeria is a great and beautiful nation, and it will be a great honor for me to be a part of the positive force that shapes and lifts her. I will also be honored to lend my support, experience, innovations, ideas, drive and zeal to continually lift other African nations.

By my work, I will like to assist in improving the Corruption Perception Index in Nigeria, over 2 years of our work. I and my team will like our organization to be awarded an industry merit award by the country within which it functions. We will like to get accredited by international organizations. We will like to receive feedback from people or from opinion polls that the graduates of our academy are people of integrity & that they are making positive changes in their spheres of influence.

51 Thank you.

[1] Anna Halpine and few other youths shared pink flyers as a reaction of conscience to deny demands (abortion rights, deletion of parental rights and sexual and reproductive rights and services for children from the age of 10) by a group of youths brought in by the Clinton administration to represent the 3 billion youths of the world [2] This a book authored by George Weigel; a biography of Pope John Paul II [3] This paragraph was paraphrased from the book “Witness to Hope” an biography of Pope John Paul II [4] This paragraph was paraphrased from the book “Witness to Hope” an biography of Pope John Paul II [5] This paragraph was paraphrased from the book “Witness to Hope” an biography of Pope John Paul II [6] Posted 28th November 2017 – date given to show the recentness of this post and it received relatively large amount of likes and shares, which signify that the post is agreed on by many people [7] Street/Colloquial name for internet fraudsters [8] Street name for a victim of internet fraud especially the rich who are blamed for the huge financial margin against the poor, the term may been extended to mean all fraud victims [9] A country seen by some Nigerians as the model for infrastructural development [10] Information from http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ [11] End date is not yet defined https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation [12] I use the word “colloidal” to lightly refer to Nigeria’s immense diversity and how we manage to still stay united; and the prospect of separation and non-separation; and the challenges and coping-mechanism there-in

52 Hichem Ouertani: A World Youth Alliance Lifestyle Hichem is an active WYA member from Tunisia. He is a certified member and a trainer of the certified training program. He was also a trainer in the Emerging Leaders of the Arab Region, a United Nations funded project to train young leaders in five Arab countries. Hichem participated in the 14th International Solidarity Forum in New York. He is the recipient of the 2018 Viktor Frankl Award, an award that recognizes WYA members for their praiseworthy efforts in pursuing the mission of promoting human dignity.

World Youth Alliance is renowned for the social issues it is involved in, how it respects the different cultures of the world and how it tries to spread humanitarian values in people’s minds. I had the chance with this organization, to meet mesmerising people who have different worldviews but who share the same passion in learning and in digging deeper in the organisation and on its philosophical foundations. What impresses me the most about World Youth Alliance is its perception of society along with its attempt to advance it and to make the world a better place. I must admit that it has shaped some of my own beliefs and ideas. The readings that impressed me the most are those of, on and by Karol Wojtya (Pope John Paul II). His avant-garde revolutionary thoughts made me rethink some of my own beliefs. In this context, this essay is going to deal with my own reflections upon the cultural impact of WYA, as well as on my own point of view concerning living the fullness of life, along with its impact on vocation and self-gift in my own life and commitments.

Culture in WYA is a basic human concept that needs to be maintained and respected and this happens only via preserving the human values and respecting the works of art of each culture. Culture is perceived as the expression of a certain society’s set of beliefs, values and environment. It is also a manifestation of our “ability to adapt to our surroundings and make from them not only a liveable place but also an expression of our spirit”. [1]Art, for instance, is an expression of the same values, beliefs of a group of individuals. It is there to allow culture to be manifested and to allow each society’s ideas, beliefs and values to be communicated to the other since there can be no art completely detached from society. What I have remarked from the readings of WYA is that they pay close attention to the importance of cultural differences and they attribute every work of art to the human dignity. They make one believe in the importance of every human creation and make one further reinforce one's ideas concerning the role of art in maintaining cultures and societies along with its didactic role to make a change in the world and to counter the totalitarian regimes. In some readings, this role is intensified. In order to guarantee a democracy and build enlightened nations, we have to protect Art from any form of[EW1] political limitations or control by politics. Art should rather be an active tool to resist, act, and promote healthy ideals that consolidate the human dignity. Man has to react and indulge himself/herself in the artistic production to contribute in the shaping of reality from his/her independent perspective. For example, this can be done through the production of pieces of art that express the human’s real conditions under totalitarian regimes or that reflect the human being’s endless struggle for the preservation of human dignity. It is inevitable that we should try to regain our hold of art under regimes that try to make it blinding to our sight of genuine truth, because art should serve the true condition of human beings. However, art should not be used by politicians for their own propaganda and for their own benefits. Realising this makes one more aware of the role of art in maintaining cultures and makes people aware of these uses of art. World Youth Alliance, thus, seeks to maintain these values, to ensure their existence in different cultures and attempts to clarify [EW2] the objective values of the human dignity on societies.The most remarkable thing and at the same time impressive about how World Youth Alliance deals with culture is that the booklet does not revolve around a 53 single issue or around a single religion or a single belief. It provides an argument and a counter argument to various ideologies. Cultural issues are mentioned, explained and treated according to different perceptions. The writers in this booklet are from different nations of the world. They have different religions and different ideologies that are all surrounded around the dignity of the person, how it is regarded in their culture and in their beliefs alongside with how it should be maintained.

One of the main issues the readings focus on is the relationship between love and human dignity. A key figure who deals with these two concepts is Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtya). His book Love and Responsibility seems to have anticipated the present code of sexual ethics which does not recognise any constraint on sexual activity except for the mutual consent. Love and Responsibility begins with an account of the human person, which lays the groundwork for his moral synthesis. Thanks to his or her rational nature, the person is an embodied, self-determining moral subject. Unlike the rest of material creation, the person is someone rather than something. The person lives his or her life “from within” in a way that revolves around the pursuit of truth and goodness. He argues that the sexual drive has an existential meaning, because the primary end or purpose of this drive is the perpetuation of the human species and it is a source of spousal love and procreation that leads to marriage[2]. He links sexual union, love and procreation together because the sexual drive paves the way for a man and a woman to love each other and to form a union open to new life. John Paul II associates love with procreation and supports the belief that marital love must always be in harmony with the procreative purpose or by the self-gratification that leads to a fruitful union of persons. This nullifies the banality of the sexual activity. Wojtya provides phenomenological account of love and integrates a conceptualisation of love that encompasses a metaphysical, psychological and ethical analysis[3]. The metaphysical one links love with fondness, attraction, longing for the other and benevolence which provides love with its selfless altruistic character. Love should be also linked to sympathy, moral union and to commitment of friendship. John Paul also rejects the beliefs that reduce love to its psychological profile where it is confused with sensuality. According to him, love should be correlated with ethics because it is a virtue and a passion at the same time[4]. Ethics is the thing that make love authentic. This ethical character is perceived through enduring commitment as well as assuming responsibility for the other person’s welfare that becomes the basis for the reciprocal gift of self. Also, love must be unencumbered by sexual compulsion or obsession so that it can be freely given and received. Without freedom, the gift of self loses its authenticity and perfective powers. Spousal love, which goes beyond friendship and benevolence, must transcend sensuality, and it must be shaped by permanence, exclusivity, and a mutual belonging that allows each person to find him or herself in the other[5]. Chastity is the moral habit of being able to see a human being of the opposite sex with a certain moral depth so that one always recognizes that individual as a person rather than an object for use. Love requires the support of chastity to ensure that sexual relations are never depersonalized. This virtue allows us to look beyond a person’s attractive body in order to transparently perceive the whole person as a being with an inner, spiritual life, who is not to be used simply for another’s gratification. Only the chaste person, who affirms the dignity of the other, is free enough from lust or disordered sensuality to make a sincere gift of themselves to another. Thanks to chastity, the virtue of love is not overwhelmed by passion or emotion so that unselfish spousal love can flourish. For Wojtya, "The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine."[6]

John Paul II in his readings links the concept of “personhood”[7] along with the concept of “moral behaviour” [8]in that the former complements the latter. What characterises human beings is their rationality and their unique inner life. The human reason allows man to transcend their bodily urges and needs; that is to say, they have free will and they can control their behaviour, and with this freedom comes

54 responsibility. Because they have the power of choice, their actions and deeds can be directed either towards good or towards evil.

To identify a deed and to classify it as good or evil, one should regard the human behaviour and check whether humans are treated as persons or as objects. People should not treat each other as “the means to an end” ". [EW3] According to Wojtya, "... we must never treat a person as the means to an end. This principle has universal validity. Nobody can use a person as a means toward an end, no human being, nor yet God the Creator."[9]"Anyone who treats a person as a means to an end does violence to the very essence of the other, to what constitutes its natural right."[10] Once this simple principle is understood and accepted, then the "rules" of sexual morality fall into place, not as arbitrary "dont's" but as the logical demands of an ethic founded on respect for the human person.

To love is to treat others as persons. Love is associated with seeking common good and never putting oneself above others. It is about subordinating oneself in service of the good or of others. Love as a virtue is an ultimate good towards which people should strive. John Paul II affirms that a sexual behaviour should be amalgamated with a personalistic norm that never allows treating people as mere objects. A sexual relationship, therefore, should meet two orders; the order of nature and the personal order. The former has reproduction as its object and the latter finds its expression in the love of persons and seeks the fullest realisation of that love. Wojtya does not disparage sexual pleasure, the value of sexuality, the value of the body, erotic feelings, or the emotions associated with love. Rather he points out how these can be dangerous if not governed by a true love which puts the person first.

Thus, sexual behaviour should be reproductive for it to become a pure expression of love. Love is about self- giving which is entrusting one’s self totally to the other person and surrendering one’s own preferences, freedom, and will for the sake of the other. True and authentic love is about looking outward in awe at the beloved and has a deep sense of responsibility for common good. Love is about giving of the self and acceptance of the other person. Respectively, one should give oneself to the beloved and vice versa; and one should accept the beloved as a gift that has been entrusted to them and vice versa. Wojtya confirms that there is a mystery of reciprocity in what he calls "betrothed love" [11]through the giving and the receiving of each other. He states that “acceptance must also be giving, and giving receiving”[12].

Wojtya argues that the love between Adam and Eve, before the original sin, was a pure authentic love since they had not yet entered the world and Adam did not struggle with selfishness. He loved his wife for who she was as a person, not for what she can do for him or for what he can get from her. He accepted her as a gift and had a sense of responsibility towards her and always sought what is best for her and she did the same. In this context of committed love and responsibility, Eve felt free to give herself to her husband emotionally, spiritually, physically and holding nothing back. The beloved should be loved completely with “all his or her virtues and faults, and up to a point independently of those virtues and in spite of those faults” [13]as John Paul argues. The attitude of the lover towards the beloved is about accepting them for who they and s they are with tolerance of their mistakes and weaknesses. When this happens, “we begin to love as God loves.”[14]

Indeed, Love and Responsibility provides insights on male-female relationships that are truly life- transforming and desperately needed today. Growing up in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, the younger generation is hungering for any wise guidance they can get on how to navigate their relationships

55 with the opposite sex. Single people, engaged couples, and married spouses alike will find in Love and Responsibility not only a very different perspective from what the world tends to offer, but a view that, once encountered, cannot help but have a positive impact on the way we relate to one another.“Personalist principle”[15],therefore, means that we should never treat the people in our lives as mere instruments to achieving our own purposes. Unlike animals that act according to their instincts and appetites, persons can act deliberately. Through self- reflection, persons can choose a course of action for themselves and assert their “inner self” to the outside world through their choices. To treat a human person merely as an instrument for my own purposes is to violate the dignity- more precisely, the dignified life- of the person as a self-determining being. “[E]very person is by nature capable of determining his or her aims. Anyone who treats a person as the means to an end does violence to the very essence of the other”[16] (pp. 26-27).

I have not made any vocational decision and the only vow that I have made is to myself and is concerned about achieving my own dreams and continuing my studies. Love has been always a mystery for me. To be honest, Karol Wojtya’s ideas are convincing and are even the ones which made me consolidate my beliefs in the non-existence of a pure love that respects the dignity of the person in our modern society. He talks about love somehow in an idealistic way that is hard to implement. It is the way love, marriage and sex should be treated; but it does not seem practical enough to be implemented. Love according to him, should be interlinked with responsibility for it to achieve its sacredness and fullness and Wojtya in his essay argues that the best way to approach “sexual morality” [17]is in the context of love and responsibility. Love is an expression of personal responsibility, a responsibility to another human being, and responsibility to God. As Wojtya expresses, love can be an expression of the dignity of the person and should be guided by the concept of mutual subjectivity where one cannot view the other as a mere object of pleasure. This happens only when two genuine freedoms meet each other in pursuit of a good they hold in common and that they both recognise as good. The encounter of two freedoms is the substance of love, and love is the expression of the personalist norm in all relationships. Loving is, hence, the opposite of using. Sexual morality transforms sex from something that just happens into something that expresses human dignity. Sex that just happens is dehumanised sex. Sex that is an expression of two persons –two freedoms – seeking personal and common goods together is fully human and fully humanising. From love of desire to love of goodwill so that love can move from simple attraction to love.

Upon reading Wojtya’s book, I deduced that the true love that he talks about does not exist in real life and more specifically in the 21st century. He mentions an idealised version of love that respects the other, that is selfless, void of any objectification and is a relation of a subjective experience achieved by the mutual subjectivity of one another. This definition of love does not exist nowadays since love is disguised in the shape of sexual attraction and a mutual objectivity where one perceives the other as an object meant to achieve their sexual desire. Even the sacredness of marriage has been violated and in most cases, it became a means to legalise sexual behaviour of the couple. John Paul II has challenged the world by presenting the truth about the human person as the foundation for all social policy and personal morality and by insisting that human freedom cannot be separated from truth, and that freedom must be directed toward love: "Freedom exists for the sake of love. If freedom is not used, is not taken advantage of by love, it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfillment."[18] The generation of men and women who have experienced the emptiness and unfulfillment predicted by Wojtya more than fifty years ago have a right to be presented with an authentic ethic of love. They need more than a system

56 for calculating the risks involved in various choices, they need to be exposed to the vision of true betrothed love presented in Love and Responsibility.

Modern culture has grossly distorted the truth about love and seduced people into forgetting the link between sexuality and procreation. Utilitarianism has become the motto of modern man in a capitalist world. They “regard the principle of maximisation of pleasure accompanied by the minimisation of pain as the primary rule of human morality"[19] and regard pleasure as an end in itself. While this may seem attractive, by making pleasure in itself the sole or greatest good, other values including the value of the person are subordinated. Persons are inevitably reduced to objects to be used to maximize the pleasure of others. Utilitarianism does offer a "semblance of altruism,"[20] but Wojtya explains how this fiction inevitable devalues the human person. Misunderstandings about love and sexuality often start with confusion about the nature and purpose of our sexual capacities. The sexual drive is not an irrepressible instinct but a natural orientation to a person of the opposite sex. Wojtya insists that we should not reduce the sexual drive to a biological force at our disposal. The “liberated” man or woman of the twenty-first century tends to regard the sexual drive simply as an instinct that should be emancipated from repressive cultural norms. But Wojtya understands this sexual drive in a completely different way. Modern women and men consider themselves liberated from the need to conceal their motives. No one feels he is supposed to feel guilty for using another person.

On the other hand, under the Utilitarian sexual ethic, those who expect commitment or fail to allow the other person to exit the relationship without recrimination may find themselves condemned. If they protest, they are told to "get over it."If the Sexual Revolution is inextricably linked to Utilitarianism ethical theory, then it is not simply a question of whether specific acts are sinful or not. "The Sexual Revolution promotes a way of thinking about the person which is intrinsically contrary to human dignity". [21]Once this mentality has taken root, marriage may not be a sufficient remedy. A couple accustomed to using each other as sexual objects will continue to do so after they marry, unless they undergo a profound conversion. If the husband views his wife primarily as object which provides him sexual pleasure, she will feel used, and if he ceases to experience sufficient pleasure or her unhappiness at being used is greater than the value she derives from being married, divorce will appear to be a logical option.Some authors even argue that it is not surprising that the modern young woman caught up in a series of user/used relationships should long for respect. Unfortunately, most of these young women are so accustomed to being used as sexual objects that they cannot even imagine how to conduct a chaste relationship. Those who have discovered the satisfaction of being valued as a person in their professional work or for their achievements wrongly suppose that if the man who is using them as a sexual object would only value their work or achievements, the terrible sense of being used would disappear. Unfortunately, respect for work-place success, no matter how sincere, does not lead a man to seek true unification of persons. No matter how much a man may value a woman's achievements, if he is at the same time using her as a sexual object, she will feel used, because she is being used.

Machiavellianism has become the guiding rule of the twenty first century man. People, nowadays believe that the end justifies the means. That is to say, finding pleasure and enjoying their lives to the fullest should be achieved through all means no matter whether they were good or evil. As long as a deed ensures their own "felicific calculus", [22]people are allowed to do whatever they please.

57 Love and Responsibility can be seen the outline of a classic romance novel or a great adventure story. This story of true love begins with love as attraction, perhaps initially as attraction to the characteristics the person possesses, but eventually attraction towards the person himself or herself. This is followed by love as desire. Desire is "felt as a longing for some good for its own sake: 'I want you because you are a good for me."[23] And so love becomes a longing for the person. This is followed by love as "goodwill", because "It is not enough to long for a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above all, long for that person's good." [24]But for love to be love it must be reciprocal. "Reciprocity assumes the characteristics of durability and reliability and allows for trust. "[25]"It is impossible to put your trust in another human being knowing or feeling that his or her sole aim is utility or pleasure. It is equally impossible to put your trust in a person if you yourself have the same thing as your main object."[26] Once they have become one in all these aspects and one by a decision of their wills, only then do they have a right to become one flesh, only then are they ready to accept together joint permanent responsibility for a potential new life, the fruit of their union, and to commit to care for each other not just when it is pleasurable but in sickness and in health, for richer, for poor, till death.We are living in a world guided by the Benthamian concept of “felicific calculus”.

What makes it difficult to live out this basic principle for human relationships is the spirit of utilitarianism that pervades our society. In this view, the best human actions are those that are most useful. And what is useful is what maximizes my pleasure and comfort and minimizes my pain. The underlying assumption is that happiness consists in pleasure. Therefore, I should always pursue whatever brings me comfort, advantage, and benefit, and avoid whatever may cause me suffering, disadvantage, and loss.

Similarly, in the pleasant friendship, when one person's interests change or they move away and are no longer around to share “good times,” the friendship is likely to fade. This helps explain why friendships among young people shift so often. As they move from high school to college to the professional world, they mature and their interests, values, moral convictions, and geographical locations tend to undergo many changes. If their friendships in these transitional years are not based on something more profound than simply the fact that they happened to live in the same dorm, play the same sport, take the same class, and have a lot of fun together, their friendships are likely to dissolve over time. Such friendships based on having “good times” together are unlikely to continue when those pleasurable experiences are no longer able to be shared. Marriage, objectively considered, must provide first of all the means of continuing existence, secondly a conjugal life for man and woman, and thirdly a legitimate orientation for desire.

This belief on how love should be selfless and should maintain the common good of the involved parties can be perceived only in the family relations. One cannot help but notice how parents would sacrifice everything and anything in order to make their children live life to the fullest. They encourage you to react, but to keep your distance, to experience, but not to get hurt, to love, to live, to build your own hopes and to create your own world. They show you the positive along with the negative, they accept you for who you are and never expect anything from you. For me, this is the greatest love that satisfies Wojtya’s definition of love. This type of love is the one that should be maintained in marital lives and in human relations. The world should be built on this paternal love in order for the world to be a better place.

Natural communities are important: family, nation, religious community. For these are communities of action. In these communities each member naturally counts on being able to participate by choosing together with others and count on the fact that in their common choices the community takes account of

58 the requirements of his personal realization. The one who participates is open to sacrificing his own particular good to the common good because the self-realisation of the value of one’s own person, which is achieved through sacrifice, is greater and more worthy than what would be gained by achieving one’s own particular interest against the common good. Love is in those who have the family as the centre of their being. The family exists though these relationships and becomes the human environment which both guards the mystery of birth and beings to reveal its significance. This is what should be implemented in the world in order to make it “a global family” [27]as Dalai Lama mentions. This concept deals with the importance of peace and harmony and their basic role in life. Dalai Lama importantly says that peace will only be shared and effective if it exists in each individual’s mind. This way, we can ensure human rights and dignity to be respected. Peace, as a concept treated in Dalai Lama’s text, is not only abstract, rather, it is a concrete realization. That means that peace has to do with prosperity, development and the people being well fed and well educated. That way, peace can win over wars and conflicts. In Dalai Lama’s words, “inner peace” [28]and "outer peace[29]" are interrelated and go hand in hand in order to ensure the survival of human beings and to preserve their happiness and tranquillity. Dalai Lama’s text eventually tells us not to overlook anyone and take care of the other. Thus, the underlying concepts in the three readings are interrelated and have the same purpose; that of preserving human rights and dignity.

The writings of John Paul II tell us that a human being or a person cannot be understood “on the basis of economics alone, nor simply on the basis of class membership.”[30] Rather, the person is understood in its totality when he is situated within the domains of culture such as language, history, and the position one takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death. He “receives from God its essential dignity and with it the capacity to transcend every social order so as to move towards truth and goodness. But one is also conditioned by the social structure in which one lives, by the education one has received and by the environment.”[31]In this context, Joseph Pieper also says that it is only when a person is no longer regarded as merely being a “creative, active and constructive” [32]agent, that he can stop to admire the beauty of the world and his own beauty and thus enjoy his of humanity in a better way, a way that is best suited to the person. The encounter with the other person is a fundamental step in the human pilgrimage in search of objective truth and subjective authenticity.

World Youth Alliance also made me believe that a human action is needed in order to make a change in the world. They believe that all particular communities of existence and action arise on the basis of the common humanity, and from this origin the more or less binding duties which correspond to this also derive. What fascinates me about the readings is that they do not deny man's need to use the objects of the world in order to survive. They admit that man needs to use the objects of the world with a “reasonable use”[33]; i.e. with no cruelty. "Mutual subjectivity" [34]is a goal to be achieved and cannot exist only by the human action and by trying to implement it in one’s own society.

In order to ensure the implementations of these beliefs of true love, each one should perceive it as an achievement of the dignity of the person and its values should be maintained and taught amongst the youth, so that, love starts to regain its sacredness and sexuality regains its main purposes. Only when men and women start to perceive each other as subjects and not just as objects of sex in order to keep humanity going, the values of true love would start to be imposed in the human mind. Young men and women, many of whom have tasted the bitter fruit of Sexual Liberation are discovering the true love that this possible through a sincere gift of self. And many have been influenced by John Paul II and his truly deep approach to sexuality. By re-analyzing the problem of sexual morality, he has produced a defence of Christian sexual

59 ethics that is a different from previous approaches as an unhitched egg is from brand new chick. Absolutely faithful to what he received, he has subtracted nothing. Everything he says was there from the beginning -- through perhaps hidden, not fully understood. He has opened up Catholic sexual morality and marvellously revealed that what appeared hard and impenetrable is soft, living, lovely.

However, Pope John Paul II reminds us that true friendship, especially friendship in marriage, must be centred on the bond of a common aim. In marriage, that common aim involves the union of the spouses, the spouses' serving each other and helping each other grow in holiness, and the procreation and education of children. Our own individual preferences and agendas should be subordinated to these higher goods. Husband and wife must be subordinated to each other and to the good of their children, working to prevent any selfish individualism from creeping into their marriage. As a team, husband and wife work toward this common aim and discern together how best to use their time, energy, and resources to achieve those common goals of marriage. Without this common end, our relationships inevitably will fall into some form of using the person for our own benefit or pleasure.

If using a person as an object and allowing oneself to be used are contrary to human dignity and an abuse of freedom, then opposition to the Sexual Revolution and its Utilitarian view of the person, is not a sectarian belief but based on fundamental principles which can be defended in the secular marketplace of ideas. And in spite of everything else that people do -- all the ways in which they use others sexually or allow themselves to be used -- somewhere in the deepest part of their hearts is a desire for true love, a desire to be loved for themselves, a need to be able to trust the person they love. When this marvellous romantic adventure is compared to the user/usee relationships promoted by the Utilitarian sexual ethic, the bareness of Utilitarianism becomes obvious. The Utilitarian sexuality can never satisfy this deep need for love. Sooner or later, the reality of that one is being used or using another poisons the relationship.

As I have mentioned earlier, I have never made any vocational decision and for the time being, I am no planning on doing so. However, these readings made me rethink the kind of vows I need to make. They should not be necessarily attributed to marriage or to studying. A vow, in my opinion now, is something selfless that should benefit not only myself but also my own surroundings. It should ensure the common good of oneself as well as that of the people of the world while maintaining both one’s own dignity and the dignity of the human person. I am planning on making a new vow and have new commitments that would satisfy these conditions. Maybe the perfect vow that would make me rest assured that it fulfils these needs is my vow to become a more humanitarian a person, a person whose future is not only centred around academic success but on something that transcends it. I am still thinking of the nature of this vow, but I am working towards achieving my commitments on helping others and on seeking the common good of society before my own. I am getting enrolled in other organisations and associations. I am already a World Youth Alliance trainer and working as a consultant for many NGO's and still looking for new opportunities.

On the same context of the personal experience, I'm living on a particular vocation that makes me survive everyday; I maybe can't name it "a proper vow" since its creation was not by an ordinary decision.

This vocation started after a surgery that I have done at the age of 12. Due to some medical errors, the surgery was not considered as fully successful and after recovering, I was informed that probably I would experience amnesia (loss of memories) in the coming years. The medical staff advised me however, to do

60 activities in order to remember and keep my memory always refreshed up and one of their proposition was to write a diary. Although the idea was good, writing wasn't my cup of tea at the age. However, I was so passionate about music especially classical music; so it was my first day in music composition.

This story happened about 8 years ago. From that moment, I'm composing music each day, until now, to keep track of my daily life.

Such an experience made me create my proper definition of vocation, as a decision, an action that defines who you are, not only for a lifetime, but even after death. After passing hardships in my first years, I started working on sharing my music everywhere; from known faces of my country to the strangers on the bus. WHY? because I've arrived to a point, where I started reflecting my amnesia on my society and community. It's no longer me, the main victim of amnesia and the only one who can lose his memories, I'm afraid that one day, you will forget me: my friends, my colleagues, World Youth Alliance and the whole world will forget me if I didn't leave a strong impact on their lives and living experience. That's why, my interior shape led me to engage myself, to vocate myself, to Life.

Having a theoretical basis is only a step forward towards achieving the values of the human dignity in my own society and to make sure that it becomes implemented in the world. Making a change in the world should not be just an aim but also a means. The readings of John Paul II really impressed me and I am starting to look for a way to implement them in our society.

In a nutshell, WYA is more of an inspiration than a mere organisation. It is an inspiration to change, to betterment and to work. The greatest pleasure one can have is the ability to implement positive change in a step-by-step process that starts with the self, to the society and to the entire world as a final stage. Such an organisation that bases its theoretical foundation on different philosophical and religious theories is an organisation that would never risk being nullified. The readings have been a great pleasure to the mind and made me have different perceptions and beliefs. They tackled issues that did not seem to have a great importance in our society and suggested solutions to each issue presented. It has been such an amazing of an experience that I will do my best to develop it more and more.

Next challenge: CHANGE THE WORLD, MAKE IT A BETTER PLACE!

[1] World Youth Alliance, Track A Training book, p 169. This sentence is taken from the objectives of reading the 5th chapter of the book.

[2] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II [3] Spinello, A.R. “Re-Reading Love and Responsibility”. 2015 [4] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [5] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II.

61 [6] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [7] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [8] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [9] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [10] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [11] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [12] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [13] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [14] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [15] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [16] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [17] Wojtya,K. Love and Responsibility: 1981, Wegel, G. (1999, 2001). Witness to Hope: A Biography of Pope John Paul II. [18] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [19] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [20] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [21] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [22] Bentham. This is a concept created by Bentham in order to explain Utilitarianism and it means “calculation of happiness” [23] O’Leary, D. “How not to be Used: Love and Responsibility”; [24] O’Leary, D. “How not to be Used: Love and Responsibility”; [25] O’Leary, D. “How not to be Used: Love and Responsibility”; [26] O’Leary, D. “How not to be Used: Love and Responsibility”; [27] Lama,D. “Our Global Family”; Essence of the Heart Sutra: the Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings: Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama; translated and edited by Jinpa, G.T (2002) [28] Lama,D. “Our Global Family”; Essence of the Heart Sutra: the Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings: Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama; translated and edited by Jinpa, G.T (2002) [29] Lama,D. “Our Global Family”; Essence of the Heart Sutra: the Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings: Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama; translated and edited by Jinpa, G.T (2002) [30] O’Reilly, M.A (2010); Conjugal Chastity in Pope Wojtyla. [31] O’Reilly, M.A (2010); Conjugal Chastity in Pope Wojtyla. [32] Pieper, J. Learning How to See Again [33] Buttiglione,R. (2000); Karol Wojtya: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [34] Buber, M. I and Thou; translated by Smith, R.G. 1957

62 Said Ousaka: A Personal Reflection of WYA’s Impact on Reference to John Paul II's ideas

Said is an active member of the WYA National Committee in Morocco. As a trainer of the Certified Training Program, he has given trainings in over 10 CTP workshops and certified 18 trainers in a TOT (Training of Trainers) in Morocco. He was also a participant trainer in the Emerging Leaders in the Arab region and a coordinator of a mini WYA camp. Said is the recipient of the 2017 Viktor Frankl Award, an award that recognizes WYA members for their praiseworthy efforts in pursuing the mission of promoting human dignity.

Plan of the Essay

Part1: · Introduction to how I have been connected to WYA · How WYA shaped my life through developing the "HUMAN LENS" Part 2:

· Share my experience of Marriage as a vocation that I made thanks to WYA's impact in reference to John Paul II's ideas. · Other examples of personal experience (member of a global family/University experience) in reference to John Paul II's ideas. Part3:

· Next Step: implementing and reinforcing WYA's values (making vocations): 1 - Invest in my nuclear family; teach WYA's values in everyday life 2 - Be a model of a person who behaves in WYA language to inspire others 3 - Implement the Human Dignity Curriculum at schools in my country.

My relationship with the World Youth Alliance started in 2012. I came across the WYA website and I just loved the mission and goals it was founded for. I got inspired by the ideas it addresses and just decided to sign the Charter and become a member. Few months later, I started what used to be called Track-A training, now Certified Training Program. My deep understanding of the main ideas of the training made a big difference in my personal life. I really consider the connection I built with WYA as an important transitional point in my personal life including the way I think, the way I behave and acquiring new aspects of identity. The secret behind being a member with serious commitment to the WYA’s mission and goals is because my behaviors have become motivated by its values and, therefore, they became part of my identity; either by digging in the depth of myself and feed the hidden values or by adopting new ones that shaped my actual meaningful life. In my next few lines, I intend to examine the way by which WYA has shaped my capacity to see the world through "human lens," and the ways in which these lens were framed, in a particular way, by Wojtya's writing on marriage. I will examine this link in three stages: How WYA shaped my life through developing the "HUMAN LENS, how my personal experience (Marriage as example) was shaped by WYA in reference to John Paul II's ideas; and the Next Step: implementing and reinforcing WYA's values.

63 One of my colleagues at the Colloquium in Rome ended her presentation by stating that the person should live every single moment of their life looking into the meaning of their life. I was not surprised to find that her closing was actually the opening of my essay. I strongly believe that If WYA values don’t become part of who we are, and then they remain no more than readings/writings on papers. As members promoting Human Dignity, adopting WYA’s values should be reflected in our day-to-day practices with our surroundings, including nuclear family, friends, school mates, colleagues, neighbors, communities, societies, nations… It is a behavior more than a workshop for the purpose of certification.

Believing in Human Dignity as an objective intrinsic value in every single person regardless of who they are, makes you see the world from a broad perspective. It is what I call “Human being lens” that I use as a tool to see the other people as Human beings. The lens that melt color, religions, race, gender, sexual orientation, history, geography, affiliation… Wearing Human lens takes the person to a high level of humanity where all the differences are appreciated and respected and conflicts are just opportunities to know and break down obstacles between brothers and sisters and see each other clearly.

This globe is our home and is a shared place where we all live together in different geographical parts with different sets of norms and customs. Every people or nation has a different culture and people behave in a different way because of their cultural values and beliefs. The behaviors and values of the other become concerns for us when we consider them as weird things and we fall in a cultural projection where we judge behaviors of other people based on our values. This is where the feelings of hate start towards other people. This narrow-minded thinking builds walls of ignorance between people. Wearing Human lens allow us to see each other as humans with critical positive thinking without judging other people because everyone has a reason behind their behaviors. West African immigrants are everywhere in my country around the traffic light begging for few coins because of their reasons looking for a dignified life, a Syrian family is out there in my town because they have a reason looking for peaceful life and a vagabond is outdoor of my house looking for a piece of bread in the trash can because of his reason looking for the leftover to feed himself. Everybody has a reason behind struggling for a better life, the least I can do towards my sisters and brothers is to think about them positively, and if ever our eyes come across, just a smile in their face would be ideal. Looking to others as human beings widens my mind and enlarges my heart full of satisfaction towards myself.

The very narrow-minded thinking makes the circle of concerns bigger while the Human lens makes the circle of control bigger. It is under my control to accept others and consider the differences as a natural existence between humans. It allows me adopt human values and reject all the unhuman beliefs. Changing beliefs and values is not an easy thing but human lens make it possible.

The World Youth Alliance has given me a new birth as a human being. My behaviors motivated by the Human values impact positively my day-to-day interaction with my surroundings and inspire others. My connections have become larger and stronger and this is what makes my circle of influence even bigger and stronger while the circle of concerns has become smaller. This has given me an immunity against all the unhuman beliefs such hate, racism, refusing the others, using others for personal pleasure, dehumanizing others… because I cannot change people’s behaviors and attitudes, but for sure I can change mine and this is how my circle of control over things becomes bigger and stronger.

64 In the past, as an outcome of my society, I was brought up to see my color and my religion as the ultimate truth. I would never approach a non-Muslim person or make friendship with a homosexual person or even think of having a black wife. Human lens make me a mature person who accepts differences and believe that human beings are one family whose members have different interests and orientations. People, whose background, beliefs, sexual orientations, race, color, are different from mine, are my brothers and sisters and that doesn’t matter since each one of us is unique with respect and appreciation to our diversity as Human beings. The human lens make the person responsible of his actions and decision; with a free will as Karol Wojtya puts it in his in understanding of the human person. For him, the human person is a subject who fulfills himself through his actions and experience. Wojtya’s analysis emphasizes the true meaning of the moral and ethical dimensions of human existence. For him, human person has a free will and through this will, the person determines his actions through experience which becomes a part of who he is. It is inside a specific lived experience that human being makes decision of his actions with, of course, accountability and responsibility.

The ethical experience of the person emphasizes the free will of the person in knowing what is good and right and what is bad and wrong. It is in fact a mutuality of the reason and truth. On one hand, the person has a will to choose what to do or become, but he is accountable for his decisions, on the other hand. The Human lens makes it possible for the person to be and become who he is as a human being who shares so much concern and caring about all human beings. It is this sharing and caring that makes all human beings members of one global family.

In relation to the global family, I would like to shed light on a personal experience which reinforced my belonging to the global family.

Back in the late 2012, I traveled for the first time in my life out of my country for a conference in Lomé, the capital of Togo in Sahel Africa. The conference brought together a number of young people from all over Africa. As the days of conference were passing, I noticed that I was kind of being avoided by my colleagues during the break times and other informal interactions. I felt that there was something wrong going on with that. I tried to approach people to open conversations, but they just answered very briefly and ended the conversation. That frustrated me and I spent the first two nights in nightmares. I could not understand what on earth I did to be treated that way.

It was my CTP chapters instead[EW1] , which helped me keep my energy and enthusiasm for the conference. The one thing I kept thinking of was a way to positively be engaged with colleagues. The next morning, I tried to open conversations with different people no matter how short the conversations were, because my purpose was to get any hints or signs to understand the reason why my colleagues treated me the way they did. I met several colleagues and I realized, without getting any direct explanation for it, that people did not consider me being African since “I did not look like a real African.” What did that mean? Real African!? Is there real and fake African? Is that because of my color? Should I be black to be considered African? I was kind of shocked when one of colleagues threw his comment on me and just left without waiting for my answer (if that was a direct question). His comment or kind of question was “Are you really African?”

That was a big question which shook my mind and questioned my identity.

65 The question of my colleague helped me think about it from different angles. Is the stereotype about Africa being black? Are only black people who make Africa? I never realized that Africans too see Africa as one thing, as black continent where only black people live. Sitting in my room in the middle of a warm night thinking of the different question going around my head, an idea just came to my mind. Isn’t the answer to those questions in the lines of my CTP readings? Human Dignity? The global family? I think I got it! Let me try to explain what I am thinking of!

The next morning, and with high energy and enthusiasm, I asked the conference management for a 30-minutes activity after the formal sessions and requested that everybody needed to be part of it. I was lucky to be offered the icebreaker time before the afternoon session started.

I started the activity by bringing everybody in a circle. I handed down a piece of paper to each participant. I showed them a drawing I prepared earlier, which I called my “identity map”. The map showed a circle in the center with my name in it. Around the circle I drew different circles and linked each one with the central. In each circle, I wrote an aspect of identity that made who I am. I wrote Man, Moroccan, book reader, spiritual, straight, positive, amazing Speaker, Arabic speaker, married, son, brother, white… and I hided one aspect on purpose to show it later. I presented my map and told them this is me, all the aspects in the drawing make who I am. Then, I asked them to individually think of the aspects that make who they are and then draw their map which they will call map of their identity. Once they were done, I asked that each one to find a partner and share their maps to each other. The task was to look at the each other’s maps and then cross out all the aspects that both they had different. For example, a man and a woman share their map to each other, they needed to cross out the aspect of being “man” and “woman” because they are different and they needed to keep the similar aspects; if they put “married”, then they kept it. Then, I asked them to go around the room and find another partner and do the same, until everybody had chance to meet every single person in the room.

At the debriefing, I asked them about what they thought of the activity was like. Some shared that even people from same country are different from each other; other stated that even brothers would be different from each other in that activity. Some had all the aspects of their identities crossed out; others had few aspects uncrossed.

I wrapped up the activity by saying some had all their aspects crossed out because they limited themselves to a very narrow context, others had few aspects uncrossed because they widened a little bit themselves in a larger context. Then, I told them that I would suggest some aspects and they needed to decide if they agree that it applied to them or not. If so, they needed to add it to the map. I mentioned “African” and asked if they added it to raise their hands, and everybody did. Then I asked a staff member who worked at the hotel to join us (I had prepared him earlier) and shared the map of his identity to the group. The point is that being African aspect did not apply to him. Then another question was asked in there: what aspect did we need so that our friend could join us to be part of the team, what aspect that could everybody share and then a lady just said “Human Being”. “That’s the point lady, thank you”! I said.

I did not realize how magic the activity was until I found myself in the evening of the same day being in a restaurant in the downtown with a group of colleagues. I even continued the rest of the

66 conference evening finding myself in other rooms or having people in my room exchanging jokes and personal experiences.

The larger context you put yourself in the world is, the more open you become to accept the differences of others. The larger we think, the smaller the differences become. No matter who others are, black or white, Jewish, Christian or Muslim, man or woman, from my town or from the furthest corner in the globe, I widen the map of my identity where I share at least one aspect of every single Human Being where all the differences melt down. This is how WYA culture shaped my new identity as a member of the global family.

Linking back WYA’s impact on personal life, I would highlight my marriage experience as an example of the huge positive impact of the World Youth Alliance and especially the Karol Wojtya’s ideas.

In my culture, woman is considered as a creature to serve man. Marriage is man’s decision. Cultures shape the role of man and woman and each one should stick to their roles. Man is the master and woman needs to serve him either as mother, wife or sister. Decades ago, and in my little village in the mountains of the middle Atlas of Morocco, I remember weddings where a white piece of clothes with blood on it was carried over heads of men and women dancing crazily. As a kid, I could not understand the What and Why questions in my little head. Later in my life as I grew up, I learned that the blood on the piece of cloth is blood of a newly married bride who had just had her first sexual intercourse. Showing off the blood means the bride was virgin and this means a lot to her family and her community; it means pride and honor. If she was not virgin, no blood at her first sexual intercourse, that means all the shame would be put on her and her family, no one could imagine her destiny. The honor of the family is summarized in the blood of virginity of the girl. In my culture, everything is right, thinking differently is a sin! Man has right to choose the wife and decides the divorce if he desires. Man chooses when to have sex if he desires, and refuses if he doesn’t. Man can punish his wife by stopping the sexual relationship with her for a desired period of time if she does anything unpleasant for him.

I was wondering if that was right. My cultural values concealed me that I could not think out of the box. That was hard to do. But as I grew up, I started daring to think critically about the situation of woman in my community. I thought that marriage relationship should be different because it looked unfair to the woman being a creature satisfying the excitement of the man and serve him for his own pleasure. Such a kind of marriage is a relationship of subject to object, a person to a creature, where man makes pleasure as the aim of the relationship with his wife. Man is being served and has sexual intercourse to satisfy his desire using his wife as a means of obtaining the pleasure. Those were big questions in my mind that needed answers. I always wondered why the bride should treat the groom that way for the sake of showing her blood on a piece of cloth to show off the pride of the family.

Woman is a Human being as man and love is part of both. Being engaged in a marriage relationship should be built on a mutual love and should become part of themselves; as stated Wojtya “Love is exclusively the portion of human person” (1) (P.P 28-29). It is a human thing that is intrinsic and both man and woman share for a common good of both of them and for newly founded family. It is a human to human relationship. Marriage is a relationship that should put love as the basis of it where “a man and a woman are united in such a way that they become in a sense one flesh, one common subject, as it were, of sexual life” (2)

67

In such a relationship, man and woman share the same end with self-giving to each other, the end of a sexual act that could lead to building a family.

Karol Wojtya recognized the consistency of Christ and the Church as the ultimate truth in terms of the Holiness of the "marriage relationship". The real value of marriage has been always the same since Eve and Adam’s relationship as the first marriage on earth. It is, however, the todays interpretations and opinions of people that deviate the real meaning of marriage. In ”theology of the body” presentations, Wojtya talked about the external stream which believed in the purity of the soul and that the body is evil, and attention must only be in the spirit and must despise the body. In this understanding human being can do whatever he wants with his body and this does not matter as long as his soul is kept pure. He, then, highlighted the positive role of Christianity in fighting this teaching by focusing on the value of the body as well in alignment with the soul referring to Christ who chose the body, to be in the image of a human being as a way to be close to the mankind and to show the holiness of the body.

Wojtya understands marriage as the continuity of the human race through children and it must be rooted in mutual love and NOT seen as a utility. Marriage is a holy relation that leads into a family where the body of the person is no longer his or hers, but it is a belonging of the spouse.

In addition to the theories of valuing the soul and devaluing the body, there was a concern that people lose their love and interest in God once they get married because their interest is directed more towards each other instead. In his response to such a concern, Wojtya stated that the single life is as much a gift and calling of God as is the married life. For him, marriage is good through which we obtain the holy inheritance and the continuation of heavenly rewards. Being single gives more opportunity to human beings to draw near to God and it is more valid for them to concentrate fully on behavior in a way that is more valid. And even in the Holy Quran God states: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)." And Quran also states: "And of His signs is this: He created for you helpmeets from yourselves that ye might find rest in them, and He ordained between you love and mercy. Lo! Herein indeed are portents for folk who reflect. (30:21).

In all the several confusing questions I experienced as I was growing up in my society, I questioned the way woman is treated in her wedding -and without doubt in all other aspects of life- and with a powerful inspiration of the religious preach that emphasize the importance of marriage built on love, respect and mercy is highlighted in the teachings of religion, I decided bravely to shape my own personal experience of marriage.

I decided to think out of the box and break the rule of dehumanizing the man and woman alike. Teaching kids, males and females, such norms means dehumanizing them as well, and both are victims of the cultural norms. My intrinsic motivation to apply such principles on my own personal life was a big challenge. The big challenge was in confronting the society as a whole.

68 My wife and I expressed the real image of love protected by marriage as a relationship of human to human, man to woman, subject to subject sharing the same end. My own experience is totally different from the common marriage in my society. It is a marriage that is built on mutual love, respect and self- giving to each other without conditions; rather than using my wife as a means or a thing to satisfy my excitement and pleasure. However, she is a human person who is an essential part in our relationship the same as I am, and our purpose is getting united for a common good for the best of our benefit and the benefit of our children.

(1) Karol Wojtya, “Love and Responsibility” (P.30). (2) Karol Wojtya, “Love and Responsibility” (P. 28-29)

In my culture, couples rarely talk about plans together. Usually the man is the one who does it. Most conversations among couples are about financial concerns. Unlike this tradition, my early conversation with my wife about the marital intercourse because this sensitive topic usually scared women on the first night of the marriage. I intentionally wanted to involve my wife in the conversation to be fully involved to learn about each other’s preferences and how to please each other by knowing about our excitement including reaching the sexual climax. It was a big achievement to discuss such a sensitive topic in my culture especially across genders. Many field studies showed that a high percentage of divorce happen because of sexual intercourse issues, which nobody dares to talk about to the partner, family or even to the judge or lawyer at the court. It is a taboo and shame and talking about it is definitely unacceptable. Couples sacrifice their marriage for the sake of cultural norms and traditions. WYA has had a big role in reinforcing my values in thinking freely out of my cultural norms and got the confidence to choose for my own life and make such a brave decision.

Another personal story about the positive impact of WYA is related to the early of 2000s for which the ideas of the CTP gave meaning to different period of times in my life. As I was in the middle of the CTP, I found answers to many of the questions that were circulated in my mind during my university times.

Reading and discussing the Solidarity Movement of Poland made me think of a couple of questions that remained unanswered for a period of time. There was a student Union to voice out students’ concerns to the University administration. It was a union that was represented by all of students and the representatives’ role was to listen to our concerns, discuss them and communicate them to the University management. Each time, we had to go into demonstrations as means of pressure to be heard and the representatives led the demonstrations. Kinds of issues were things like quality and quantity of food at the restaurant or we demonstrated against what we called “the invasion of the police at the University”. The hidden part of the union is that each representative held an ideology and there was a whole group of students of their ideology supporting them. There were Marxists, Communists, and Islamists… During my whole university time, I remember there was no single moment where the union achieved a victory for the students concerns. Every time, we saw different groups of students fought each other with weapons calling out their ideological slogan and the focus of the demonstration just deviated into ideological purposes. I always questioned myself why they were calling out such slogasn while our concern was “getting good food”? Did it require a communist system or an Islamic government to make us good food at the University restaurant? That was stupid in my opinion!

69 The Polish revolution inspired me a lot, it has had the answers I needed to my questions at the University. Our concerns and demands addressed to the Student Union melt down in the ideological conflict and the focus shifted from the core demands to the imposition of ideologies. The management took advantage of the ideological conflicts and never responded to us. It would be only our chance to be heard if all students kept their ideologies aside and focus on the core students’ demands that our voice would be heard. Similar to the Polish movement, where all the Polish kept aside their ideologies and beliefs and united together for the dignity of the person that they achieved a historical victory against the totalitarianism. This history which marked the history of Poland started with the set of its foundations by the famous words of Pope John Paul II when he stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s, and he said, “Be not afraid... Let the Spirit descend. Let the Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.” His powerful words were directed to the world, but actually the Polish people with a powerful inspiration knew the Pope was addressing them. These powerful words inspired different categories of the Polish people and gave birth to the Solidarity movement. His visit to Poland in late 70s energized the people even more and his sermon about dignity that every single person is given by God reminded them that Dignity is what makes them who actually they are. He also highlighted how the totalitarianism demolished the Human Dignity by curtailing the freedom of religion of people. His powerful words inspired people to strengthen their spiritual faith and that was the core of the Solidarity Movement.

My hope, one day I can give a speech at my University about the Movement of Poland. This inspiring movement, for me, remains a strong example of how Human Dignity could unify the human beings with their diversity in terms of background, regions, and ethnicities… to overcome the difficulties of life.

Analyzing the ideas of WYA as abstract concepts and bring them to the concrete, then link them to personal experiences has become a motivational factor for me to change the world. Even though changing the world seems big, I believe that the small changes make a big difference. Changing the world as a vocation has become for me very feasible and applicable through three main levels: myself being a model to my surroundings, invest in my nuclear family and implement the Human Dignity Curriculum at schools in my country.

In the given circumstances of todays’ happenings in the world, I believe that small things one does in everyday life can definitely have a positive impact on others. My experience in my day-to-day conversations with people proved that my behaviors, sayings, and thoughts shaped by WYA have a great impact on my surroundings. Influencing culture is definitely an effective way to changing the world as Hrvoje Vargi[1], WYA staff member, said in one of his explanations of the Impact of WYA in his life. Many times my friends acknowledged how inspired they were by my behaviors and the way I express ideas about different topics. Addressing topics of Humanity and highlighting the human part of every situation I talk about, has made my language universal and inspiring. I remember how a friend of mine called me in the middle of the night to express how my gesture towards a man in the street made him cry. I could not remember the gesture but my friend reminded me that while we were stopping at the red traffic light and there was a person begging for money and I just opened the door to shake his hand addressing him “brother” and asked him for forgiveness because I did not have anything to offer him. My friend said “I saw happiness on the face of the person caused by the gesture even without giving him money”. “I know the money means a lot for him, but the way you made him smile and made him feel himself as a person with dignity, you just sparkled a light in his heart and made him feel a sense of belonging to you as a brother. This made me cry”, my friend said. This gesture was not on the list of my to-do’s actually, but it

70 just came spontaneously as a personal behavior. I realized then that adopting WYA’s values and demonstrating them in everyday actions, no matter how small they are, will definitely make a big difference.

The colloquium is a very special event in my life. The time I was asked to highlight the impact of WYA in my life was an opportunity to compile and organize different experiences in my life that happened to me and start thinking of the future ones. Having an 11-months baby girl is a gift from God and having this opportunity of shaping my life by WYA’s ideas is a gift from God as well. Educating my daughter about the WYA values is another way to change the world. She will be a future Human Dignity advocate in her actions and with her surroundings. In my country, the educational system teaches us what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do. It builds walls between us and the other through affirming the stereotypes and false ideas about people. Despite the reality of the education provided at school, my wife and I made a vocation to reinforce the Human being values in our daughter’s education. We need a daughter who will be able to differentiate between what is wrong and what is right. A daughter who will appreciate other people, and make no difference between her school mates or friends based on color, gender, region or race… A daughter who will believe in the Human Dignity and one whose actions will be framed with a free will. A child who will choose which book to read and choose wisely on what to watch on TV or navigate on the Internet. An adult who will critically analyze what stories are told about others in the media and search for the truth. A person who will respect the other and inspire others to respect her. A person who will live the meaningfulness of her life as a Human Being in respect of her own human dignity and the dignity of others. In a formal way, she will be part of the kids taking the lessons of the Human Dignity program at schools. It is a vocation that I made in my life to work on having the HDC implemented at schools so that our future generations will have opportunities to a better and deep self-development to the understanding of the human person which will lead them to human flourishing, this opportunity which will help them to understand and develop healthy habits, good decision-making skills, and a strong sense of meaning and purpose. Future Human Dignity advocates at the personal level as well as social and global levels.

[1] Hrvoje Vargić is a trainer at the Synod colloquium and current Regional director of Europe Office

71 Angel de la Flor: The Purposes Angel took the regional internship with the WYA Asia Pacific office in 2013. She volunteered in the WYA Asia Pacific Emerging Leaders Conferences in 2013 and 2014. She was also a delegate in the 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women representing the WYA Youth at the United Nations. Angel represented the Asia Pacific region in the 2014 International Solidarity Forum.

“What is the meaning and purpose of your life?”

This was the big question that was brought to the table during my despidida or farewell lunch with one of my seniors. Unanticipated, perhaps inappropriate for me to ask on a supposedly professional meeting, this kind of dialogue with my chief supervisor was intentional and necessary after I have worked with him for a long time. He is a man that I have always looked up to – passionate, skillful, responsible; grounded and humble in spite of his drawn out experience and expertise in the humanitarian and development sector. I initiated with permission, to learn more about his personal stance and viewpoint in life for our final conversation, prior to my resignation from the organization that I worked for the last three years. He was twice my age, which entitled me with every right to be inquisitive, agog, and of course, inspired. It was a thrill to engage a conversation with someone who has spent half of his life in the most perilous places of the earth; working for fugitives in refugee camps, being caught in crossfires amidst civil wars and aiding victims of the worst crises on the record.

The question above was more than just a question I posed on him; but it was also my masked response and reaction to certain arguments that he disclosed as an avowed and professed atheist. It was my assumption that his stance was a result of him being a firsthand witness to horrible real life scenarios, human suffering and afflicted situations throughout his career. However, he mentioned that such conviction was a decision he deliberately made when he was only sixteen years old, long before he even encountered the tough reality of his chosen work. From our dialogue, I learned that an atheist, while not generally, primarily claims the following: 1) a higher being is nonexistent, everything is force of nature 2) religion or any form of belief system caters division among people; 3) a human person, from a scientific standpoint – is only one particular species among the animal kingdom; 4) essential human values or emotion (i.e. love) are a set of behaviors or codes of conduct for socialization and reproduction – a process both natural and unique to every species; 5) one’s fate and destiny lies in one’s own will, power and reason 6) human life is transitory, subject to mortality, to nature and to an ever fleeting and unknown reason.

So I asked him, “What is the meaning and purpose of your life?” “I live, and I die. There is really nothing on the other side...”

On the other end of the table, I contained all the perplexity and bewilderment I felt towards his answer. I uphold utmost respect for people and their choices, no matter how dissimilar they are to mine. Not to sequester this conversation exclusively on atheism; today, our generation is witnessing manifolds of voices and opinions more than ever that invoke confusion and misconception on the understanding of one’s self, one’s purpose and one’s relationship with life and the world in general. I realize that this is one of the root issues to the many problems that young people today: meaninglessness or the lack of purpose and vision for their being.

72 The primary objective of this essay is to share my reflections, explore my experiences and assertions towards faith, life’s meaning and purpose and the proper understanding of a human person in the context of the arguments stated above. The answer to the question posed above, echoes significant consequence and outcome to various respects and areas of living. In this essay, we seek to find and examine the Purpose, that translate in our quest for a full life, thriving relationships and successful discovery of one’s own vocation. In order to pursue these, the essay draws from a personal understanding of one’s self and of a human person in general. The quest for Purpose drives us to live out a full life. Purpose can only be found in the proper understanding of one’s self, of others and of God (Ultimate Reality). A person who settles to be blinded from his or her own purpose, defeats and squanders his or her potential, and all the gifts the life has endowed and offered to him or her. Moreover, this is with reference to the key principles instilled and influenced by World Youth Alliance.

I. The Purpose of Living

“What is the meaning and purpose of your life?” rhetorically asks who you are as a person. What is your existence for? The only way to find out what you are here for is by comprehending and recognizing who you are to begin with. This seeks to understand and examine the life of a human person in light of truth and purpose of meaningful existence. While there are individual and specific purposes for one’s own being, there is a necessity to acknowledge of the ultimate purpose for the life of a human person.

My mentor once shared a motivation to me when I was still studying in the university that I could never forget: “You are valuable, thus you will do valuable things. You matter, and you will do things that also matter.” I came to understand and realize this further after I joined World Youth Alliance-Asia Pacific as a member and intern in 2013 right after graduation.

The World Youth Alliance Charter states that every human person possesses an intrinsic dignity and has an inalienable right to life. This intrinsic dignity is the foundation of all human rights[1]. Dignity is inherent to mankind, divinely endowed by God to man, whom He made him worthy of value and honor. Dignity in its original meaning pertains to “high rank or position”. This attests to mankind being set apart from and made the crowning glory of all creation, made in the likeness and image of God. [2] In Karol Wojtya’s philosophical reflections, he highlights that human beings are the only creatures aware of their own being, analyze their experiences, have sense of ethics and moral values and are capable of judgment. [3] We have judicial sense or our consciousness towards what is right and wrong, aware of what is good and evil, what is justice and injustice - all of which are nonexistent to all other creation. In the WYA Charter, it also states that nobody or nothing, be it an entity or a community, can grant or rescind human dignity.[4] This accounts for our intolerance towards any form of violation against this dignity. To simply put this, human life is costly and we defend it with all our beings; whether it is for someone who is terminally ill, disabled, or unborn. Meanwhile, we could remain totally unaffected when a chicken or swine’s life is put on the line. A human person is sacred, of highest worth and value and has perpetually intrinsic dignity. I have a personal favorite from the passage of the Bible that captures this wonder towards human beings. The Psalmist David once wrote a prayer to God:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You have crowned him with glory and honor…you have given him dominion over the works of Your hand; you

73 have put all things under his feel, all sheep and oxen, and all the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fishes of the see, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”[5]

Another facet unique to being a human being is our spirituality – our capability to relate with God. The understanding of “who am I”, is only complete and fulfilled in the acknowledgment that he is created in the likeness and image of his Creator, endowed with an infinitely divine value. In one of the reading materials for the Certified Training Program of WYA, Charles Malik’s Man in the Struggle for Peace elaborates a deeper understanding of man’s relationship with a Creator and the meaning of his existence.[6] He elaborates that in order for man to effectively find his being, in order to do things that matter in the world (i.e. peace making), he must first recognize and acknowledge his natural condition – a struggling caring being in search of peace. I personally share with the ontological sentiments of Malik, whereas he stated that a human person is only able to be at peace, and to make peace when he has established a spiritual house at a personal level through ‘a right relationship with God – the ground of being and existence’.[7] Meanwhile, we are faced with a challenge as many post-modern and neoliberal ideas that reject theism, and the truth of this Creator-Creation relationship. Such as in my own encounter, these ideas are increasingly widespread and many people today have opted to settle in their unbelief. As Malik puts it, when one thinks that with pride, intellect and self-sufficiency are the ground of his being, he only deludes himself. “A proud and self-sufficient being, turning his back on his ground and origin, can never make peace.” He further asked: “How can man, forsaking his origin, disowning his ground, hugging himself alone, ever attain peace?”

Another endowment to human beings is its capability to love. In the human family, there is a strong sense of brotherhood, solidarity and kinship. We are the only creatures who are able to make commitments, fulfill our vows, and create meaningful relationships. It is said that a man is a communal being – built for relationships such as in the form of family, marriage, friendship and community. We thrive through cooperation and collaboration, and immensely succeed when we work with other people. We are sustained by the love, care and support of the people around us. We morally grow when we learn to serve others and live our lives selflessly. Apart from our relationships, any person is proven to deteriorate in isolation.

Another unique gift to a human being is the aesthetic sense. We are essentially drawn to beauty, and have every capability to create and curate them. This sets us apart from animals as we don’t find too many monkeys creating Mona Lisa. Our delight for arts, music; all the emotions and passion that come with them make us more human. Our sensibility for beauty and our encounters with it make us come more alive. All throughout history, we attest to many artistic phenomena informing us that human creativity knows no bounds and limits. We put them in words, in images, in songs, in structures; this ability is unique and exclusive to humans alone. We are capable to appreciate and be in our highest sense of awe and wonder. This response is in our essence. This must testify and attest to the Creator’s genius mind through every mystery written behind each point of creation -- from the beautiful sunset, the infinite breath of the ocean, to mind-blowing geological formations and to the infinite vastness of the visible universe.

One can only begin to marvel in the glory of God in man as His creation – where the intricacies both at micro and macro perspective could not be ignored. Life has given us enough evidence that there is a meaning and purpose to our very existence. There is not one replica of a single dignified human being amidst vast billions. We bear our worth and value for a purpose. We are capable to live meaningfully when

74 we begin to responsibly steward the very life, full of commission, which was gifted upon us. We become most human when we continue to bear the image of God. Personally, I thrive securely in this humility: to be identified as a creation of the Almighty, created with utmost dignity, subject to both His sovereignty and love; and privileged with a responsibility to live a life worthy of my unique calling and purpose.

II. The Purpose of Freedom

There is a huge difference between living and merely existing. I once have been told to do more than just exist. In one of the arguments presented at the beginning of this essay, it highlighted the truth and acknowledgement that this life is subject to mortality and is only transitory. Now, we may ask, how should this affect a person’s relationship towards life and the world? In a series of personal experiences, I have had a life changing realization of how privileged I am to have been granted of life, and how short and fleeting this life is. I had been confronted with a very serious grief in the wake of the deaths of two of my closest loved ones. They were siblings - my cousins whom I treated as my own sister and brother. I lived with their family for a couple of years and spent almost all of my childhood with them. At the very young age of 16 and 7, they both passed away within one year. The sister was someone I considered as a close companion as she was only a year younger than me, and we attended the same high school. The brother was someone I had the opportunity to take care and watch grow ever since he was a baby. I was 17 years old, when the sister had anaphylactic shock, was comatose for more than a month and died eventually. During that same time, the brother was on his third year of battling with cancer, which was diagnosed when he was only 4. I slept in the hallways of the hospital and stayed with their family all throughout the process, I had held these people on their deathbeds until their bodies had lost all the warmth. During that dark period of my life, I had my first hand experience of the harsh reality of life. This life is short and can be taken away from us at any given moment. I share this experience with you because it became a turning point and birthing place of an important commitment. The gift of that experience was my subsequent strong commitment and intent to live my life fully and waste not a single moment of it.

It became my life goal to live a life fully. That at the very end of this life, I may be able to say that it was a life lived so well, so worthy of existence and the privilege to walk on the face of the earth. Death convinced us to live meaningfully. I wanted to become anything and do everything. With this commitment, I asked myself, how does one measure a life that is lived well? How does one quantify “full” in terms of a human life? Many young people in our generation today have also came to this realization on the basis of their own unique experiences. This commitment seeks to answer both the Why and How of living. Why does one seek to live life fully, and how?

Life has gifted us with full authority, control and freedom to make something out of our days. Our life is up to us. We get to call the shots. We are the ones to decide on how we are going to spend our life. Our being comes with human freedom and free will. As we go through our life stages, time unfolds before our midst and it calls us to make many decisions and choices along the way. We hold the pen to our life stories and we have the privilege to write on our own life’s pages – however we want it to be. I would like to highlight once more that this gift of freedom in our being sets us from all other creation. We are able to respond with positive actions and decisions. Unlike animals, we do not only react to our instincts and inclinations. The reason why I stress the importance of this is because our gift of freedom is the very key to live in the fullness of life.

75

First, we must learn to understand the nature of our freedom. I would like to draw reference from the ideas I learned from World Youth Alliance on the definition of freedom. From George Weigel’s Two Ideas of Freedom, he shared two schools of thought on freedom. The first understanding of freedom is called the ‘freedom for excellence’, which was described as the following:

Freedom for excellence, derived from the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a means to human excellence, to human happiness, to the fulfillment of human destiny. It is the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit… Freedom is the means by which, exercising both our reason and our will, we act on the natural longing for truth, for goodness, and for happiness that is built into us as human beings. Freedom is something that grows in us, and the habit of living freedom wisely must be developed through education, which among many other things involves the experience of emulating others who live wisely and well. On St. Thomas's view, freedom is in fact the great organizing principle of the moral life – and since the very possibility of a moral life (the capacity to think and choose) is what distinguishes the human person from the rest of the natural world, freedom is the great organizing principle of a life lived in a truly human way. That is, freedom is the human capacity that unifies all our other capacities into an orderly whole, and directs our actions toward the pursuit of happiness and goodness understood in the noblest sense: the union of the human person with the absolute good, who is God.[8]

From this definition and explanation, it emphasized that freedom must always come alongside of truth. Where truth is not relative and there are absolute moral grounds for our freedom to be exercised. Freedom is embedded in the vision that a human person is capable to intend what is good and right -- not only for himself, but most especially for others.

Contrary to this notion of freedom, he shares another school of thought, derived from the ideas of William of Ockham, the ‘freedom for indifference’[9]:

“Freedom is simply a neutral faculty of choice, and choice is everything, for choice is a matter of self-assertion, of power. Will is the defining human attribute.”

“Freedom, for Ockham, has little or no spiritual character. The reality is autonomous man, not virtuous man, for freedom has nothing to do with goodness, happiness, or truth. Freedom is simply willfulness.”

“Freedom can attach itself to any object, so long as it does not run into a superior will, human or divine. Later in the history of ideas, when God drops out of the equation, freedom comes to be understood in purely instrumental or utilitarian terms.”

In this perspective, freedom is seen as the right to do anything and everything that a person wills, with no sense of judgment, and without any regard to the consequences towards one’s life or others’. Freedom is reduced to a person’s will and power. How is this idea of freedom translated in the lives of many young people today? I would like to cite a common example of this understanding of freedom. We have popularized the notion of You Only Live Once aka “YOLO”, particularly in the youth subculture. This idea simply permits one to do anything and everything, without counting any costs,

76 without any form of reason, and go to the extremes of choices since he or she only lives once. Here, freedom is self-seeking, self-affirming and discounts the interests of others. This is an example of freedom of indifference.

In order for us to live our lives fully, we must have a correct understanding of human freedom. It must take into consideration all the gifts and potentials of a person, one of which is a person’s sense of “Responsibility” – the ability to choose our response. This concept was perfectly highlighted in one part of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. He shares that in spite of the nature of evil, both in the world and in a human beings depravity, one cannot point fingers and point the blame to his or her circumstance. In his testament to all the trials and hurdles faced in the concentration camp, he had the determination and persistence to be free. He wrote:

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”[10]

We can live for our ideals and values. While we may never come close to the horrible fate of entering gas chambers, Frankl used this as a reference point – we have the personal responsibility, a power in our everyday lives. Whatever our circumstance and condition puts us in, we can choose to be free. Freedom is in our being and freedom comes from within. This truth and understanding must transcend all across the many areas and respects of our lives – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social.

In my intent and commitment to live life fully – I use freedom as the guiding principle and foundation for ‘intentional living’. What does it mean to live freely and fully? How do we live freely? To live life to the full, we must realize that we are of value and we are destined for a unique vocation and calling. Our freedom must compel us to seek a path that does not settle for anything less than what our dignity deserves. Our freedom sets us on the track whereas we do not engage in anything that can hinder and hold us back from our destiny or vocation. Our freedom must encourage us to create bridges of meaningful relationships with others and calls us to become self-giving beings. It must nurture our ability to love others and serve common good. As in Karol Wojtya’s words, “We are free so that we can love freely, and thus truly.”[11]

A life is being lived to the full when we are free to maximize our gifts and talents, to hone our character, become the best version of ourselves, and are able to extend all of these to others. Life is being lived fully when it is gifted to others - filled of love and has fully experienced being loved, enjoined in human family and community.

III. The Purpose of Relationships

The World Youth Alliance’s Declaration on the Human Person highlighted the act of ‘self- gift’. In self-giving, one ‘answers the question Who Am I through the experience of love.’[12] A human being is a relational being, created and designed to thrive in relationships. Love is what binds and sustains us in the human family and relationships. Contrary to the arguments presented in the beginning of this

77 essay, genuine love is not merely substances and chemicals in the psyche that aid species into socialization and reproduction.

Love, in its truest sense, must be viewed as an evidence of another endowment of the Almighty that affirms our dignity. Karol Wojtya defined Love, as ‘an expression of personal responsibility, responsibility to another human being, and responsibility to God.’ What is genuine love and how are we to love others? How can we have the ability to put others before ourselves? How can we demonstrate genuine selflessness and self-giving all throughout our life?

Relationship with God

The ability to Love is derived from the author of Love and the Love Himself – God. One of the attributes of the Creator, in Christian and Biblical tradition, is that He is Love. Jesus Christ, when asked by his disciples of the Greatest Commandment, he answered that it was to “Love the Lord your God with all your strength, mind and soul”[13]; succeeded by the command to “Love your neighbors as you love yourself.”[14] These two are the summary of the Law and the commandments. One of the attributes of the God of the Bible, is that He is ‘compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.’[15] As we often hear and say: “God is Love.” As a Christian, my understanding of Love is grounded on the Gospel of Christ. This Love has been the central message the Christian tradition. It is an account of God’s redemption, deliverance and forgiveness for His people. God’s justice and absolute holiness requires atonement and sacrifice for sins – the root of evil in the heart of a fallen man. In this moral separation from a Holy God, man in his sinfulness could not atone for and save himself; therefore, God sent His only Son to become the atoning sacrifice, the lamb who shall take away the sins of the world; unblemished and He who was without sin became sin for man to pay the sin’s penalty of death. God’s Love, in this sense, is unconditional, life-laying, sacrificial and self-giving in the form of the body and blood of Christ on the cross. As our willing response, we owe God the honor and worship. Personally, more than just my ground of belief and faith, my being delights in that flawless love. I came to a realization that the primary purpose of the human beings’ ability to love is for us to love God in return and can have a relationship with Him in our lives.

If God is the ultimate source of our Love, we will never run out of the capacity to extend ourselves to others. We will grow to learn how to love as God loves; we will bear the fruits of His Spirit: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…’[16] We must honor God and put Him in the center of our relationships. When we first love God, we also learn to love His people.

Relationship with Others

The Certified Training Program with WYA taught me an invaluable lesson that helped me understand how I should relate with others. Drawing reference from the philosophical work of Martin Buber’s I and Thou[17], one of WYA’s key messages for young people is to recognize one another as personal subjects. Our interactions must affirm the dignity of each other. We must learn to create an I-You relationship with the people around us. In this relationship, one must perceive each other’s unity of being. Whereas the I is encountering a subject, and not merely experiencing the other as an object. In this mode of engagement, it unifies two subjects in a mutual dialogue, and strengthened human relationship. The I-

78 You relationship shares a sense of responsibility, commitment, care and love. Buber also described another mode of engagement, which is the I-It relationship. Here, the I treats the other as an It or an object. The I- It relationship analyzes and examines the other being as an object, and perceived in isolated qualities or parts of a thing. The I fails to see the other as a whole being. It is necessary to take note of Buber’s reflections, as this is a common weakness in our engagements and relationships. One fact that cannot be denied is our inclination and tendency to be so self-absorbed, self-enclosed and treat ones self as the only subject of experience. Whether we are aware of it or not, at one point in our lives, we find ourselves in the I-It mode of existence in his life.

In the Christian tradition, the teachings of Jesus Christ commanded His disciples to “Love your neighbors as you love yourself.” In the Bible, the instructions for ‘One Another’, such as “Love one another”, “Bear one another’s burdens”, “Forgive one another.”, have been used for over 100 times in the New Testament alone, mostly written by the Apostle Paul.

Today, one of the greatest challenges and battles faced by our society are in the areas of human relationships. We must not underestimate the effect of the qualities of our interpersonal relationships. In them, we either breed or promote a culture that has ripple effect in our society at large. Many social problems such as bullying, depressions, suicide, divorce; sexual utilitarianism, xenophobia, racism and warfare can be accounted to the root issue of relational dysfunction. These issues transcend time, generations, space and all levels of our society – from private households to national and global borders. It can occur among individuals, families, organizations, communities and governments. There are many governments around the world that have problematic understanding of the value of persons, in which human dignity is violated in their policies and approaches of governance. Serious consequences and problems are at hand and are created when people fail to see the value and have flawed understanding of the dignity of a person.

As young people, there are many simple ways we can do to strengthen the human family. The positive and thriving culture we create will have long lasting effects for the generations to come. World Youth Alliance passionately promotes solidarity among its members and the youth in all human relationships. In WYA’s Declaration on Solidarity, solidarity is defined as ‘the unified commitment of persons to live and work in the truth of who we are and the pursuit of the common good’.[18] It is a foundation for sustainable development and the building of just and free societies. Today, there are many positive actions that can be taken and done by the young people to promote solidarity. One of the inspiring and notable examples I have personally encountered was one of my friends from India created an online platform to promote dialogue with the youth communities in Pakistan. In spite of political tensions and conflicts between the two countries, these groups of young people create bridges and connections that may promote peace and understanding. In the same manner, collaboration for many other useful projects can be done to strengthen the human family.

In our individual and personal lives, we must commit to uphold and honor the institutions of family and marriage. We must put our family in our most consequential priority that could not be traded for career, money or anything materialistic. We protect the family and marriage by engaging in God-honoring and person-centered interpersonal relationships, through maintaining purity, uprightness and chastity. From Wojtya’s Love and Responsibility he elaborates that chastity is not merely a prohibition, rather its must be seen “as the ‘Integrity of love’, or the virtue to love others as a person.”[19] We must be

79 intentional in our end-goal of building a healthy and thriving marriage and family in our commitment, should one deem it to be in his or her vocation.

The ultimate purpose of human relationships is for a human person to have and to be a recipient and beneficiary in his act of self-giving. The meaning and purpose of one’s life and being is fulfilled in giving love to and in being loved by others. This principle is universal and applies to all levels of human relationship. I would love to share the writings of Viktor Frankl pertaining to the love that sustained him, when we he was trying to survive the agonies inside the Concentration Camp:

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” [20]

IV. The Purpose of Reason, Passion and Conviction

One important aspect of our life seeks to answer the question of our vocation, calling and direction. All throughout our seasons, we will find ourselves asking: Where is this life headed? What is my end goal? What path should I take? What’s next?

For most of us, we even start asking children, as young as they are, of what they want to become when they grow up as a way to cast a vision of direction in them. The process begins at a young age, and we are being educated, trained, and equipped to function and contribute well to our society. Our parents would sacrificially invest in our future. This sense of vision, or the yearning to know what tomorrow has in store for us is a unique attribute that was exclusively endowed to human beings. As the King Solomon writes in the book of Ecclesiastes, God has set eternity in the heart of a man.[21] We all can attest to our essential need for Hope. Now, we are all ought to ask: How must a person fulfill and live up to his hopes? How are we supposed to face tomorrow? How are we ought to respond to all the uncertainty that life brings?

I suppose that a person make hundreds and hundreds of decisions each day. From things that are as mundane and personal as choosing the best clothes to wear, to big and consequential decisions that involve family, studies and work. These series of decisions, no matter how little or big, make up the entire narrative and account of one’s life. But if we were to ask, how do we come up with these decisions? What goes on inside of us – our hearts and our mind – to be able to make our choices?

A human being is designed for reason, conviction and passion. As we approach human destiny and life’s uncertainty: we operate through our mind, heart and soul. Once again, these things set us apart from all other creation: our reason, or our ability to discern and perceive sound and intelligible judgment; our passion, or the ability to contain deep-set fervor and strong emotion toward certain object of interest; our conviction, or the capacity to believe and accept something with certainty as truth. With these three, a person is able to face tomorrow and live out life to its fullest. It is my realization that the best decisions I have ever made in life have always been brought about when there is balance among logic, love and faith.

80

To elaborate further, I want to cite from an experience I had several years ago. As young as sixteen years old, I had to decide which course and career path should I take as I began with my University application. More than just a requirement for my future degree, I was aware that that decision is going to set a significant direction for my life. There were many variables for such decision – my personal strengths, my skills and ability, my dreams, and of course, the many practical side of things – the reality of the real world. Eventually, I decided to choose a social science course, particularly International Relations in order to pursue my dreams of becoming a Foreign Service Officer or a Diplomat in the future. My highest aim and goal at that time was to pass the most prestigious and most difficult examination in the country, Philippine Foreign Service Examination (FSOE), deemed as the toughest due to its average passing rate of less than 1- 2%.

One of my mentors who was a sheer realist, informed me of potential disappointments that I might face in the future – with specific considerations on the status quo of the economy, the labor market, the corruption in the government, and of course, the nature of the course. I thought long and hard of all the costs. What will it take for me to succeed in this? Which is the best university that can equip me well? Do I have enough discipline to commit to such endeavor? I counted the costs and made my plan of action. This was my reason.

Meanwhile, deep in my heart, my lifelong love for history, culture, geography and the likes, not to mention my very vivid dream and longing to travel the world affirmed this decision. It seemed to be something I could do for all the days of my life. It was something I really wanted since I was just a little girl. From an emotional perspective, I really desired for it. The dream was compelling me to pursue the course. I believed this was my passion.

I recalled the possible horrors of the 1% passing rate. I feared that I might end up as a failure in the future -- that these ideas might remain merely as ideas in the hands of impossibilities. I actually decided to shift from the course after the first semester, and decided to enroll for a business course instead. Something that was a lot more practical. While I was lining up at the registrar’s office, on the office bulletin board, there was a familiar passage of Scripture that really had me changed my mind: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a good hope and a good future.”[22] As soon as I finished reading, I returned to my old department and decided to pursue the course – whatever it might take. I was fueled with hope that nothing can truly be impossible so long as one believes. Tangible facts alone ask of us to begin with our doubts. While faith already sets a verdict, such as in the form of – “You have a good hope and a good future.”; it requires you to be of courage, and have hope to move forward for the evidences of this verdict and for the fulfillment of God’s promises. They say faith can move mountains. This was my conviction.

When I was just starting out as a student, my sole purpose and goal was to pass the FSOE. It almost became the measure of my success. I knew it would come as a privilege, with the highest prestige and perks. I can already imagine the all-expense paid, government-sponsored trips around the world.

It was only until my internship with World Youth Alliance after my graduation, that I understood how there is so much more to my very shallow aspirations. Since then, I was able to understand the truth and fulfillment to be found in the act of self-giving. When it comes to our calling and vocation, we must

81 not only aim for our own dreams and ambitions. True fulfillment and the best measure of success, is when we are able to become our most human selves, loving and serving others fully, and willing to make an impact and a difference in the world. Today, my measure of success is no longer fixed in the passing of any exam. I continue to journey and delight in the glorious unfolding of my life’s calling and purpose.

As in the words of Viktor Frankl – ‘It does not matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.’[23]

Now, beautiful Human, what is the meaning and purpose of your life?

[1] WYA Certified Training Program Manual, The WYA Charter, p14. [2] Genesis 1:26 [3] George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, p 132. [4] WYA Certified Training Program Manual, The WYA Charter, p14. [5] Psalms 8:3-8 [6] WYA CTP Manual, Charles Malik, Introduction from Man in the Struggle for Peace, p 18 [7] WYA CTP Manual, Charles Malik, Introduction from Man in the Struggle for Peace, p 22 [8] WYA CTP Manual, George Weigel, Two Ideas of Freedom, p 60 [9] WYA CTP Manual, George Weigel, Two Ideas of Freedom, p 64 [10] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning [11] George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, p 143 [12] WYA Declaration on the Human Person [13] Matthew 22:36-37 [14] Matthew 22:39 [15] Psalms 145:8 [16] Galatians 5:22-23 [17] WYA Certified Training Program Manual, Martin Buber, I and Thou, p 24 [18] WYA Declaration on Solidarity [19] Karol Wojtya, Love and Responsibility [20] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning [21] Ecclesiastes 3:11 [22] Jeremiah 29:11 [23] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

82 Anne Mimille Guzman: Weightless Waiting: Finding Affirmation Whilst the Struggle to Become

Mimille is currently WYA’s International Director of Operations. She was formerly a regional intern with the Asia Pacific office in 2015 before undergoing the Headquarters internship in New York two years later. Her main WYA involvement had been developing and teaching the Human Dignity Curriculum.

Waiting can be rough. Whether it be standing in a line at the bank or waiting for a call after recently applying for a job, waiting merits a kind of restlessness from an unfinished act. Similarly, life can often feel like a long wait. We all feel like we’re waiting to finally become someone better than our current selves. Notwithstanding the time and effort this will take, one may still feel anxious over the uncertainty of which path to take and the shifting circumstances of life. The essay below is an attempt to come into terms with the weight that comes with this waiting by looking at the concepts of self-affirmation and “becoming” in closer scrutiny.

The Necessary Introductions

Growing up, I had always been insecure about my size. In our small family of four, I was raised with a sister who was older than me by only a year and a half. This meant gatherings with family and friends were rarely void of comparisons. These were often innocently masked as observations in order to fill the space of conversation. Despite only being around four years old at the time, it didn’t take me very long to catch on. In ballet classes, the instructor always stopped at my spot longer than the others. No matter how high I jumped, I just couldn’t reach her outstretched hand. A grandfather I was distantly related to snubbed at my attempt to kiss his cheek as per my mother’s prodding. After letting my sister greet him, he grouchily responded that he didn’t receive kisses from fat kids. It also really didn’t help that my mother had a knack for dressing my sister and I in twin outfits. This made our differences even more pronounced and eventually earned me the identifier of being the “bigger” sister.

Yet it really wasn’t that bad. By the time I was in elementary school, I began winning awards left and right. Every year, I would end up bagging awards in quiz bees, art contests, and public speaking. This went on for a while that it came to a point a teacher had to tell me to refrain from entering one art contest to “give others a chance”. I wasn’t identified as the fat little girl anymore but the one who effortlessly got the straight As. And right there, I eventually found a way I thought I could compensate for being “bigger.” I decided, “I would become the smart one.” I kept this belief with me to silently validate myself whenever I felt ridiculed or underestimated for my appearance.

Of course, this epiphany wouldn’t really hold water. Come high school, my parents decided to enroll me in a more competitive environment. Every year, the Philippine High School for the Arts opens its doors to a select group of young artists who audition all over the country to earn a spot in the school. Getting in meant that one would receive an academic and art scholarship, a monthly stipend, and free board and lodging on top of Mt. Makiling. I was fortunate enough to qualify for a Creative Writing scholarship. It was like FAME in real life and I greatly excelled to the point of graduating valedictorian. Yet despite the glamor that surrounded this fact, insecurity still lingered in my young heart. I noticed how I was the only girl in my group of close friends who didn’t have a boyfriend or a suitor. When I asked my dad why boys didn’t like-

83 like me, he simply said that young boys get easily intimidated. He also explained that since this is the time when we’re still trying to gain confidence, boys would usually aim for goals they deemed to be more attainable.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand how my dad was trying to tell me how precious I was. After all, it was hard for a teenage girl to grasp this granted that all of her peers didn’t seem to have a problem getting boyfriends. Frankly, I was jealous of the feeling of being pursued. When you’re surrounded by the noise of media and pop culture, they tend to convince you that it gets awfully lonely without someone to share life with. Despite my dad’s assurances and the constant pep talk in church that we were “fearfully and wonderfully made”, I didn’t believe it.

I took this mindset with me into college where I eventually had my first serious relationship. At the time, I was convinced that he was the one. We met in a study trip abroad as co-delegates and I had never met anyone like him. Like me, he appreciated the quiet and shared my love for books. It was rare for me to find someone who I can be comfortable in silence with. I was immediately drawn to his gentle demeanor and quirky sense of humor. I interpreted his meekness for mystery and his hesitation for deep thought. And barely a month after knowing each other, we decided that the only reasonable explanation for our instant connection was that we were destined to be together. Thus began our long-distance relationship, with him and I living in the opposite ends of the country’s archipelago. The relationship lasted for more than a year with the result of him cheating on me. This went on for eight months before I had the courage to call it out and walk away.

My response to this rejection the next day surprised me. After a night of tears, I plunged head first into my schoolwork. This continued months into the school year where I had to lead our university publication as Editor-in-Chief and juggle this with my heaviest number of units during my tenure in college. I formed bad health habits, like sleeping at 4am to finish papers while constantly consuming caffeine and potato chips. This resulted to a great amount of weight gain and an internal weariness for life that hung around me like a dark cloud. I chose to mask this by drowning out the sadness I felt with “busy-ness”. The noise provided by “busy-ness”, of all those opportunities to take and meetings to attend, became the answer to my question of how can I be enough. It was as if my younger self was silently consoling me with the belief that “At least, you still have your mind.”

In this reflective essay, I will attempt to examine the statement that man, as a subject, yearns to affirm his personhood as part of the process of becoming. This will be reviewed through highlighting the role of free will, self-gift, and the manifestations of human dignity in solidarity and art. This will be reviewed in depth through looking at how it parallels with my own experiences as a young woman from the Philippines, some selected pieces in World Youth Alliance’s Certified Training Program, and the works of Karol Wojtya. In doing so, I hope to explore how the root of man’s struggle to affirm his own value while developing his potential is a natural tendency of yearning to “become” like the Ultimate Good.

Saving Grace: A Lesson on Self-Affirmation

It was almost serendipitous that my constant introspection coincided with my involvement with World Youth Alliance (WYA). What first attracted me to the organization was how much they believed in the potential of the human person. I shared the same belief, yet I never thought it could be explained in

84 exploring what it means to have human dignity. When I decided to take my internship with them in 3rd year college, studying the Certified Training Program (CTP) didn’t feel like work at all. This was mainly because the materials’ focus on human dignity helped me understand myself as well. I learned that acknowledging my desire to feel validated stemmed from the natural tendency of man to affirm himself. However, the manner by which I was seeking to find affirmation failed miserably because they were not proper to me as a human being. I sought this validation in the opinions of others, may it be in my relationships in school or the general society. I had a hard time understanding that my inherent value as a person cannot be given nor taken away. Yet encountering the materials in WYA gave me the vocabulary to understand why I was worth loving as a subject with both mind and soul.

There were particular materials in the CTP that allowed me to understand the innate value of the human person. One of which was Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” which talked about the difference between the I- You and I-It relationship.[1] Buber identified the main points of comparison to be the following: First, I-You sees the other as a subject while I-It sees the It as an object. Second, I-You relates with the You while I-It experiences the It. In connection to these points, the relationship found in the I-You calls for a reciprocity between subjects while the I-It simply regards the It as an “other”. As Buber puts it, there can be no reciprocity since the I gains the experience in them and the world only allows itself to be experienced. The CTP identifies Buber’s main thesis in stating that the act of reciprocity found in the I-Thou relationship is precisely what affirms the subjects involved. This means that it is the continuous encounter with fellow subjects that reveals more of man’s personhood to others and himself.

Meanwhile, Karol Wojtya supports these ideas as he differentiates man from an object in his work, “Love and Responsibility.” [2] According to him, the main difference may be found in structure and in degree of perfection. Wojtya shares:

To the structure of the person belongs an ‘interior’, in which we find the elements of spiritual life, and it is this that compels us to acknowledge the spiritual nature of the human soul, and the peculiar perfectibility of the human person. This determines the value of the person. A person must not be put on the same level as a thing (or for that matter as an individual animal): the person possesses spiritual perfectibility, and is by way of being an (embodied) spirit, not merely a ‘body’ magnificently endowed with life. Between the psyche of an animal and the spirituality of a man, there is an enormous distance, an uncrossable gulf.

Wojtya differentiates man from the psyche of an animal by means of an “uncrossable gulf” in the form of his interiority, his very soul. Aquinas gives us a hint of this interiority with the tripartite view of the person as being composed of the body, soul, and spirit. The body contains man’s emotions and passions, the spirit comprising of one’s intellect and will, and lastly, the soul which composes the interior senses (such as memory, the imaginative sense, gut instinct, and the unitive sense of uniting all the different senses).

Upon establishing how man’s soul determines his value, it is important to mention his perfectibility as well in being an embodied spirit. I usually explain this idea to children by way of having them imagine a beaver. I then invite them to list down the abilities of a beaver, one of which is the ability to take drift wood and build it into a dam. I eventually pose the question of whether or not the next generations of beavers, who

85 will continue building a number of dams, would eventually upgrade and build a concrete dam complete with hydropower facilities. In a resounding “no”, the children are able to point out the uniqueness of the human being: We are the only beings with the capacity to grow and “become.”

In becoming, Wojtya also expressed the need for man to act in order to reveal more of his personhood.[3] He calls action as the best insight into the inherent essence of the person. These rings true as well in Buber’s analysis of the primary difference between the I-Thou and I-It where the former concedes that “I don’t know everything about you, yet I still know you.”

The Role of Free Will

In approaching the discussion about man as a subject, the young person would certainly agree that affirming one’s personhood is no easy task. This was further discussed in another CTP reading that greatly complimented Buber’s I-Thou which was Charles Malik’s “Man in the Struggle for Peace.”

In Malik’s article, he regarded man as a struggling-caring being. This means that man is in a state where he lives with a degree of worry or concern since he must attempt to choose among the infinite possibilities set before him. This was precisely why man struggles for peace. In the same thought, Karol Wojtya shares the same view with both Buber and Malik. He is able to summarize the connection between the two articles in describing how man reacts to the world. As a subject, man can determine himself in the process of experiencing the world. Yet despite the infinite number of choices before man, he will naturally tend towards the true good. Wojtya explains that it is precisely man’s ability to discover the truth which gives him the possibility of self-determination. No other subject can do this for him and in this manner, man is in possession of himself. [4]

Institutions are wary of discussing free will or freedom in the academic and work space for its potential to be distorted and abused. Yet it is with WYA that I came to an understanding of how beautiful freedom can be when discussed in the context of what is proper for man. In another chapter of the CTP, members will encounter George Weigel’s “Two Ideas of Freedom”.[5] He proceeds to describe the first as the ‘Negative freedom’ which means the absence of restrictions (mainly ‘freedom from’). The second was ‘Positive freedom’ which meant the freedom to make one’s own choices as a way of realizing the greater good in history (mainly ‘freedom to’).

Drawing from the second freedom, Weigel cites St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on the “freedom for excellence.” He remarks that positive freedom was synonymous to “freedom for excellence” since it means seeing freedom as a way to achieve human happiness and the fulfillment of human destiny.

It was this discussion about freedom that reconfigured my perspective on how I should deal with the circumstances I was in. This chapter described freedom as a neutral faculty of choice and that freedom for excellence is the only appropriate response to our human dignity. Weigel shares that it is our freedom to act in conformity with the reality of who we are as subjects. Yet the struggle of “becoming” comes into play once again as freedom for excellence takes practice before we form the habit. He ends by stating how this must be developed through education or emulating the example of others who have come before us and had lived wisely and well. However, this proves to be another challenge given the myths the young

86 person must traverse in seeking to affirm himself. In my case, it was how culture had promulgated the idea that I must be a woman that fit the mold of societal beauty standards to be treated with value.

Traversing Myths by Curating the Ideal Self

Society often portrays the young woman as the object of desire. In the Philippines, the pressure to be beautiful for young girls can clearly be seen in the way we consider beauty pageants as a national sport. I have even had friends who were willing to subject their family to debt just so that they can get surgical procedures done to fit the pageant standard. The common features in this checklist would often require light skin, small and high noses, and a towering height. While we can agree that none of these seem to fall under a Filipina’s natural features, thousands of young women are willing to spend time, effort, and resources to be just that.

The eve of social media has not improved the situation. A study done by the Royal Society for Public Health this year in the United Kingdom[6] listed the top negative effects of social media on young people to be anxiety and depression, poor body image, and the fear of missing out (FoMo).[7] The act of “curating the ideal self” is a phenomenon that should not be taken too lightly. The system has identified the young consumer’s desire to be accepted and translated this as an opportunity to earn. Thus, we have these online celebrities who gain a substantial amount of influence and followers who liken themselves to them by supporting the brands and products they use. And while not every personality creates content with this agenda, it is nevertheless bothersome that the undiscerning mind can fall prey to the mindset that affirmation can be quantified in the amount of likes and views in your social media.

One can understand the fatal discontent that gnaws at the heart of every young girl. If previous generations only had their peers and family to relate to, the current generation are now given the option to become influential in the virtual world. After all, even the most ordinary person can become “internet famous.” So why not take a shot at it?

I have been told by a younger mentee that if I had not told her about my struggles in my career and relationships, she would have assumed that I lived a perfect life based on my social media. It was then that I realized that despite the internet as one of the most intelligent platforms we have ever encountered, it can never capture my inner world.

Social media promulgates the culture of highlights where we are forced to summarize our experiences into bite sized pieces for easier consumption. What suffers from this is how it actually mutes the importance of our “in-betweens”. One of the many attractions of the curated self is its privileged position of being void of the responsibility of bearing open the difficult, the awkward, and mundane parts of ourselves. Yet it is precisely the presence of these unlikeable parts that we are given the chance to build virtues like fortitude, humility, and temperance. In choosing to hide our warts in the shiny virtual reality, we forget that our flaws are the necessary dips in our flight to “becoming”.

One can perhaps even echo a contemporary philosopher’s take on this at the age of modernization, “The modern idiot could routinely know what only geniuses had known in the past, and yet he was still an idiot – a depressing combination of traits that previous ages never had to worry about.”[8] In an age where we are often told which truths to believe, the CTP and Wojtya’s writings allow us to determine the objective

87 value of our inherent human dignity based on the experience of our own actions. In learning more about the human person, I was thankfully able to identify avenues of refuge in the act of solidarity and creating art.

Solidarity as a Response to Spreading Fictions

I had the great fortune of entering a university[9] whose liberal education curriculum required us to take units on the Philosophy of the Family. The CTP, as a makeshift crash course on who I am as a person, impressed me with how coherent the ideas were with my philosophy course in college. It fascinated me on how my class on the Family echoed the ideas in the CTP where solidarity and the importance of the family as its breeding ground became the main themes of their materials.

In the Philosophy of the Family, we were taught that the future of humanity passes by way of the family because it is where man can get an education of love rooted in faith. Such an education can help him in deciphering myth from truth during these times. The family can build a civilization of love within their homes and in effect, humanize the world. Having the chance to contemplate on the role of the family enabled me to look into my own life and realize that this was what my parents have been doing in our home. My parents did not receive guidance from their own family set ups since the uncommunicative nature of their familial relationships were the productive brand of parenting during my grandparents’ time. So instead, my mother and father turned to the Bible to understand how God saw and blessed the union of man and woman to build a family. We were not a perfect family but my upbringing in a Protestant home taught me the importance of empathy which I would later find out was actually to practice “self-gift”. I first encountered “self-gift” in Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus[10]. It was listed in the CTP under the chapter of the history of ideas. Pope John Paul explains self-gift in this passage:

When man does not recognize in himself and in others the value and grandeur of the human person, he effectively deprives himself of the possibility of benefitting from his humanity and of entering into that relationship of solidarity and communion with others for which God created him. Indeed, it is through the free gift of self that one truly finds oneself. This gift is made possible by the human person's essential "capacity for transcendence." One cannot give oneself to a purely human plan for reality, to an abstract ideal or to a false utopia. As a person, one can give oneself to another person or to other persons, and ultimately to God, who is the author of our being and who alone can fully accept our gift. By going back to the family, I was in awe of seeing mutual self-gift take place primarily in my father and mother’s marriage. Indeed, it would be difficult to remain in a marriage if one simply regarded self-gift as a “series of sensations” or even a feeling. Wojtya reminds us in “Love and Responsibility” that, “Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love…Love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely its “content” or object; it is between I and You.”

Having my parents as my model for love, I came to understand how I must seek to be loved and to love in the same manner. This was a love which demands the affirmation of the value of a person wherein the subject wills for the beloved’s full and total good: the others’ happiness.[11] Either that, or it does not qualify as love at all. Wojtya summarizes this beautifully in this passage:

88 A woman is capable of truly making a gift of herself only if she fully believes in the value of her person and in the value as a person of the man to whom she gives herself. And a man is capable of fully accepting a woman’s gift of herself only if he is fully conscious of the magnitude of the gift — which he cannot be unless he affirms the value of her person. At 23 years old, I came to identify the root of my lingering loneliness as a misinformed perspective on how I should regard my own person. Armed with the knowledge of my value as a person, the anger I felt towards the people who had hurt me turned into an understanding of how far we have yet to go in building this civilization of love. In forgiving them, I also became self-aware on how my own actions can lead others to undermine others’ sense of self-worth.

Learning this also improved my patience in fruitfully waiting for my future partner. I still dream of having my own family and contributing to the conversation of love and hope in my own home. Yet before this happens, I found that singlehood is a wonderful time to come into solidarity with others and learn more about improving oneself. After all, there are infinite wonders in one’s inner world that one has yet to explore.

Meanwhile, I found solace in the authentic reciprocity in other kinds of love as well. Wojtya calls participation as “the ability of man to exist and act together with others in such a way that in this existing and acting we remain ourselves and actualize ourselves, which means our own I’s.”[12] The CTP finds participation in the guise of solidarity which is found in WYA’s Declaration on Solidarity. The Declaration defines solidarity as the unified commitment of persons to live and work in the truth of who we are and for the pursuit of common good. Aside from identifying my role models in my own home, I had managed to find companionship in the beauty of friendship and mentorship in both my university and the Church.

Self-Gift in Art and Stories

Another way I was able to practice self-gift was through identifying the talents God blessed me with. I once heard that human beings are naturally creators because we are made by the Ultimate Creator. In my case, I was drawn to the art of weaving stories. As a child, stories appealed to me because of how they understood the importance of the journey. Fiction holds their characters to a certain standard of self- growth. When the writing is able to justify the progression of how its characters react and improve, the more it is regarded as a stellar piece. The reader is given a glimpse of how the character struggles to become better or worse. That is the most gripping element of the story: it enables us to imagine and empathize.

At a young age, I realized that if language had the ability to perpetuate the culture of empathy then I would want to commit my talents to that cause. I had been fortunate enough to grow up in a family that supports my belief on how the magic of reading can help empower young minds. On my 9th birthday, my family and I opened the House of Treasures. It began as a small reading corner for the young cancer patients in one of the biggest public hospitals in the Philippines. It was soon accredited as a psychosocial support group that gives medical assistance, holds feeding sessions and gives regular therapeutic activities to the children through art and storytelling on Thursdays and Fridays. For fifteen years, we are fortunate to be able to expand our service beyond the walls of the hospital through donating books and school materials, building schools, conducting character formation workshops and storytelling sessions to indigent

89 children and persons with disabilities in poverty stricken areas like Tondo and Payatas as well as ethnic groups in Zambales, and Mindoro. This enabled me to encounter so many people who were very different from me, yet shared the same values that drove our organization forward. I had learned that majority of these young people yearned for more than the tangible every day needs. In each visit, I found that they seek conversations that were filled of stories of a world beyond the pain and poverty. Books, where stories teach the heart to empathize by bringing oneself into the shoes of a complete stranger, became the perfect vehicle for that. I, in turn, grow in awe at the transcendence of man in the manner these children and their parents respond to their circumstances.

One of my favorite encounters was with a little girl named Sam whose hair had completely fallen out because of chemotherapy. She is used to being mistaken for a boy because of this. When I asked if she felt bad that her hair was gone, she just smiled and said that hair can grow back. Then there was Jeff who passed away two years ago. He had the reputation of being one of the naughtiest kids in the hospital. He did not know how to share but he would relentlessly scavenge the heaps of legos we’ve spread out for the perfect piece that would complete his big projects. Jeff would strain to look at you as the cancer makes it hard for him to see. But he has the ability to see planes, cars, and buildings even before they’ve come to existence. And with his little hands and hunched back, he would build.

There was also a time I spent a week in the island of Lubang, Mindoro. The people there had no banks. Instead, they keep their treasures buried in soil. In the toil, they become patient in waiting for the months’ reaping. They also had no mall but instead, the people come to the plaza and offer a dance to the women seated in the circle. As the men pay a fee per dance, they build their local fund. Meanwhile, teenage girls are taught that beauty does not merit catcalling. Instead, the fishermen become poets at night and offer impromptu verses in singsong Filipino during their fiesta beauty pageants.

I keep these stories with me as I experience the world and relate to these subjects. I will never truly know all their inner worlds but those short encounters are enough for me to know that Sam is brave, Jeremy is creative, and the people of Lubang are wise. And as I encounter them, I affirm my personhood by learning how much the human person is capable of so much more.

When it came to writing my own pieces, my stay in the Philippine High School for the Arts allowed me to publish ‘Clara’s Coffee and Other Tales’ when I was 16 years old. It was the second Filipino authored book ever to be published into Braille with the first one being 'Noli Me Tangere'. This opened the doors for us to donate braille copies of the book to institutions for the blind with every standard copy sold. Aside from writing short stories, I tried my hand in writing librettos which were staged in universities like the College of St. Benilde and the University of the Philippines. Play festivals and companies like Dulaang ROC, the Short + Sweet Theater Festival, and MinTeatro also staged my shorter works.

Art became a way for me to see how my human dignity can manifest in reality. The way sharing stories had moved me can be closely linked with two readings in the CTP on Culture. One was Luis Barragán’s acceptance speech[13] when he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in Washington, D.C. As a Mexican architect, an essential theme of his speech was how our capability to humanize something with art is what makes us dignified. He explains how this involves developing “the art of seeing” which he describes to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis[EW1] . Barragán quotes Carlos

90 Pellicer in explaining how the art of seeing perceive the good and the bad while unseeing eyes are considered “souls deprived of hope.”

The second reading that talked about the art of seeing was Joseph Pieper’s “Learning How to See Again and Thoughts on Music”[14]. This time, he talked about how man’s ability “to see” was in decline. Pieper expanded on what he meant “by seeing” as the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is. The decline leads the modern man to struggle from restlessness and stress, his total absorption and enslavement by practical goals and purposes, and the phenomenon of having too much to see. Pieper then recommends certain steps to preserve and safeguard the foundation of man’s spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted relationship to reality: one was simple abstention wherein one avoids visual noise and second was to be active in oneself in artistic creation since this requires authentic and personal observation.

Taking these lessons to heart, I realized how art had indeed played a significant role in allowing me to take a break from the worldly noise and focus on the lessons that bring out my humanity. For a time, I was immersed in an artist community who worshipped art and beauty. As a young girl who wanted to be respected by her peers, I struggled to subscribe to this mindset since I yearned for art that did more than shock me. The CTP verbalized this struggle by helping me realize how it was a waste of time and effort to create art for art’s sake. Pursuing beauty that allows us "to see again" as per Barragán's speech must be found in art that touches our shared humanity. Otherwise, I believe beauty would be reduced to aesthetically pleasing but hollow technique and style.

In the same way Paul Johnson described how art was able to greatly impact society’s culture in the “Rules and Ravages of Ideological Art”[15], I also wanted to make art that promoted the transcendent quality of our humanity. After all, what I’ve always learned about myself in writing stories is the degree of hopefulness I have for man in the end. I write stories to reveal how man can use his freedom for excellence since majority of the issues my characters confront involved my own fears and flaws about never being good enough and having to bear this weight under the pressure of living in this society.

As a last example, I saw the “Art of Seeing” in full effect when I was tasked to interview Daniel dela Cruz, a Filipino sculptor. It is fairly easy to pinpoint Dela Cruz’s work in any art gallery. Simply look for the figures of robust women who are magically suspended in gravity-defying feats or infused in musical objects (see attached annex). In contemplating on the beauty of his works, I decided that his works manifested Mortimer Adler’s theory on beauty: A work may have “enjoyable beauty” since the senses immediately find them pleasing when perceived and “admirable beauty” which takes a while because it’s accompanied by mediated thought and acquired knowledge. I was truly taken by how these women floated in space before realizing how Dela Cruz gave me the perspective that can teach me how to finally “see” their beauty. The artist, unknowingly, helped me come into terms with how I saw beauty in my being a woman now regardless of shape or size.

The Poetry in Becoming

In Genesis 1:27 (New Living Translation) it was written, “So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God, He created them; male and female, He created them.” This is one of the first memory verses they’ll teach you in Sunday school. Yet the delightful twist of man’s journey of becoming is that it takes a lifetime of learning to understand how to decipher and accept this. Deriving from my journey as a

91 young Christian woman, I’ve come to understand that all the struggle to become is naturally ordered towards the Ultimate Creator by Whom we are molded after. He, the Highest Objective Good Whom we can both experience and know, is called by many names among men. Yet the knowledge of this, although comforting, does not make the venture any easier due to our startling “human-ness”.

However, a semblance of peace may be derived from Wojtya as he wrote, “Freedom exists for the sake of love.” As a young person, I am grateful to be involved in an organization that saw the importance of teaching my generation to love through giving us the chance to understand ourselves through text and projects. This allowed us to grip the reigns of our choices in the recklessness of childhood and to hold ourselves accountable for the blessings our unique freedom provides.

Going forward now, I still work towards a future where I continue to use my vocation in writing stories for furthering this advocacy. In the sphere of work, I am also preparing to pursue my dream job as a staff in WYA. What I look forward to the most perhaps is the chance to encounter more stories of how these fundamental truths about the human person manifests in the different lives and beliefs of the young people I will have the privilege to encounter. Much like what Mrs. Whatsit said in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, I hope to live out how she had tried to explain the concept of free will. In comparing the human life to a sonnet, she says, “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.” I hope to write beautiful poetry while I still can. Looking back at the content of this essay, we have weaved our way in understanding how the entire makeup of the human person, as a subject, calls for the act of self-affirmation during the dynamic of becoming. This was done by looking at the role of free will, self-gift, and the manifestations of human dignity in solidarity and art. My personal life’s narrative, the works of Karol Wojtya, and selected texts from WYA’s Certified Training Program formed the basis of the following observations. In doing so, I hope an understanding of where one stands in the narrative of a fleeting, but meaningful life would make the waiting weightless.

92

Annex:

[1] Buber, Martin and Ronald Gregor Smith. I and Thou. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program) [2] Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. Ignatius Press, 1993. [3] Wojtyla, Karol. The Acting Person, trans. By Andrej Potocki. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979. [4] Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. Ignatius Press, 1993. [5] Weigel, George. Two Ideas of Freedom­­­. Ethics and Public Policy Center, 2001. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program) [6] Royal Society for Public Health, 2017 [7] FoMO is described as the “need to be constantly connected with what other people are doing, so as not to miss out. This is associated with lower mood and lower life satisfaction.” [8] Botton, Alain De. The news: A Users Manual. Hamish Hamilton, 2015. [9] University of Asia and the Pacific [10] Paul, John. Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus … on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. St. Paul Publications, 1991. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program) [11] Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. Ignatius Press, 1993 [12] Wojtyla, Karol. Person and Community Selected Essays. P. Lang, 1993. [13] Barragán, Luis. “Ceremony Acceptance Speech”. The Pritzker Architecture Prize, http://www.pritzkerprize.com/1980/ceremony_speech1. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program) [14] Pieper, Josef. “Learning How to See Again and Thoughts on Music. Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. Ignatius Press, 1990. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program) [15] Johnson, Paul. “Rules and Ravages of Ideological Art”. Art: A New History. HarperCollins, 2003. (As cited in WYA’s Certified Training Program)

93 Satria Rizaldi Alchatib: Universalizing the Culture of Human Person: A Love Essential From Marriage Life

Satria is an Indonesian WYA member currently based in Moscow, Russia. His past involvements as a WYA member include representing the Asia Pacific region in an International Solidarity Forum in New York and being an organizing committee member of a WYA Asia Pacific Emerging Leaders Conference. He underwent the WYA regional internship in Asia Pacific in 2014.

World Youth Alliance Asia Pacific Regional Team Member

A. Preface

This essay will demonstrate a reflection from two phenomenal writings of Karol Wojtya; The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler and Responsibility of Love and the Theology of the Body. Furthermore, it will try to formulate the understanding of human person in vocational relationship where the solidity of responsibility and commitment be seen as an important measure in establishing a sustainable and healthy marriage relationship. In the later part, I will try to reveal a number of most pressing issues occurred surrounding the youth on vocational relationship and how the culture of human dignity shapes universal understanding of love and affirmation in human relationships.

This essay is a compilation of wisdoms and personal experiences that reflect the importance of the idea of human person as a guidance in love relationship. The goal of this essay is to broaden the horizon of human dignity ideation as a universally accepted culture for young people in the exercise of vocational relationship particularly in life of marriage. In addition, this essay will enumerate a variety of challenges that young people face today as well as the strategy that that needs to be taken into account in establishing human dignity culture. Therefore, the ultimate aim is realizing a dignified world in times of globalization. Eventually, this essay is expected to architect a holistic understanding of human relationship through the affirmation of marriage.

B. A Reflection of Karol Wojtya on Ethics

The essay of Karol Wojtya delivered an interesting critique towards the approach of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s approach on ethical experience. As a science of human action, ethics indeed plays pivotal role in determining the behavior of society. In his essay, Wojtya provides a precise description on how interpretation on ethical experience can be the source of moral good or evil.

First of all, Wojtya delivered a strong argumentation against the rigid approach of Immanuel Kant in defining ethical experience. The loss of freewill in Kant’s approach had triggered misconception of ethics as a whole. Kant limits the definition of ethical experience at the feeling of respecting laws. Furthermore, Max Scheler’s approach came up as a counterbalance towards Kant’s philosophy that involves the phenomenology as ethical system. Scheler’s though at the first time seems to contain more practical moral value. However, the emotional approach of Scheler is lack of dynamism which made it similar with Kant’s rigidity. These two philosophers may be distinguished from their definition of ethics as a “Duty” and “Value”.

94 Kant’s duty emphasized law as the governing system of ethics in a way that every human being should bear the feeling of respecting laws in constructing ethics. Unlike Kant, Scheler stressed the value or moral ground as a basis of ethics that involves emotional sense that treat ethical life based on direct experience or intentional act.

The concept of human dignity is closely related to Scheler’s thought compared to Kant’s approach. Human dignity embodies intrinsic value as natural course of human being, the ethics should be based on the respect for the value of human being as a person. This assumption is based on the understanding that human dignity grants human rights not the other way round. Human dignity is a value while human rights is the actualization of law. The basic assumption of human dignity is that human rights should be based on moral ground. The legalization of abortion is in some parts of the world is a significant proof that an act that violates human dignity can be a legal part of human rights. Therefore, the content of law does not necessarily represent the protection of intrinsic and inviolable dignity of human person. Therefore, the concept of human dignity was risen to provide moral content on human rights law that protects the value of human person from conception to natural death.

In addition, Kant’s argumentation that law should govern the ethics is actually prone of ethical conflicts, usually reflected in the practice of abuse of power especially in the world of democracy. The failure of democracy in delivering the ethics is obviously based on the lack of moral values in the construction of law. In Indonesia, this phenomenon had happened regularly that we called it as the “democracy’s hangover”. The lack of moral ground in the current national law allows the death penalty to take the course in the country. This is completely against the concept of human dignity that protects human person from with his inviolable dignity. As the third largest democratic country in the world, the law is not only the guardian but also the commander in-chief in the country. Therefore, no matter how massive the demonstration on the streets protesting the law, the law will not change unless there is strong political will from the parliament. However, it is a long and sometimes frustrating process which only results in unending debates.

In addition, I am strongly in favor of Wojtya’s perspective on how the ethical experience should embody both logical and emotional experiences to equally preserve morals and ethics in carrying out human life in the ever-changing world. Ethical experience should allow actualization and modification to adapt with human development. Therefore, both Kantians and Schelerians should be able to provide a better collaborative understanding on ethical life. In this context, duty and value must exist and stand to complete the ethical experience. The law as a governing body should be able to provide moral value in the maintenance of democracy.

In maintaining relationship, ethical life plays fundamental role, most especially in marriage relationship. Preservation of human relation involves trust and emotions. Trust is treasured from authentic experience from one person to another which forms confidence and acceptance to bind relationship. Moreover, emotion is the expression of love and admiration to one’s certain character and behavior which allows compatibility.

In any intimate relationship such us friendship and marriage, Scheler’s thought might be the most relevant approach. Most of the relationship of this kind filled with emotional ornaments such as love, affection, and sense of belonging. Unlike in most professional environments where logic is the dominant factor that involves the calculation of benefit and loss.

95 In family relationship, the mixture of Kant’s and Scheler’s approach might be suitable because family relationship involves two fundamental elements, emotion and respect. The durability and harmony within a family relies on the personal and emotional relations between the parents and the children, between the elder and the younger. How the parents deliver affections to raise the children and the children respecting their parents is essential value to preserve the harmony within family. Furthermore, family relationship involves ethical system that must be obeyed by each family member. For example, the children must use proper words to communicate with parents as the expression to respect them, in certain cultures, children must kiss the palm of the elders to pay respect. On the other hand, the parents should avoid the words of harassment to preserve the love of their children. Therefore, the duty and value approaches are completely a compatible combination. Karol Woltyla’s philosophical narrative of value is to draw the way value should be interpreted through implementation basis.

Eventually, after examining the whole reading of Karol Wojtya, I came up to a conclusion that ethical life must be governed by both the logical and emotional experiences that give power and moral values in impacting and determining the development of human life. Therefore, ethics is permeated by inseparable variables of values and duty.

C. Compassion and Responsibility of Love

The word of compassion represents a sense of belonging as a genuine nature among human-beings. It gives birth to friendship, relationship, and love. From “I and Thou relation”, we can take an effective mechanism in establishing relationship at the workplace. Putting an equal value to someone in lower level of management does not necessarily mean to disregard the upper managers, but to foster a friendly environment and harmonize relationships at work.

In a number of successful companies and managements in Indonesia, every employee from all departments regardless of their level of expertise possess unlimited access towards most company’s properties, have a borderless communication management from upper to lower levels, and have the ability to make decisions at work. This has created an exceptional sense of ownership among employees towards the management and the company itself. This has enabled all employees to live by the feeling of equal recognition. In such circumstances, employees fueled with the pride of making decision and at the same time progressing their management skill as well as pursuing a better career development. In various cases, corporations that value the ability of workers were able to exploit the potency of their employees and equivalently contributes to the revenue and development of the companies at the same time. Therefore, the effectiveness in managing a good environment at workplace will result a vibrant energy that leads to a progressive development in the companies.

In my personal experience, I discovered that selecting “right friends” is the formula of excellence. A friend who understand the value that I live with, the passion that drives my life, my desire of doing something out of the box, and most importantly the weakness where I am at lack. True friends are those who allow your self-fulfillment to go beyond horizon, those who are leveraging your potency to the peak, supporting you to succeed in life, and fully understanding your weaknesses and willing to complete them. Rather than putting yourself as a partner for individual progress, a great friend makes yourself his family for life.

In the words of Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtya), it is said that:

96 “Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness, he must not forget that he is a person”.[1]

Pope John Paul II explains us that a man has great capacity of love, the ability to recognize himself as a person and put the highest value of humanity to those who feel they don’t have it. His book Love and Responsibility born from his experience with young people who are eager to learn “how to live”.

This is a precise narrative on the way human being should address themselves as an actor to their self fulfilment. In this text, the pope also emphasizes that a man should not narrow his natural greatness to only sexual ability and desire. It is natural that every man has sexual desire towards persons of the opposite sex, however it should be defined as an energy to love and express compassion towards each other. It is defined in the form of relationship that symbolizes commitment to love each other and that is the place for responsibility. In his book, Pope John Paul II clearly says that responsibility is the aspect that reveals the beauty of love which completes the life of human beings.

Furthermore, it is also an essential description from Pope John Paul II that love is a composition of several integrated aspects which consist of feelings, emotions and values that are inseparable. Love is a virtue which enables every man to exercise his latent desire into positive energy and feelings. Love is a sense of excitement which every human being is able to cherish. It is an aspect which enables the integration of human-being and enable the union among them in a genuine intrapersonal relation. A union that squanders his/her natural energy. The couple who have positive objective to complete each other can nurture a healthy and long lasting relationship.

From the wisdoms of Pope John Paul II, we can receive a number of love essentials and the meaning of responsible love. It is also interesting to incorporate the learning of ethics with the wisdom of Quran. From the holy book of Islam, we can learn the ethics of love and the dialectics of expressing genuine love among human-beings. Indeed, the feeling of love towards opposite gender is a natural attribute and a unique gift from God. It makes love more beautiful with the expression of commitment and responsibility.[2] In the view of Quran, love is a blessing which makes the human life “alive”. Furthermore, the creation of human- being in opposite gender is to create peaceful civilization. This is to make human-beings counterpart to each other. Islam believes that love is a blessing that solidify the purpose of the creation of human-being. Therefore, they become leaders, flourish peace and civilize the world.

In the view of Islam, love is a reflection towards the divinity of God. In another words, love to God is a priority that symbolizes the vertical relations between the creator and his believers. Meanwhile, in human relationship, it is a horizontal love that binds men and woman among themselves. Therefore, love among human-beings shares equal compassion that relates them together to fulfil and complete each other’s soul.[3]

D. The Person and Sexual Urge

Sexual urge is an inseparable aspect of human life. It is undeniable that every human person has sexual urge and has the need to express it. The way human person express it symbolizes his/her role as a subject in human relation. This is in line with Pope John Paul II’s words on;

“we must, then, be clear right from the start that every subject also exists as an object, an objective “something” or somebody”.[4]

Therefore, human person shared exchange of role in relationship. In another part, Pope emphasizes;

97 “Because a person possesses free will, he is his own master”[5].

Every human person has the right and access to their dignity and freedom, therefore he/she is the master of him/herself and responsible towards them. The person must be independent in any of his/her action. They are not relying their fate to the other nor the others to be the master of their fate. Because the person possess dignity, it gives him/her a power to live life to the higher fulfilment including this sexual fulfilment in a responsible manner. In this context, education plays important factor, the urge of sexual education is equivalent to the sexual urge itself that define human person as a dignified creature. It is also a beauty that every human person has to cherish. Human culture nourishes ethics and foundation of relationship to the opposite sex. It is also the foundation that complete human person from natural into cultural beings.

In the life of marriage, physical intercourse is amongst the most fundamental elements that preserves marriage relationship. The essential function of this activity is to increase intimacy in the life of family. It gives positive energy to both husband and wife in their endeavor to run the family with a stronger bond of togetherness. It is also building spiritual yet emotional ties among them in both happiness and difficult times. Love is the factor that sustains relationship as a living energy. Therefore, every intimate course expressed among them is the soul that preserves marriage life. Healthy relationship fosters harmony and harmony creates a vibrant spirit and living energy to achieve mutual life fulfilments.

Many believe that sexual intercourse and pornography is a similar course of action. However, those are essentially different. The relationship between pornography and sexual intercourse symbolizes the difference of I-It and I -Thou relation. The audience of pornography consumes sexual exposure as the object of personal enjoyment which he/she takes for granted. It creates a negative addiction and physical delusion towards sensational physical activities that becomes the symptom to adultery. The target of pornography are generally children or under-aged persons who are psychologically vulnerable. The addiction to pornography can lead to a dangerous threat to his/her future marriage relationship. This is due to the lack of parental guidance and the lack of sexual education that distinguishes pornography and intercourse in marriage relationship.

Exercising sexual urge in the life of marriage is an acceptable behavior among married partner. However, the expression addressed towards spouses has a spiritual addition. This reflects I-Thou relations where every person (husband and wife) sees each other as their loved and respected ones. The physical threatment towards that occurs among them full of compassion and it shares the energy of love. In addition, for the couple whom their belief grounded in the teaching of religion, intercourse activity is equal to high-level prayer. It symbolizes the love of two obedient believers that reflects their love and obedience to God. For example, the teaching of Islam explains that marriage is the fulfilment of religion. Those who have completed marriage life, their religion is half-fulfilled. Henceforth, the other half will be completed in the form of prayers as a married couple.

E. Metaphysical Energy of Love

Indeed, love is a mystery and has a mysterious approach in the life of human persons. It obviously comes in a sudden moment and happens unexpectedly. When someone falls in love the world seems to revolve the other way round. The energy of love enables one to recognize their lovers as special creatures. From this part, love has become an energetic attraction.

98 “Feelings arise spontaneously – the attraction which one person feels towards another begin suddenly and unexpectedly – but this reaction is in effect ‘blind’”.[6]

The attraction of love is located in its spontaneous nature. It gives lovers a natural pleasure and creates the willingness to share life together. Love raises up the feeling to lovers that he/she was created for someone and that he/she wants to cherish life together. Love creates the belief that human person was born for a bigger happiness. In this happiness, there is a strong belief that a special person is the reason behind the joy. In many aspects, love leads to different blindness (Pope John Paul II). The articulation of blindness reflects the pureness of love in which creates the willingness to sacrifice in pursuit of happiness from love. Moreover, it also symbolizes loyalty as a fundamental spirit in forming relationship. This blindness should be interpreted in a positive way whereby every couple shares mutual emotion and love makes the feeling preserved and perpetual. As previously mentioned, a responsible love is practiced in the form of commitment. In this sense, the most ideal commitment is marriage. A bond that represents a deeply religious and legal commitments aimed at unifying human persons in an ever-lasting spiritual and emotional connection.

In a letter to a young woman (Teresa), Karol Wojtya (Pope John Paul II) emphasized that love is an affirmation of the value of the person. Authentic love leads human persons to value those whom the persons spend their life with. Marriage is one form of many affirmations. Such kind of relationship must avoid egocentrism and individualism. Because the very essence of relationship is to receive and to give away ourselves for the sake of sustainable mutual happiness.

“A genuine love is one in which the true essence of love is realized – a love which is directed to a genuine (not merely an apparent) good”.[7]

This statement represents the expression of goodwill among lovers. The intention of love is to solidify the quality of human relation. For example, a religious man married an former drug addict woman who wanted to change her life and bring it towards a worship to God. In religious view, the priority goal of this love relationship is unify persons in a learning atmosphere where the woman has the opportunity to fulfil the emptiness in her past life and help her towards purification of soul. It is also the opportunity for the man to practice his religious experience and trains him to become a leader in the family.

In many experiences, those who have converted into religious personalities are often more obedient towards religious practice and have stronger spiritual relation to God compared to those who were originally raised in a religious family with a strong worship environment. This is due to the fact that those who wanted to change their life usually commit maximum effort to purify themselves from their past life. Henceforth, this becomes a crucial standpoint where the concept of human dignity needs to be practiced extensively. Instead of seeing one as an “affected” person, it is more favorable to see her/him as a changing individual whom relentlessly convert her/his past life towards excellence in life.

F. Marriage as the Affirmation of Love

Affirmation can be described as a recognition towards one’s uniqueness, his value and his trait as a person. The expression can be verbalized as a feeling of gratefulness towards one’s existence:

“You are a good person and it is good that you are exist and live with that goodness, I feel the enjoyment of seeing your existence, your doing, the value, and the uniqueness you are living with”[8]

99 Affirmation is a concrete acceptance of human person by his/her loved one. It is the foundational aspect of establishing relationship. If a couple wishes to start a responsible commitment and take the relationship further into a vocational relationhip such as marriage, engagement and vow, ones should deeply understand the essence of affirmation holistically. Such as possessing two sides of a coin, affirmation leads human person to completely understand the deficiencies and superiorities of his/her spouse, accepting them and therefore willing to complete them. Affirmation brings understanding towards recognition and eventually acceptance to each other’s selves.

“Don’t be afraid to do what is necessary to make love happen, to be people of affirmation”[9]

The issue of young people today in an open society is the lack of trust. This had barred people from starting relationship because of the fragility of the relationship itself to break apart. Mainly, people distance themselves from the others because of knowing their deficiencies, for discovering their lacks in life. However, in this point young people have given up to see what the others are capable of, what kind of potency that they have and their genuine personalities; and the most importantly, the positive energies that they may be able to share. Negative energies are feeding up their brains and minds because of this lack of trust which leads to a complete loss of trust.

This type of ambivalence had created a bias in young people’s common perspective of relationship nowadays. Unconsciously, they have blocked something that they perceived as fearful threat. Meanwhile, all the perceived paranoids could be the other way round. The components of love attached to these fearful young people are betrayal, hatred, revenge. This may occur not because all human persons are perceived as sinful creature. This is because young people refuse to discover deeper the values, life principles, religiosity, and beauty of the person. In reverse order, if young people nowadays are courageous to love, to seek the beauty of ethics, to discover values and positive energies in the person, they will realize that love visualizes God’s greatest beauty and it is the God’s greatest blessing that come across one’s life. Love fulfils soul that is empty, converts negativity into positivity, creates confidence over doubt and enshrines beauty over illness.

A smooth relationship can never be realized without starting to trust. It is not a matter of timespan of getting to know the person. It is all about the courage to put trust to someone completely. Understanding process may take time but trust can be determined immediately if both partners able to acknowledge the compatibility of his value with the value of the person. This values are enshrined though his/her personality, through the way the person treats the under privileges society, how he/she respect the elders, favor someone else over themselves in a goodwill spirit. These are the beauty that revolves if a person sees their counterparts as a part of value system.

Love is a necessity to the person and it is the source of energy for one’s soul. Those who have not been affirmed in a love relationship usually have a very high sense of individualism. This may bring different kinds of depression, inadequate behavior, insecurity, inferiority and inability to have an organized life. This is the cost of the lack of affirmation to form relationship. Moreover, it also because the persons are ignorant to life sharing and become avoidance in possession of love partner. Love is necessary for happiness as Pope said the following:

“Do not be afraid, don’t be afraid to marry, don’t be afraid to love, don’t be afraid to do what is necessary for happiness. Don’t be afraid to do what is necessary to make love happen, to be people of affirmation”.[10]

100 It is essentially true that the courage to love brings a lifetime of happiness. Only those who are brave enough to take a long journey will arrive at a new place, a beautiful destination, love is a prize for those who are eager to learn a new dimension of beauty in the self of another. Love creates every memory a moment to remember. It creates history that we cherish together.

G. Love as a Goodwill and Reciprocity

When it comes to love, what is the appropriate expression to affirm love to the person? Should love be a purely individual fulfilment for the sake of one’s pleasure only? Goodwill is the answer. Love is an expression of selflessness. It is the recognition and valuation to the loved ones. Goodwill is the purest form of love. Apart from desire and sensuality. A love of man towards a woman and a woman towards a man must be based on a shared commitment to achieve each other’s fulfilment. Generating self fulfilment as a mutual fulfilment. A personal objective into a shared goal.

Upon entering a vocational life, one will enter to new phase of life when the motto of “long-life learning” will be a realized in daily practice. In a marriage life, one will start to understand the demand of his spouse and his new family. It can be depicted as “driving a new car with some extra passengers”. We need to take them altogether in a long journey called a family life. However, the driver is us and the main passenger is our wife/husband and the children. This metaphor means that the others persons including extended families and relatives do not need and do not have to know how we maintain the journey. Families only need to know that the destination is clear that as a mature couple, we are heading towards happiness. Because this new journey requires learning of new skills in realizing a “dream family”. The first skill is a survival ability to overcome life shocks. There will come a time that a couple has to face that life is not always going the way they want, but the way it is supposed to be in life. For instance, a couple expect that life issues such as work or business matters will be sorted out easier once handled together. In practice, the reality could be harder. However, as long as both husband and wife are fully dedicated to work together, they will face it with confidence because of the commitment is fueled with trust. They will take all the lesson learned together to improve their relationship and their quality of life. Apparently, mutual goal is harder to achieve because it has a bigger challenges and a broader destination. But once a the couple complete the challenge with effective problem solving and partnership, the bond between them will flourish stronger. It is always a matter of time when a caterpillar turns into butterfly.

“The love of man for woman and woman for man cannot but be love as desire, but must as time goes by move more and more in the direction of unqualified goodwill”[11]

Love is by its nature is a bilateral shared relationship. It is a tie between two persons. Two thoughts, two perspectives, and two ideals under a single roof. What we need to do is to convert the conflicting ideas into common ones. Love is the power that enables them to join and unite every couple with different traits, idealism and principles.

H. The Challenge and Wisdom for Young People on Vocational Relationship

1. The Misuse of Relationship

The issue of young people is related the understanding of genuine love. Whenever persons are entering into love relationship, it does not merely come with good intention to preserve a lifetime

101 relationship that is bound by commitment and responsibility. The problem is limited appreciation towards dignity of human persons. Therefore, the universal concept of human dignity becomes important to be understood by young people.

The biggest problem in love relationship nowadays among young people is that love is being taken for granted. It is understood as a tool to gain individual pleasure and benefit partner for intimacy exploitation. Henceforth, it does not come with responsibility and commitment to build a long-lasting relationship. Therefore, it becomes a mutually beneficial connection rather than a relationship that mutually fulfills the spiritual being of each other. Instead of just the knowledge, the practice of human person becomes more relevant to discuss the issue related to young people. This is due to the nature of the modern youth that are adapted to practical knowledge that leads into a fast and instant culture of life. Young people need to be exposed to the practice of human dignity. One way is through the practice of a mature and healthy marriage. Healthy marriage is constituted in a way where two human persons share equal rights and responsibility to grow a family together. It may become a reflection of goodwill such as religious purpose, search for mutual happiness, and the willingness to attain genuine emotional enjoyment through each self. It is the willingness to give themselves to give away for mutual happiness.

2. Transmitting Natural Disagreement into Constructive Partnership

It is essentially true that every person is unique and this uniqueness has to be seen in such a way that it came to life as a gift from God. Uniqueness is often being associated as difference in a positive interpretation. In the life of marriage, disagreement among both husband and wife is natural phenomenon. However, it helps both to grow into better persons. Natural disagreement can be expressed in a constructive engagement where both persons equally take the ownership of the family and share the responsibility to nurture the family and love can be a solid materialization for the family to grow.

3. Unifying Contested Traditions

A couple who have different traditional and religious backgrounds usually possess a challenge upon entering their marital journey. This is related to acceptance and welcoming to a new culture and tradition. In my experience, I belong to a conservative religious Arabian family while my wife has grown up in an original Indonesian family with a strong Indonesian traditional culture. In my family culture, marrying a non-arab women is an unusual phenomenon and sometimes may be considered as a taboo. However, love prevails an understanding among competing traditions.

This was proven in a way that cultural difference needs to be celebrated rather than being contested. A couple enter into a love relationship because they share a mutual spiritual and emotional connection without problematizing cultural differences. This is actually the power of love. Love can transmit difference into celebration and divergence into unification. Therefore, this contrast views among each culture needs to be countered by a thorough communication, bringing family into a genuine acquaintance as the same human person that shares universal value of goodwill. Unifying different cultures may take time. However, once it is achieved it will become a celebration of diversity. In this sense, unifying two different cultures also unifies two families that relate directly to the universal understanding of human persons.

4. Balancing Career Life Matters Through Affirmation of Love

The most dilemmatic issue in the life of marriage for millennials is competing interest between family and career issue, on which side priority needs to be put. This is also the dominant reason why millennial

102 generation tends to be avoidant towards marriage before all their career goals being fulfilled. Through this social phenomenon, I decided to convert the challenge as an opportunity to seek the fulfilment of both career and family lives as important sources of happiness. On one side, a married couple needs a good career progress to raise good income and sustain their family life. On another side, couple as persons need to return back to the point of their marriage purpose, that is, to share love and nurture togetherness in family life. Therefore, the priority is clearly the family and the concept of human relation is important to be taken into account, a support towards each other is has to be translated as an affirmation of love. As a partnership rather than competition. Eventually, to become a progressive human person, career pursuit has to be exercised as a vocation to support family growth and raise happiness for the sake of them rather than seeing it as the pursuit of an endless self ambition.

I. Conclusion

In an ever-changing world, we are living in a multi diverse global society whereby diversity of identities is an inevitable phenomenon. This has created the necessity to establish a universally accepted and morally justified social instrument that unifies pluralism and diversity in order to minimize contestation and encourage cooperation among different societies. I believe this instrument is the culture of human person. Society may differ themselves on the basis of ethnicity, nationality or religion but the status and the spirit of human person forever unifies them as one global family.

The universal identity of human person enables every individual to take the ownership of family and community. This enables individual contestation be converted into mutual cooperation to make the world a better place. In life of marriage, the spirit of human person is delivered in form of appreciation and affirmation of love. The feeling of love creates marriage as a learning playground to learn about differences and take them as celebration. It is a fulfilment of soul where human person giving away themselves to seek and receive happiness through love partner. Marriage is a powerful vocation to cherish kinship, friendship and relationship. It has the power to eliminate differences and take them as a source of happiness.

[1] [1] Wojtya, Karol: Love and Responsibility. (P.1) [2] Haziyah Hussin: World Applied Science Journal: Islamic View and the Muslim Ethics of Loving. (P.1) [3] Ibid. (P.2) [4] Wojtya, Karol: Love and Responsibility. Chapter 1. The Person and The Sexual Urge (P.21) [5] Ibid (P.24) [6] Wojtya, Karol: Love and Responsibility. Chapter 2. The Person and Love (P.77) [7] Ibid (p.81-82). [8] John Paul II on Love & Responsibility: What Psychology Tells Us?: Affirmation & Marriage. Article is published on www.catholicculture.com. New York, 2002 [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid [11] Wojtya, Karol: Love and Responsibility. Chapter 2. The Person and Love (P.84)

103 Laksh Sharma: ‘Perspective’

Laksh is a WYA member from India who is currently based in France. He participated as a summer camper in the WYA Asia Pacific 2016 Summer Camp and underwent the regional internship with the said office. Among his projects as a WYAAP intern was an online campaign that aimed to raise awareness about child pornography.

Namaste! This is very well-known Indian greeting which includes joining hands together and bowing with the word ‘Namaste’. The greeting and gesture is very popular and well-known because of Yoga and what not, but the meaning is less known. We, Indians, bow down with our hands joined in front of our fellow being no matter who he/she is or where he/she is from as a sign of respect and equality. It means that I am greeting you with all the honesty and respect and bowing with humility in front of you with my hands joined because no matter who you are, what you look like, where you’re from or what you do, I do not consider you to be below or above me.

My experience as a part of the World youth Alliance has been ‘pure’ and the impact of it ‘eternal’. Those are the best two words to describe it. WYA represents a free and fresh culture knitted together with exchange and synthesis of ideas, philosophies and history. From the charter to the CTP, every extension is an integral part of the bigger picture that WYA tries to paint. WYA and its philosophy carefully strings together the youth of the world. Irrespective of their cultural, linguistic and religious background, the WYA way is more of a guiding force rather than a hindrance or a contradiction.

I was familiar with the WYA philosophy even before being a part of it leading to my further engagement with the organization. So, I cannot definitively sight a difference in my outset towards life and the living pre and post-WYA but I can say with certainty that my experience with WYA has further strengthened my way of thinking and living. I believe the cultural impact that WYA has is inherently carried through its members without much intentional effort, but through their way of life and behavior.

My objective in this paper is not to prove a point or represent a particular line of thought but to compare and contrast the ideal with the reality and ask some indispensable questions. Questions about humanity, questions about religion, questions about faith and questions about differences. I come from the ancient land of India but I have had the privilege to travel across the globe and experience many different cultures and points-of-view. I consider myself to be a global citizen and I shall try to encapsulate through my essay, a wholesome view.

Karol Wojtya or Pope John Paul II was one of the most inspiring, progressive and influential people in the recent past, not only for Christians but for people all across the globe. From helping build and improve relations with other religious communities to playing an influential role in ending communism in Europe, his contribution has been impeccable. Therefore, the cultural impact of his actions is unquestionable. The fact that his work is relevant even today, more than yesterday in many ways, and is the basis of many fruitful discussions, speaks volume about the man and his vision.

I am not only an admirer of the teachings of Karol Wojtya but in many ways live through his teachings. I am in agreement with most, if not all of his philosophy on marriage, family and the fundamental human community. The central theme or crux of all his teachings and philosophies in simple words has been to

104 “get back to the basics”. None of the things he advocates is anything out of the ordinary or asks for much effort but are simple guidelines for a fulfilling life. His teachings are beautifully thought out, showing reason to the skeptic and showing light to the believer. All my life I have indulged in dialogues, debates and discussions relating to religion, logic and belief and I have tried my best to walk a path in agreement of all these varied and often opposing concepts. Without active pursuit, I have followed the examples set by Karol Wojtya and even WYA for that matter. I find them consistent with my line of thought and the message I’d like to spread across the world. As the world becomes an increasing complex place with clashes over religion, race, creed, caste, language, land and every other human difference going from sporadic to all pervasive, the teachings of WYA become not just important but necessary and the ‘youth’ its flag bearers.

At the center of all the work of Pope John Paul II is the ‘human person’ and the development of the definition. Karol Wojtya distinguished between something and someone; a ‘person’ is always someone, not something. It seems very obvious and simple and it is, but its implementation and compliance seems less and less obvious these days. The term ‘person’ has been coined to signify that a man can not only be contained under the concept ‘individual member of his species’, that would be too restrictive given the unlimited capability and potential that a man possesses. What makes a man separate and different than other beings is his/her mind, his/her thought(s), a universe of its own. Each mind can construct, destruct, add, erase, mold his/her own universe making them inherently unique. There is something special, something rich brought by the term ‘person’. Something over and above, a surplus, something unrepeatable, something unique, something more. One can’t just think of a ‘person’ as repeatable or replaceable. Each person has a unique identity, a unique presence, a unique voice, a unique mind, a unique thought, a unique influence on the world. When you view a ‘person’ as something rather than someone, you fail to acknowledge his/her uniqueness in all its abovementioned forms. This cancels out the ‘person’ and when one cancels out the person, you ‘depersonalize’ him/her. This denies the inviolable mystery of the person. Wojtya shaped the concept of ‘inviolable mystery of the human person’ both at an individual level (self-possession and integration in action) and on a social level (self-gift and the common good).

In Wojtya’s analysis, the human person finds fulfilment when the inner subjective elements of the person are brought into conformity with the objective and virtuous social reality through the person’s free act of the will. His analysis starts with an appreciation of the value of the human person as ‘its own master’ endowed with free will.

Wojtya also distinguished between ‘individualism’ and ‘personalism’. Individualism means that the human person acts primarily to advance self-interest. In contrast, personalism refers to the constitution of the human person through acting in solidarity with others. The family is nature’s primary structure to facilitate personalism and participation.

The practice of empathy makes the foundation of Martin Buber’s; I and Thou. Buber brings forth the two main modes of human engagement, the I-It and the I-Thou. He comments that the modern world focuses on the first mode only ignoring the second mode, leaving the human alienated and leading to unfulfilling lives. The first mode of engagement, which Buber calls ‘experience’ (the mode of 'I–it'), collecting data, analyzing it, classifying it, and theorizing about it. The object of experience (the It) is viewed as ‘a thing’ to be utilized, a thing to be known or put to some purpose. This is a very static and stationary point of view.

105 To be truly human, one must practice the I and Thou mode of engagement. It involves building a relationship and participation. Learning is a lifelong process that enables us to harness the intrinsic, inviolable and infinite potential within ourselves. This engagement enables a person to truly experience self and the other person. Instead of considering the other person to be a stationary object, he/she is seen as a dynamic universe in itself. Science, for example, is infinite. No matter how much we discover and find out, there is always more. Similar is a human person and the universe that lies within him. Keeping an open mind and recognizing the universe that another possesses can truly enlighten a person, limiting another person to an ‘object’ or ‘a particular set of static characteristics’ will limit the growth of the person himself/herself. This is a transformation of the point-of-view from an object to an extension of self. Buber advocates such engagement to form a true and fulfilling society based on relationships. Unfortunately, in the modern world, people fail to engage in the ‘I and Thou’ mode and continue to see other people as ‘something’, ‘objects’ or ‘It’. Consider any modern work place, all employees are considered as resources or objects to be used for a particular purpose. Hiring, firing and managing ‘persons’ is a strictly objective process in most if not all cases. Somewhere the thirst to succeed, ambition, money and power have corrupted the infinite human mind and narrowed it down to much less.

‘Subjectivity’ is another concept tied to being someone rather than something. The basis of subjectivity is to treat or see another ‘person’ as a subject rather than an object. It stems from realizing self from within rather than the outside. Experiencing one-self from within, experience of self gives a sensation of possession of self, belongingness with self, feeling of intimate self-presence, control of one-self, true freedom. Self-realization is essential to practice true subjectivity, to see others as subjects, as in many ways an extension of ‘self’.

There are two constituents to a human person, the soul and the body. Soul is the essence, the principle that animates the body. Body is the gift to the soul. It is very important to understand these constituents and their role and purpose to understand the human person and love and sexuality. Even God (The Trinity) is a communion of persons bonded by love and so is man. Love is an essential part of a human life, without it the soul would never truly be fulfilled and satiated. Sex is another point of contention these days since the purpose, intent and emotion behind it is somewhat lost or losing these days. Call it casual sex, meaningless fornication or physical need, it continues to entice the people and continues to erode the foundation of society and family. Casual sex leads to dissonance between the body and the soul. The soul craves love, emotion, belongingness. Dissonance or tension creates an unhappy, unsatisfied and unfulfilling life for a human person. Using people as objects for pleasure maligns the ‘person’ and his/her dignity. We must remember that the term ‘sex’ is supposed to mean ‘making love’. This carries deep significance. It is a very intimate and emotional expression of love, meant for procreation, according to Wojtya. I stand in agreement with most of it and do believe that this might lead to a better and fulfilled society. Whether to blame the growing “casualness” of the activity as the sole reason for the crumbling institution of marriage might be a bit of a stretch. We must remember that the world is increasing a more complex place with a lot of factors contributing, such as, technology, education, employment, stress, ambition and more. These factors have taken a toll over normal human lives and have assumed more importance over the institution of marriage. Technology has made everything more ‘instant’, education & employment have formed a destructive and unilateral relationship wherein personal growth and enlightenment have no space, ambition and stress are in a constant rat race to nowhere.

106 He believed natural law affords a more complete and balanced understanding of marriage and family life than the present mainstream perspective, which has its roots in liberal theory. He saw marriage and family as the fundamental human community and marriage as a virtuous relationship. In his writings and talks, he discusses two inseparable ends of marriage, i.e., conjugal love and openness to the procreation of children. He said, “The depth of the community requires commitment on the part of the spouses to a lasting and exclusive fidelity towards each other”. According to Wojtya, this special form of love elicits from the participant the total gift of self. It yields a kind of human friendship that prospers in the midst of the joys and sufferings of everyday life. He emphasized that the bestowal of humanity upon children fills the fundamental community with meaning and purpose. He described the characteristic traits of this fundamental community to include acceptance, participation, education, commitment and fulfilment.

Overall, Karol Wojtya has emphasized the importance of marriage, family and relationships and has centred all around the human person and his/her free will. His enlightened way of thinking and the conveyance of the same is essential for the world given the crumbling institution of marriage, failing relationships, disputed families and the constantly challenged human dignity.

Although I might not have made any marital vows or any big vocational decision as such, my vocation lies in my duty towards my parents, my family and extends to my country and the world. I see myself as a global citizen, meant to serve humanity without any bias or preconceived notions. At the center of us lies a binding factor of humanity and we must struggle and fight to save its meaning, its essence, its dignity. I have formed my life and future goals in the light of this everlasting, unlimited, tempestuous yet satiable and blissful journey and struggle.

Without undermining any of Karol Wojtya’s teachings and philosophies I consider the most important and relevant one to be the simple yet profound meaning of the human person and its infinite definition. Personalism as opposed to individualism is essential for a truly human community. As individualism perpetrates modern society, so does the constraints to the potential of a human person. Building relationships through subjectivity will create a mutually beneficial environment for one and all leading to better and sustainable future prospects. Problems from warfare to global warming, all could be eased through the simple thought of ‘subjectivity’, ‘someone’. The practice of personalism will itself bring the importance of family and community into perspective. Because I am a business and finance student and I work in the corporate sector, I tend to see the business side of things. I need to use my education, my core competences to make a difference in the world. I can sight the world rapidly moving towards the concepts of ‘object’, ‘something’, ‘I and It’.

For example, in the early 1970s, the Ford Motor Company faced intense competition from German and Japanese small compact car imports. In an effort to quickly develop a competing model, Ford condensed the typical period of time to develop its new car, the Ford Pinto, from 3 and a half years down to 2 years. As a result, a design flaw occurred that was not recognized prior to the tooling and the manufacturing plant set-up process. Ford decided to a financial analysis of the situation. To make changes to the design at that point in time would cost Ford $11 per vehicle, with 12.5 million vehicles needing to be recalled. Thus, the total cost to Ford would have been $137.5 million to fix the Pinto. Changing the design would also have resulted in less trunk space, which would have had a negative effect on Pinto sales. Ford predicted that as a result of the defect, 180 people could die, 180 people could suffer serious burns, and 2,100 vehicles could be destroyed by fire. After, they used statistical data and figures to value a human life

107 loss in a car accident to be around $200,000, the cost of injury, legal fee and other things, the total expenditure came out to be around 49.5 million dollars. Comparing the two potential costs to the company, Ford decided not to recall the vehicles. Although their decision was law abiding, it was morally unethical. Such eye-opening instances show us the stark reality of the world we live in and make the teachings of Karol Wojtya and others even more important. The culture of ‘shareholder value creation’ must be turned to ‘shared-value creation’. Many companies, such as, Wallmart, Intel, Nestle and more have gained a lot from this approach, both in terms of goodwill (bridging the gap between corporates and society) and profits (sustainable). This is speaking of things at a broad organizational level but can be narrowed down to individuals as well.

My homeland, India, faces many challenges and evils. India is a big country with over a billion people; at least 9 recognized religions, 22 ‘official’ languages and 562 federally recognized tribes. It is vast country with different languages, cultures, physical features every 100 kilometers. So, it’s reasonable to assume conflicts can be easily sparked in a country which has a possibility of being divided on almost every ground possible. But somehow, through the thread of common intrinsic ‘humanity’, we manage to find common ground, love and respect for one another. But, being a young developing country (70 years old) with rudimentary problems such as, food, shelter, education and healthcare for all, governance becomes a pivotal factor. Being the largest democratic country, India is prone to a lot of populist and communal politics. Politicians use the grounds of religion, caste, creed with poor, uneducated people to secure a vote bank for themselves. Therefore, ‘subjectivity’ is imperative in India. Using people as objects to gather votes and exploiting the loopholes and flaws of democracy is in opposition with the definition of a human person.

Problems of ‘child labor’ and ‘treatment of girl child’ are also a topic of contention but see gradual improvement. India has the largest pool of young people in the world and is currently in the ‘demographic dividend’ phase. But because of the limited amount of resources, limited number of opportunities both in terms of jobs and quality education, the mind of the young people has been conditioned as that of being in a rat race with cut-throat competition where ambition and survival basically mean the same. The outset of the young people has become as that of a horse with blinkers on, narrow, limited and objective. Limiting the infinite potential of the human mind by treating your fellow beings as simple obstacles and competitors (objects) makes the person an object himself.

One of the most difficult conundrum I face as a person is my judgement of religion as good or bad for the world as a whole. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it make things better? Does it make things worse? I have a case both for and against and I’m unable to pass verdict. To me, religion is meant to be a guiding light in times of darkness, a point of reflection in times of light, a moral compass for right and wrong, good and evil. But, ever since its existence, religion has caused a lot of conflict. Now, some might blame human misinterpretation and bending and twisting of meaning for the friction caused due to religion across the world ever since its existence. But, in my opinion any holy text or guidance from above cannot have and should not have scope for any misinterpretation. Such a text should be simple, straightforward, connected to all and connecting all without any contradictions with the other. Throughout history, there’s barely a phase in humanity when it wasn’t divided on religious grounds and the dignity of human beings wasn’t violated in the name of religion. Whether it was Christianity in the middle ages or modern Islam, there has always been one religious community or the other under the radar. The interpretation of religion or ‘misinterpretation’ has led to much conflict over the years. But then I think of the pros of religion and they

108 in many ways outweigh the cons. I think religion is absolutely necessary because without it there would absolute chaos in the world. Most people across the globe derive their values, believes, principles and their judgement of right and wrong from religion. Without this set of values and considerations, a person would a blind man without a stick. People would lose all sense of morality, hope, faith and belief.

Here is where Karol Wojtya’s line of thought could prove pivotal and decisive. Knitting through different religious, racial, cultural and linguistic mindsets is his concept of the human person, the intrinsic human dignity, the unlimited and unique human mind, the respect for personal subjectivity. These notions can truly act as a guiding and uniting force irrespective of backgrounds or time. His line of thought speaks to everybody at all times, his ideas and theories can never be outdated and can never create friction among men. If religion is becoming the point of contention to some, conflict to many and disdain to many more, Karol Wojtya and his writings can be one of the unifying forces in the current scenario. Therefore, I believe that the my quest for answers, for the truth, even spirituality might be inexhaustible but my quest for a solution gets answered and inspired by Karol Wojtyla.

In times such as ours, brewing pessimism and cynicism, when the glass is seen as half empty, the music as noise, people as resources and God as a possession (yours and mine), Mahatma Gandhi’s wise words come to my mind

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

For example, due to communal politics in India, politicians tend to divide the country on the basis of religion by striking conflict (radical mobs, demolition of temples, mosques, etc.) and cash in votes through this conflict by catering to specific desires of a community. This is where I see the fundamental flaw in the construct of religion. Instead of building bridges, religion can be seen as the basis for war and division across the globe. Giving another example from my personal life, I was travelling to some parts of Northern India in an attempt to spread awareness and educate people about the bias against the girl child. The reason behind this social ill in India is that most of the people in the country are employed in the agriculture sector; the farmers prefer to have boys so that they can help out in the farm and extend the family later to increase the labor. I tried reasoning with the poor, uneducated, illiterate villagers. I told them that a girl is capable of achieving everything a boy can giving them examples of high achieving women across the globe like Indra Nooyi, Kalpana Chawla and more. But, I got nowhere, all my reasons in vain opposed to the villagers’ dogmatism. Then, I thought of a different approach to reason with them, religion. I reminded them that Hinduism is a religion with utmost emphasis on the capability and stature of women, Goddess Durga, Lakshmi, Parvati. I told them that the Bhagavad Gita dictates the hierarchy of respect as Guru (Teacher), Mata (Mother) and then Pita (Father). Now, I saw a spark, their hard stance melting. Once I connected my thoughts in the light of religion, the people were willing to listen and even change. Such is the power of God and religion. Again, I find myself in this conundrum where I can’t decide with certainty and may be never will. But with each passing moment I feel I get closer to an answer.

The absolute truth is that human beings, all of us, are different. It’s a fact. We come from different places, learn different things, look different, speak different, write different, celebrate different and more. Each one of us is indeed, different. And somehow, over the course of time, this simple and factual word has become frowned upon and even taboo. Why are we so afraid of differences? The matter of fact is that if we

109 somehow, you, me and all of us learn to see these differences, accept these differences and embrace these differences as uniqueness of individuals and move on then may be and just may be, we’d somehow be a little less…’different’. Difference is a good thing, it is what makes us special, it is what makes us human beings.

I’d like to conclude my paper by quoting from a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925. It says,

The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.

― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

110 Aseel Awwad: The Original Plans of God My Personal Reflection Regarding the Impact of WYA

Aseel is a member of the WYA National Committee in Jordan. She participated as a trainee in the TOT (Training of Trainers) in Lebanon. Aseel was also a trainer in the Emerging Leaders of the Arab Region and an attendee of the Arab Spring Conference.

My name is Aseel Awwad, a Palestinian who was born and raised in Jordan. Even though I was practically born in 1993, I consider 2011 as my year of birth, as this is when the new Aseel was born! Since 2011, I have started volunteering and participating in community work, finding the purpose of life and trying to discover new sides of my personality to be more selfless, dedicated and committed to the course of putting this world on track.

During one of my online searches, I came across the World Youth Alliance, the name of the organization that represents more of a worldwide youth stage, attracted me to know more about this organization. What impressed me the most were the social issues that WYA focuses on, as well as the way that it digs in depth of different major principles such as human dignity, human rights, freedom, and most importantly, the culture.

In this essay I will first focus on my experience with WYA and its core values, then I will show how Wojtya’s thought fits within WYA's work, focusing on Wojtya’s application to human dignity, freedom and solidarity as core values for WYA, and merging those values with my personal experience after analysing the dimensions of marriage and love and how are they related to the fullness of life.

What I like the most about WYA is that culture and education for the World Youth Alliance have always been key issues to focus on with youth, which is important because culture is what shapes the social behaviour and norms found in human societies. Improving the society’s culture means improving the world. One way to implement that is the deep philosophical readings that WYA encourages youth to do, that help them observe the concepts related to human rights and dignity despite any religious, ethnic, or extremist beliefs, to support and nurture the dignity of each human person in this world despite his colour, nationality, religion and origin where all people are considered equal in which the work of WYA arises to further solidarity among people. One form in which this solidarity arises lies in the family, which is the school of humanity—and it is context of the family and human sexuality that Wojtya develops his understanding of the person.

My first participation with WYAA was in the Emerging Leaders of the Arab Region program in Lebanon. Besides the fact that this was my first experience abroad, it was also my first time to meet leaders from other countries like Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon, which was interesting and fruitful. It was amazing how WYA could bring 20 different youth from around the Arab countries altogether, when all of them share the same values, interests and passion to make this world a better place for everyone. I fell in love with WYA and the deep discussions we’ve had in the training, and I felt responsible for bringing my experience with WYA to my peers. For this reason, I have completed the Training of Trainers course to be able to hold such WYA trainings and events in Jordan.

111 Although World Youth Alliance ideas were shocking to some people in every CTP training in Jordan, as it was the first time for most of them to discuss such topics as the ones that the World Youth Alliance represents, but it was interesting to see the participants diving in the deep meaning of human rights in every WYA training for their first time, exploring what human dignity is, and agree to respect their own and then the others dignity for future cultures that appreciate and respect all humans. As a girl from the Arab world, it’s always challenging to talk about dignity with the conflicts we’re facing today that shows various kinds of governmental violations against human dignity, and for me; this has also a personal meaning, where my grand mothers and fathers have been killed and displaced from Palestine to Jordan. However, that was one of the motivations for me to join WYA, praying for a better future for the Arab and the entire world. WYA didn’t only improve my thoughts and beliefs, but also played a key role in shaping some parts of my personality to a point that there’s WYA in every act that I take now.

WYA’s CTP training has introduced me to some of Karol Wojtya's philosophical legacies. It also made me so passionate about reading more of his works. When talking about culture, I must address the family as the main forming principle of culture and humanity, and here I would like to talk about The Theology of the Body by Wojtya and his understanding of the person in the context of family and human sexuality, and how it is all this related to WYA’s perspectives.

I have found this reading interesting, because the ideas suggested in it meet in different points with Islam and the holy Quran, which is something I would like to highlight, as I believe as a WYA member that religions aren’t a way to make people different, but rather they can be a source of values and ethics for the good of people. Wojtya’s purpose was to give to the world a true vision of man, answering important questions like: Who are we? Why did God create us as male and female? How are we to live? What is our destiny?

He begins with the part that Jesus addresses the question of divorce and remarriage with the Pharisees. He instructs them that Moses allowed divorce because of “the hardness of your heart … but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8). Using this text as his springboard, the Pope takes us back to “the beginning” in an effort to bridge the way we are, living with a hardness of heart, to the way we were before sin entered the world. Hardness of heart is the condition of the will that is closed to God; even in Islam, God said “their hearts hardened, and Satan made their deeds appear good to them (6:43). When humans close their hearts to God’s life and love, they are incapable of sharing life and love with their spouses or their children, because they don’t have it within themselves to give.

Jesus directs his discussion with the Pharisees “from the beginning” (Mt 19:8), because it is the starting point. Jesus understood that the state of Adam and Eve before sin is the model for all married couples, because it reflects God’s original plan. By penetrating human experience beginning with Adam and Eve before sin, the Pope will contrast that reality with our experience after sin. Nevertheless, there is a vital connection between that world and ours. It is the echo in the human heart that resides deep within the soul of every man and woman.

The pope develops three experiences that are common and fundamental to the human heart, and I will evaluate the three forms of experience that Wojtya develops in Theology of the Body, and then turn to Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness to show the link between Wojtya

112 and the remainder of WYA’s work related to human dignity starting in the family that forms the culture and develops the solidarity.

1. Original Solitude. God said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18); even in Quran “O men! Behold, we have created you all out of a male and a female, [15] and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. [16]” (49:13). But why is it not good for man to be alone? The answer is found in human nature. When God created the man, he formed his body from the “dust from the ground,” but he also added a unique spiritual component when he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. However, Adam was alone. He discovered there was nothing had a soul like his that was created to love and to be loved. Adam was alone in the most profound sense, because there was no other creature in whom he could pour out his love and receive love in return.

The fundamental difference between humans and animals is that humans seek love amid the experience of solitude. It’s the longing of every human to share one’s inner self—the desire to love and to be loved, “And that He creates the two mates—the male and female” (Q 53:45).

2. The Original Unity Man’s experience of the original solitude—being alone—finds its fulfilment in the experience of the original unity. Solitude aches for a fulfilment in communion, that is, a common union, with someone “fit for him,” otherwise the human person will never fulfil himself. Man’s very being calls for union— communion; oneness with another person, “therefore a man must leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the two will become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). The “rib” of Eve’s formation indicates that the “woman” is also a human being, different from the animals and made in God’s image and likeness. Therefore, like Adam, she, too, can only discover her fulfilment in love.

According to John Paul II, both the experience of solitude and the experience of original unity are expressions of being made in God’s image and likeness. “Man became the image and likeness of God,” he wrote, “not only through his own humanity, as an individual, but also through the communion of people that man and woman form right from the beginning.” This union reflects God’s inner nature, which is an eternal communion of love and of life in a union of three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the original unity, Adam gives his whole being to Eve who is open to receive it. In receiving him, she in turn makes the gift of herself. It is this exchange of self-giving that brings about their common union—a communion of persons. In this original unity, we discover a foreshadowing of mankind’s ultimate destiny, which is the eternal communion achieved with the Bridegroom Messiah in the wedding banquet of the Lamb.

The blessing of fertility, which is linked to procreation, is built on this fundamental union. Thus, sexual union, properly understood, reflects the inner life of the Trinity. This explains the satanic attacks aimed against the body and the resulting culture of death. In order to know what is most sacred in the world, consider that which is most profaned: our bodies—the temple of the Holy Spirit, human life,

113 and the denial of, irreverence toward, and sacrilege of the Eucharist. Satan attacks the greatest good in an attempt to seize it as his own. The body, which is formed as a symbol of Trinitarian life and love, is the battleground.

3. Original Nakedness Pope John Paul II begins his last point on his reflection of Original Man with a quote from the second chapter of Genesis: “The man and his wife were both naked and felt no shame” (Gen 2:25). Even in Islam, “And they who guard their private parts, except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed” (Quran 23:5-6). The pope teaches that this nakedness without shame is a key for understanding the original Biblical view of men and women. It indicates that the very desire of their hearts was to love as God loves because they had the unspoiled love of God radiating from within themselves. Adam and Eve’s desire for each other was not focused on the other as an object to be used, but on the person to love as God loves. Their longing was to express their love through the gift of self, which is called self-sacrificing love.

Indeed, according to John Paul II, it was precisely to express this reciprocal love that God made them male and female. So, God commands them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). In other words, God commanded them to love as He loves, which is with an eternal generation of life and love. Each divine Person gives the totality of his being to the other Persons in an infinite act of total self-giving and receiving. When God said, “Be fruitful and multiply”, his decree meant: live in the image I created you; “your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women” (Q 4:1).

Therefore, we discover there is no shame in loving the way God loves, because the focus is not on body parts, but the person of the beloved. So, Adam and Eve were naked and there was no shame because the desires of their hearts were pure (Gen 2:25). Their desire was to be a gift in the image and likeness of God, because they wanted to love the way God loves. In their nakedness, they discovered the theology of their bodies, the revelation of the mystery of God’s plan of self-donating love. They saw the beauty and the goodness of God’s plan of love and life. They desired nothing else. They saw and knew each other with all the peace of the interior gaze which creates the total intimacy of persons. In their innocence they saw with their hearts not just with their eyes. Thus, they could perceive the person revealed through the body. They could see the spiritual reality in and through the body. Thus, Adam did not merely see a body, but a person made in the image and likeness of God, a somebody.

There is an important lesson here that resonates with us. Sin has not conquered the goodness of our creation. Therefore, through the eyes of faith, we can see this beauty and goodness despite graying and falling hair, wrinkles, too much weight, stretch marks, and sagging and deteriorating body parts. Sadly, we often perceive with the false vision of the world, which focuses on what is superficial and passing. Through grace we can reclaim the divine perspective, which is God’s original vision of our bodies. John Paul II wrote, “Nakedness without shame expresses the fact that holiness entered the visible world.” It shows that Adam and Eve were holy. “Holiness enables man to express himself deeply with his own body precisely by means of the sincere gift of himself.” Holiness, the pope points out, is always expressed through the body. Therefore, we can’t reject or denigrate our bodies, because holiness expresses God’s love through our bodies. Jesus teaches us this lesson when he pronounced

114 the most masculine words ever spoken, “This is my body which is given up for you.” This is the gift of self through the body. In their original nakedness Adam and Eve discovered the “nuptial meaning of the body.”

The body has a nuptial meaning because it reveals specifically in the difference between men and women the call to holiness, that is, to be a gift in the image of God. According to John Paul II, “The human body includes right from the beginning the nuptial attributes, that is, the capacity of expressing love.” That love is achieved “when a person becomes a gift, and by means of this gift fulfils the very meaning of his being and existence.”

Jesus’ commandment is to love “as I have loved you” (Jn 13: 34). This call to love as Christ loved is stamped on our bodies. This is the essence of the theology of the body. Neither a man’s nor a woman’s body make any sense by itself. Why am I a male? Why am I a female? Is our sexuality some freak of nature? However, in the complimentary and completing nature of the male and female bodies we discover the call to be a gift, the call to remain in the image of the Blessed Trinity. The call to be like Jesus, the call to love like God loves, and to surrender our bodies like Christ. It’s the call to holiness. It is only as a gift that we fulfil the meaning of our existence.

If we don’t live according to the true meaning of our bodies, we ultimately destroy ourselves. This is the culture of death and self-focus in which we live. It is a culture of men and women who are estranged or cut off from the nuptial meaning of their bodies. Our society has bought into a bogus version of the human person. As a result, our culture inundates us with false messages that give a counterfeit meaning to life. The theology of the body dispels this falsehood and exposes the lie.

If one could choose between a real and a counterfeit $100 bill, we would always choose the real money. However, what would happen if we were indoctrinated with messages that told us the counterfeit money was real? Wouldn’t we be deceived to choose what is false? This is the world in which we live.

Christians are called to dispel Satan’s lies with the whole truth of their faithful witness. This is accomplished by embracing the nuptial meaning of their bodies by living a life of self-sacrificing love.

As a fundamental anthropology of the human person, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is not meant only for those who are married, but for all members of humanity, no matter their age, relationship status or vocation. Theologically, there are many complex aspects of this teaching, but we do not all have to be theologians or scholars to understand the core principles or to live them out in our homes and our lives.

It's important also to affirm the body’s beauty and dignity for the one’s family members, and that does not necessarily mean telling someone that they look “beautiful” in terms of worldly standards, but rather assuring them that they are beautiful as a unique creation of God. As family members’ bodies change over time, it is especially important to emphasize the goodness of the body and the ways in which it reflects Christ in a very authentic way. This teaches them that as their bodies – and the bodies of others – change for better or for worse, they are not losing any of their worth.

115 The language of the body is also important, very often, we are unconscious of the messages that we are sending with our bodies, yet they are powerful tools of communication. As St. John Paul II said, “Through sexual union the body speaks a ‘language’… this language must be spoken in truth”. But this language is not solely spoken through the sexual union. Our bodies can communicate how we feel about ourselves, those we are with, the situation we are in, our mood and countless other messages.

We must become conscious of this language and use it in a way that communicates the love of God and recognizes the beauty and dignity of each human person. Trying to recognize the messages that the family members send through their body language, and the messages that we send to them. Having a discussion about this can bring the family to an awareness of the language of the body.

In WYA, we share many of those values that Wojtya mentions in The Theology of the Body, like the belief that the human body is a God’s gift that should be appreciated by love, that makes WYA stand against pornography, due to the fact that it uses the human body—especially the woman’s body—as an object to make money regardless to his/her dignity and God given value, and as a way to engender lust that must be distinguished from desire and longing, both part of love, whereas lust is not! Also, we consider those values when differentiate between nude art and pornography, where nude art to engenders admiration for the beauty of the human body.

After reading The Theology of the Body and Love and Responsibility by Wojtya, in which they anticipate the sexual ethics in every relationship between a man and a woman, and by merging them with WYA’s principles regarding human dignity and the family as a core value, I have started thinking deeper about love, marriage and relationships and consider those values when making my personal decisions.

When talking about relationships on the personal level, I would like to mention my engagement story as it has been for me an application of the WYA’s principles. Around four years ago, I have met a guy in one of the events where I have been a speaker to talk about a success story that I had with a huge initiative I have established in Jordan. This guy was an organizer of this event; we’d met once to plan for the event and that was pretty much it. Two years later I was transiting in Dubai for Malaysia, where I have met this guy again by occasion! We have met three times later between Jordan and Dubai, until we fell in love and he proposed to me few months later. It was a huge decision for me to take—the traveller girl who doesn’t like routine and always up for new challenges and adventures; because taking this step into marriage means to share, and to share everything. Not only your body, hopes, dreams, but to also every aspect of your lives. In marriage you are no longer thinking about yourself, but rather to take care of each other. If partners consider one another as equals, and each feels equally valued in the relationship, you will create the best circumstance for your love and happiness to thrive, but this is not necessary an easy thing to achieve.

For a free girl who was born and raised in a conservative community, where men lead just because they’re men, and women stand behind just because they’re women, it’s essential for me to make sure that I will be treated with absolute respect according to my incommensurable value, my dignity. While making this huge personal decision, WYA has always been there inside of me, questioning myself how will I know if he also believe that human dignity is inviolable and inalienable—it cannot be destroyed,

116 and cannot be removed for any reason or gender and under any condition, and that my dignity and rights will be respected at all terms for a future family that generates a generation of leaders who believe in those values and spread them among their peers. However, that’s one of the major things I wanted to make sure that the man I will build my life with does really understand.

In matrimony and in the family a complex of interpersonal relationships is set up—married life, fatherhood and motherhood, filiation and fraternity—through which each human person is introduced into the “human family.” In the family, the human person is not only brought into being and progressively introduced by means of education into the human community. Therefore, the commandment to grow and multiply, given to man and woman in the beginning, in this way reaches its whole truth and full realization.

Conjugal communion constitutes the foundation on which is built the broader communion of the family, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters with each other, of relatives and other members of the household.

This communion is rooted in the natural bonds of flesh and blood, and grows to its specifically human perfection with the establishment and maturing of the still deeper and richer bonds of the spirit: the love that animates the interpersonal relationships of the different members of the family constitutes the interior strength that shapes and animates the family communion and community.

When it comes to family, the family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture. Many families are living this situation in fidelity to those values that constitute the foundation of the institution of the family. Others have become uncertain and bewildered over their role or even doubtful and almost unaware of the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal and family life. Finally, there are others who are hindered by various situations of injustice in the realization of their fundamental rights.

For me, a happy marriage means a happy life, not only for the man and woman, but also for their future children. But happiness in marriage is not something that just happens. A good marriage must be created in the Art of Marriage: The little things are the big things, combined with the deep understanding for one another. It is at no time taking the other for granted; it is having a mutual sense of values, appreciation and common objectives. It is standing together facing the world. It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family, because family is the most important structure in human being and it can only build with love. That was what’s important to be taken into consideration when deciding to take any step towards marriage, but is that everything? And how about sacrifice in love?

The answer is no, for some people, self-giving and satisfying the others and making them happy is a very rewarding experience, that makes them feel the joy of their life, and that’s actually great because faith in God is completed when living for people, living for others and for God. Of course, this requires sacrifice and pain sometimes. The psalmist tells us “happy the man who takes delight in the commands of the Lord.” This is what Jesus and the other prophets expects of us as His followers. We are called to renounce ourselves and share the burden of Jesus in reaching out to humanity. Christian

117 life comes to the fullest when we share in the sufferings of others, doing what we can to alleviate them, for by so doing, we learn how to love and grow in compassion and solidarity with God and our fellowmen. The Christian message remains that it is through the cross that we find fullness of life, but I think it’s also very important not to lose yourself for the others, and always have your own life, dreams, and goals that would always make you have your own personality and character. Especially for people who are in love.

On the other hand, love is sacrifice, why? Because such action can express the complicated essence of love (transcendental desire and transcendental responsibility) clearly. Sacrifice is an act of giving up some valuable thing. It is not a normal opportunity cost that you will pay for a normal choice. It must be an obviously undesirable (but desirable for the object) practice (principle of transcendental desire) of fulfilling a responsibility that is thought by a person to be the maximisation of the real happiness of herself/himself and her/his lover (principle of transcendental responsibility). And, if there is a contradiction between the responsibility for one's self and that for the other's self, the latter must have the priority (or else it would become selfish and self-centred) but it does not mean the former can be ignored as human being should respect their own existence too. Self and other are originally equal but the reason of the prioritisation of the other's happiness is just to avoid the natural trend of selfishness in final decision that will occur when there is a contradiction between the responsibility for self and that for other.

Considering love as a transcendental desire and a transcendental responsibility and begins with desire of beauty a develop in responsibility for one's own self and the other's self, besides sacrifice, passion, protection and devotion may be optional behaviours. However, they all fail to express the essence of love. Passion is purely driven by desire and emotion and there is no necessary sense of responsibility at all. Protection may imply possession and dominance. Devotion lacks clear incentive (i.e., desire). Therefore, only sacrifice suits the best.

Sacrifice has already been a key element among sexual loves we experience. Lovers at least must sacrifice time and money with the other. In some cases, they may even sacrifice friends, family, jobs and studying. However, besides the sacrifice of life and the withdrawal from a love relationship, the sacrifice of both people should try to be equivalent for the reason of fairness and equality. An imbalance relationship of sacrifice will cause problem in long term, for example over-reliance.

All those ideas were for me things to consider before going one step closer towards marriage, to make sure that my partner agrees and understands those beliefs. The only way to figure that out was time and experiences: watching his reflections on the vocational decisions I make whether he shows support or tries to affect me in a way that satisfies his manhood, the way he reacts when we disagree; whether he goes aggressive or does he respect my ideas even if he doesn’t agree with them, and most importantly to make sure that we share the same core values. When taking such decision, you must be patient. I have said yes to my partner and we got engaged, as I have found in him everything I have ever wished to have, someone who loves my inner beauty, understands me and supports me to be who I want to be.

Some people choose to get married to live the fullness of life, and no doubt that everyone in this universe dreams of the fullness of life, but only people whom are optimistic about their life, and have

118 a strong belief in God would experience living the fullness of life.

Fullness of life means fulfilling our physical, material, emotional, aesthetic and spiritual needs. To live the fullness of life is more than just acquiring wealth, status and power. It means to live a meaningful and purposeful life. Meaning is spelt out in terms of being contributively towards others, especially in love and relationships. Purpose would entail long term life goals. Even if we’re rich and successful in the general terms, if there is no love in our lives, thus no friends or anyone to share love with, we will never experience the fullness of life, but having friends or loving and being loved isn’t everything unless we find a purpose for living!

The fullness of life is the theme of today’s scripture readings. The purpose of Jesus’ and the other prophets coming is to give us the fullness of life. Many of us are caught in the rat race of acquiring wealth, money, power and status. Some think that fullness of life is to eat, drink and be merry all the time. Others think that life is to look good, attractive and are obsessed about the way they look. To think that this is happiness is an illusion because we become consumed by what we consume. We must not be deluded by the world because what the world can offer is external happiness, not the happiness of the soul. The world might be able to satisfy the body but not the spirit. We are not mere body; we have a soul, a heart, and a mind that desires to be satisfied as well.

So how can we acquire a satisfying life? Life satisfaction is given to us as we expend that life for others. Indeed, the more we try to acquire life, the more it escapes us. This is what Christ meant when He said, “For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it.” Life is ours only when we give ourselves away in love and sacrifice. If prophets lived the fullness of life, it was because all through their lives, they lived for the others. They lived for God and for their people. They did not live for themselves by doing good, focusing on others’ needs rather than their own. Indeed, those people who are rich and successful know that what give them the greatest joy are not pleasure and power but giving and love to the people who are in need. Therefore, most successful people give a great portion of their time and wealth to the development of humanity.

Life for many is a whole series of ambitions. Once a goal is reached, another goal is set. And so, we were told first to study hard, then to get a degree, find a good job, then a good spouse, a big house, a luxurious car, etc. But if we are so busy pursuing the goals, we will never be able to enjoy and taste life! That’s why we should always work hard, but also enjoy our lives at the same time.

Consequently, we should take into consideration that the future that we’re working for is becoming our present, so we should always enjoy our present because it’s the future that we’ve waited for. In other words, we must empty ourselves of our goal-orientated thinking so that we can live moment by moment, enjoying and relishing what we’re doing without being over worried about the future. Only by living as full as we can in this moment and finding meaning in what we do. The happiness of life is to be found in the journey itself, much less at the end.

On the personal level, when I have finished my high school, I have chosen to study computer engineering, since I thought that’s what I want to do until the rest of my life, because I believe that doing what you love is main key to live the fullness of life. But after my graduation, I’ve figured out

119 that being a computer engineer doing the same routine tasks at work is not my thing, and I don’t enjoy doing that at all. I decided to look for another opportunity where I feel more like “yeah, this is what I enjoy doing,” and I figured out that I am more into fashion designing. I thought that I should follow my bliss and the universe will open doors for me where there were only walls, because the only way to do great work is to love what you do, so I moved to Istanbul to study fashion design and I graduated this year. I have taken this step because I realized that I cannot change the past or even the present, but I can definitely change my future.

They say if you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life. Not everyone is lucky enough to live the choices that they really enjoy. Choosing a right life path can be tough. Especially when the parents are involved. Parents want their children to have a better life in the future, so they want their children to be educated the way they think is the best. This act limits the children’s freedom.

To be completely free, or to do something of your own free will, it is essential that you could have acted otherwise. If you cannot avoid acting in a particular way, then your action is not free. While it is generally understood that human beings have the ability to think and act freely as rational and moral agents, the common causal laws by which all human activities and responses are governed are incontestable. It is this conflict that provides the real problem of how we are free.

The journey of a life lived in freedom is a journey of growth in virtue—growth in the ability to choose wisely and well the things that truly make for our happiness and for the common good. Freedom, in other words, is a matter of gradually acquiring the capacity to choose the good and to do what we choose with perfection.

Law is thus intertwined with freedom. Law can educate us in freedom. Law is not a work of heteronomous (external) imposition but a work of wisdom, and good law facilitates our achievement of the human goods that we instinctively seek because of who we are and what we are meant to be as human beings.

That is, freedom is the human capacity that unifies all our other capacities into an orderly whole, and directs our actions toward the pursuit of happiness and goodness understood in the noblest sense: the union of the human person with the absolute good, who is God.

Besides freedom, the concept of 'solidarity,' as one of the three social democratic core values, Solidarity means assistance and support between the strong and the vulnerable, the rich and the poor, and the old and the young. This readiness to stand up for each other often exists within families. Social democracy demands to extend it to a societal level.

As a Palestinian who was born and raised in Jordan, I experienced dealing with two diverse cultures that formed my personality, and what I find most interesting about our Jordanian culture is how solidarity and caring are main parts of our culture’s structure. At a certain point, this solidarity can go to the extreme to become conservatism and interfering in the other’s lives, and for girls, this conservatism doesn’t necessarily support gender equality, which gave me the passion to influence youth and help them widen their horizons to see the bigger image of everything, to show solidarity in

120 a way that is far from interfering.

However, people who feel responsible for the well-being of all community members, out of whatever motivation, form the base for the political work of social democrats. In a more and more globalized society solidarity must not only be organized on a national but also on an international level.

As a form of solidarity, we active youth always try to perform actions to solve our community problems, which can be performed by establishing campaigns to achieve a certain goal or perform a tool to push the government for the public good. Thus solidarity describes the will to assist each other because one sympathizes with others and to provide support between the generations and people.

In the end, I want to affirm that WYA had brought an interesting, fruitful ideas to the Middle East, in which they can change the mindset of youth to ensure a better future, by introducing them to the aspects of volunteering, solidarity for good, human dignity, freedom and leadership skills to perform the change in their communities.

However, a better youth participation in the community and politics will lead to a better future Middle Eastern engagement in the global decision making process. The Middle East’s engagements with the human rights idea are being increasingly shaped, where WYA is being a main actor in that. This promise to render human rights claims a more formidable, meaningful, and emancipatory force in Middle East politics.

121

122