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A tough struggle not to be a slave or everything I need![]() a kiosk in a train station. You know what a train station kiosk is like, right? It’s a real product of our consumer society: Where you try to make a maxi-profit in a mini-space. A maxi-crowd surges over a mini-workforce which tries to satisfy a maximum number of desires in a minimum amount of time. Between maxi and mini have you wondered what becomes of the people? A station is a place intensely alive. People go up, and people go down, of every colour and all ages. Thousands. But each one, each one, unique. With his or her own story. The kiosk is attractive. You find a thousand things there which can he of great service to the folks passing through. Still, caught between maxi and mini it’s a tough struggle not to be captured as a slave It’s true there are always at least four of us holding the line of battle. But life is difficult. All this maxi and mini is violent, anyway. And so sometimes, we get mixed up. We are tricked by the heat of the battle and we find ourselves fighting each other. Only when we see (for example) how everyone cares for Rosie when she gets sick - it puts our hearts right again: it is clear we are fond of each other, after all! But there are all these people. There too, it’s important not to fight the wrong battle. The war is not with them. Between maxi and mini we become machines. Them and us. Sometimes more them, sometimes more us. And it’s hard, hard to stay alive. I have to really hold on not to become a maxi-sales clerk, who manages to do a maximum amount of things in a minimum amount of time. And thus, one evening, after hours and hours, there appears in the midst of the crowd a lady who holds out her change purse and says, "I can’t see too well anymore. Would you look yourself?" I come close to telling her she ought to put her glasses on, that everyone is in a hurry here, that I don’t have the time. But no, I hold out my hand and she shakes out her coins into my palm. I start counting, and suddenly, amid the coins I see a little medal shining. The Child Jesus. "What a surprise to see you here, in the middle of all this, my God!" Completely flabbergasted, I stop counting. The lady looks at me, trusting: "Do you have what you need?" Her smile looks like the smile of the Child on the medal. I look at the two of them and I feel within me a great tenderness winning out... "Oh, yes ma’am, I have EVERYTHING I need!"
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Inspired by Brother Charles... |