Maria Fischer •
I remember traveling from Tupãrenda to Asunción last year, admiring my chauffer for driving in that crazy traffic and during a torrential downpour, which transformed the streets into rivers. He stopped at an intersection, and at that moment, I saw the gigantic poster with a message that was as clear and strong: Stop or have a wreck. —
I remembered it while I was speaking with a group of executives a couple of days ago about how to conquer or re-conquer that fire in the heart, the lightness of life.
Holy Father Francis’ message, in his homily of Ash Wednesday 2018, revolved around “three words offered to us in order to rekindle the heart of the believer: pause, see, and return.” Partly in jest and to stress that everything depends on stopping, even if only for a brief moment, the activities that keep us on the run – sometimes without meaning, until we are out of breath, in thinking, working, in living, or even in loving, I shared about that poster in Paraguay.
While everyone laughed, one after another including me, understood that sometimes we need a sign like that in our offices, on our cellphones, in our work shrines, or in our home shrines. All our work, the important things and personal relationships break down, simply because we never stop to listen, to read, to look…
Two days later, one of the executives sent me a WhatsApp with a request: I need a photo of that poster so I can put it on my desk.
Thanks to Seba Valdez, our great collaborator in Paraguay, a few days later I received a photo of that poster. He told me that it was full resolution – “in case you want to enlarge the photo.”
Yes, sometimes, we need a large poster to stop and not have a wreck.
Original: Spanish. 28 May 2018. Translation: Celina M. Garza, San Antonio, TX USA. Edited: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, Elgin, TX USA
