«I don’t recognize myself in that photo!»

At some point, we have heard that voice within us.

That first glance that rushes by: it recognizes the face, interprets the attitude, and completes the story with what it merely sees. But there is something in each person that does not surrender itself to the superficiality of inexperienced eyes.

Eyes that can accumulate data and statistics about someone and yet, from the part, fail to know the whole. The «who» fades away, fragmented.

The truth of a person only emerges when his or her unity is revealed.

And each heart makes the synthesis.

Only the heart unites. Only the heart—not feelings, I am not talking about feelings—brings things together for an encounter person to person, with God and with others.

That heart is a center of energy capable of making the many one; in it, we accept the truth that intelligence shows us and choose our direction, sustained by virtue trained day by day. Millimeter by millimeter, gram by gram.

Where I place my heart defines me. Think about it.

The Strange Gaze

We live with a kind of inner “arrhythmia.” Everything must be exposed: what we think, what we do, what we feel.

Today’s society demands absolute transparency; it wants to know everything about us.

But the heart needs silence, intimacy, and time.

«What is essential is invisible to the eye.» — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

When the heart begins to live at the mercy of the gaze of others, it stops keeping its own rhythm and loses its personal melody.

The problem is not showing something of our life, but the demand to show everything to measure a value that seems to be put up for auction.

The Avatar

The avatar—the character we adopt on social media, at work, at home, or among friends—can become a distorted identity: it is the most dangerous substitute for our heart, which becomes distracted and loses its way…

There is nothing wrong with adapting our language to each storm, to each tide. What is dangerous is losing the unity that reveals the inner truth. When the heart loses its center, the character takes the helm of the ship.

Social media are not merely tools we use: sometimes they have “customized” our values, our language, our relationships, and the image we build of ourselves.

They are only instruments. We do not give them control. They are useful to us.

The Heart Gathers What Is Scattered

The heart carries out a silent but decisive task: it interprets data and affections, accumulates experience and memory…

The intelligence that loves truth,

the good proposed to the will, and

love as an end

help us discern the direction to follow.

When inner fragmentation reigns, means become ends, and we run the risk of blending into our roles or profiles.

Inner unity is not recovered by constructing a “more authentic” character for others to see, but by returning to the center. No technology can carry out for us the tasks that reveal the virtues of everyday life: caring for others, being patient, facing pain, or remaining beside the person who needs us.

Technology makes things easier, but it cannot replace the conversion of the heart.

It has no heart.

The person is transformed through truth, is revealed in freedom, and in the virtue that enables him or her to relate to others and pursue the common good.

Looking at the Other Again

The heart recovers its rhythm when it stops revolving around itself.

It begins to heal through concrete attention: looking at someone without expecting anything in return, especially someone whom no one else looks at.

Attending to the other cannot fit on an Excel spreadsheet. One gives oneself

when one listens without immediately preparing a response,

when one accompanies without turning pain into content, and

when one remains.

Then the heart once again becomes a place of encounter: a space, not a platform.

We need to learn to inhabit the digital world without handing over the center of the person to it.

It is worth pausing and asking ourselves from time to time:

• The footprints of my feet: which direction are they walking?

It is enough to protect a space to breathe at an unhurried pace:

a conversation without a phone,

an afternoon without posting anything,

a friendship without characters.

There we discover that we are not the sum of our profiles, but persons called to serve from a deeper unity.

There is a phrase from the Gospel that always makes me tremble; my heart feels seen: «Truly I tell you, I do not know you» (Mt 25:12).

That gaze does not ask me for a better profile. It neither compares nor controls; it remains with love.

«Only a well-tempered heart is capable of feeling the truth, which is the most perfect way of understanding it: if it neither wounds nor caresses nor presses, in a word, if it is not dramatic, it is hardly truth at all, but merely data.»

Rafael Alvira

That center is still there.

The «ark» of your inner life has not been lost.

All that is needed is to return to it and let it beat.

One day we will be seen without a filter. Then we will understand who we are.

«Now we see as in a mirror…; then we shall see face to face… Then I shall know as I am known» (cf. 1 Cor 13:12).