Hajja Salesjana April-June 2021

27 H AJJA S ALESJANA out of the ditch” – then how immense His Love must be! A beautiful fact of life that confirms what I have been saying follows here: A university professor wanted the students of his Sociology class to go to the fringes of the big city where they lived to record the life stories of 200 young people. Students were asked to offer an assessment of the future of each respondent. In all cases, students gave the following diagnosis: "without the least probability of success." Twenty-five years later, another professor of Sociology by chance found that previous study and commissioned his students to follow up on the project begun many years before to see what had happened in the lives of those boys and girls, if they could be found. With the exception of 20 who had moved to another place to live or who had died, the students discovered that 176 of the remaining 180 had achieved success in life; i.e., they had managed to have orderly, stable, and reasonably happy lives. The professor was stunned and decided to continue the investigation. Fortunately, many of those people lived relatively close by and it was possible to ask each one how they interpreted the path their lives had taken, knowing that the family and neighborhood context presaged the worst ... Well, in every case the answer, overflowing with a great feeling of gratitude, was, "I had this teacher." That teacher was still alive and the professor looked for this still “alert and agile- minded old woman” to ask what magic formula she had used to “save” those boys and girls from the toughness of the ghetto and to guide them along the path of an honest, neat, and stable life. It is really very simple, the teacher replied. "I simply LOVED THEM." Antoine de Saint-Exupery photo by Jaanam Haleem www.unsplash.com 'One sees clearly only with the hear t. What is essential is invisible to the eye.'