… this awareness leads to an otherwise impossible capacity for relationship … with our patients.
“Piccinini explained in these words how involvement with his patients had come in ‘with a crash’ from the recognition of a common need and a shared question:’Sickness, suffering, pain, and death are the normal but sharpest expressions of human limitation, and the fact that man is limited can never be removed from one’s awareness of life. This awareness leads to an otherwise impossible capacity for relationship. The sense of limitation immediately puts you next to others, even if they don’t agree with you, even if they don’t understand or even look at you. Because, just like them, you are needy. This awareness, which seems like a strange sentence, immediately forms an opening, because we understand with a crash that we’re together, not because we think about it in the same way, but because we are needy in the same way. It is crucial to keep this in mind when we are with the sick. What an amazing renewal! There is no need to theorize about service; you start to do it for real.’”
Enzo: The Adventure of a FriendshipEnzo: The Adventure of a Friendship. Emilio Bonicelli. p. 48