Yesterday I caught up with Liz Burkemper, home for spring break from her first year at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Liz inspires me with her aspiration to simplify her life and take time for contemplation. I told her I was grateful for her remembering Mev and her Brazil message at some of the vast and lively protests she participated in in January and February.
Carlos Mesters: Here in Brazil, our limits are very much at the social level — hunger, homelessness. We struggle to become aware and change these things. But sometimes after engaging in a long social struggle, we realize that nothing grew inside of us. Maybe in the U.S. your limits are more at the personal level. But sometimes when you are struggling individually, you realize that you have to address the social dimension to arrive at the personal dimension. Without integration of the personal and the social, we won’t be full persons. We may start at different points, but we arrive together. The struggle is one.