I admit: I’m a dreamer. At times I find myself sitting on
the couch at home, and I watch the saxophone my father played 40
years ago and which renders the living room even nicer, and I
dream. At times I mix dreams and memories, and when I think with a
music in the background the dreams, images and emotions unite to
make peaceable an afternoon already pleasant. This is what happened
last weekend: sitting on the couch I thought about the words of
John Legend in his splendid “Ordinary People”.(1)

Often we forget that we are ordinary people, people with merits and
also with shortcomings, with our talents and our limitations. With
our emotions and with our tears… Ordinary people. At times the
will, almost the need to be special floods our days, actions and
thoughts, and we wake up searching for the idea that will change
our life or the lottery ticket that will replace our lack
fulfillment. The stress and the speed of our lives slowly decenter
us, and with lost time we lose the emotions, the looks, the
caresses and the hugs that characterize who we are: ordinary
people. When Paul wrote a letter to Timothy he reminded him that a
contented spirit is a great gain. When one reaches the conscience
that we cannot be special by ourselves, there is peace, hope and
love, there is gratitude, consolation, the awareness that Jesus has
given his extraordinary life to make us ordinary people with
extraordinary hearts. John Legend advises us to
walk slow. I think he’s right. How many times we’ve lost something
because we had something else to do. How many times we haven’t had
the time to greet someone well or to make a phone call that
expresses between the lines, “I care about you.” A popular saying
tells us that we know the value of something only when we don’t
have it anymore. It’s true. We spend a lifetime searching for
something that will render us special and lose bit by bit all that
helps us be who we are. That’s why it is important to live slower.
To think more. To listen more. To talk more. To live more… like
ordinary people. I sit on my couch, look at the saxophone and
dream. I dream of being an ordinary person but with an
extraordinary heart, changed, renewed, transformed by Christ.
Enzo Bifano lives in Rome, Italy, and works as an
analytical programmer at a large communications
company.