Reading yesterday’s Gospel, March 12 (Luke 11:29-32), an idea resonated within me that I have been pondering for some time and that I wanted to write about.

I know I don’t write virtuously, and it’s a fact that I have a hard time putting myself forward when it’s meant for others to read. It’s one thing to write your little inspirations of the day or about an experience in your personal notebook, and another to give way and leave the door open for even just one person to read you.

In this passage, Jesus speaks of signs. Of how they asked him for signs to believe, and how these were taking place before those people, but they were unable to see them. The sign was Himself, but they didn’t see Him.

I thought about it, and I think what must have happened to them is that they weren’t able to do it because they were wrapped up in their own things, their habits, their everyday noises—in short, in their mental frameworks. They looked to Jesus in their own way and were closed off to the wonder of what He brought them.

I only have to look at myself to see how I close off the possibility of novelty in my routine and of being amazed at what reality has to tell me every day when I put myself in my multitasking or super-efficient mode.

Efficient, effective, useful, productive…

I saw myself so reflected in those people, and how often do I look only with the natural gaze of the body’s senses and leave aside the supernatural? The one that opens you to something more than what simple material reality shows you, and that requires time, silence, and a willingness to look slowly so as not to just see.

And I return to the meaning of usefulness, profitability, effectiveness, productivity… Is it possible to be productive if I stop doing so many things in my day? Do I stop being an efficient person if I slow down, letting things leave a mark on me and trying to leave mine in them? And then, I realize that perhaps I should rethink the meaning of the words efficiency and usefulness in the way I move and live.

I understand what the world is trying to impose on me. Performance, success, quantitative measurement… but is this living fully? And I stop. And I become silent, and I look around me to be able to answer myself not from theory, not from what the gurus or “experts” in happiness say, but to look at my experience. To contemplate my life and my journey. To verify it in my small reality. In my small plot. In my heart, understood as the core of my person.

And I put aside for a moment all the impacts I receive. The ones I seek and the ones the algorithm I like so much gives me.

And I raise my eyes to heaven… and I realize that productivity isn’t about material things. That my effectiveness isn’t about what I accumulate, but about what I give. That I am efficient when I give myself more to the people I meet. That my success lies in the times I’ve been able to overcome my prejudices and allow myself to be challenged and touched by something or someone. That my usefulness doesn’t depend on the opinions of others, but rather resides in my freedom to be, able to make room in my life for actions considered useless if I judge them through the filter of performance.

And I realize that perhaps the word isn’t effectiveness or efficiency. It isn’t productivity or usefulness. It’s about bearing fruit.

“Give” means to give oneself, to surrender, and fruit that is the seed of more future fruit. A fruit that, when it dies, leaves a residue in those who remain here, to flourish again. A residue of those things that are not seen with the eyes of the body, but are experienced and seen with those of the heart.

Those tremendously beautiful things, but that require your openness to become visible.

And as I thought about this, I saw the rays of the sun coming through my window after so many days of rain and the hues of that sky that appeared before me. How unexpected, and how much beauty.

Beauty… we talked about it at university these days. What is it? Can a person who is blind and, therefore, cannot see with the eyes of the body, have an experience of beauty? And I wondered if there is beauty around me, in my small square meter of routine.

And I decided to stop. And I looked… and I realized how much beauty suddenly surrounds me. The sun, the sky, my home, the fragrance of coffee permeating the kitchen, the encounters that will take place today, my beautiful mother waiting for me to eat… my mother… how much beauty there is in her and in her motherhood. In her care, in her dedication, in her smile, in her wrinkles. In those furrows in her skin that speak of a life lived with so much love and suffering. And I marvel at the beauty, invisible to the eyes of my face, but which shines intensely when seen with those of my heart.

And I remember yesterday’s Gospel and resolve to contemplate my day, open to all the beauty that will appear before me, but that needs my attention and my presence to be able to speak to me. It asks me to awaken to wonder in other ways and forms, to discover the unexpected and the gift of each day’s newness.