The most wonderful lesson I ever learned from the Jesuits, perhaps the only lesson, was in Calcutta in 1984. I quote.

Don’t for one minute think, that your presence here will be of any help whatsoever to the people you’re about to live with. You’ve been brought here for your benefit, not theirs.

I’m not 100% sure why I’m bringing it up now.

It was a kind of a gap year* thing and the school tradition was that you got your hands dirty in a semi-sanitised but also thrown into the deep end sort of way.

He said it conversationally, not to fire me up to better things but as a bald statement of fact. In an instant, a fool could see the honesty of it. The most wonderful lesson alluded to, was the accidental nature of our position. If it held for me, then it must hold for all.



* five months only in India then six in Australia.