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By Root 361 0

challenge is to adopt a blind child, the first time such an adoption has been considered possible in the entire country…Anita, who reports very intense flow experiences sculpting in clay, making love, and reading Braille…Dino, eighty-five years old and blind from birth, married with two children, who describes his work, which consists in restoring old chairs, as an intricate and always available flow experience: “When I take a broken chair I use natural rich cane, not the synthetic fibers they use in factories…it feels so great when the ‘pull’ is right, the tension elastic—especially when it happens at the first try…When I get through, the seat will last twenty years.”…and so many others like them.

Another group Professor Massimini and his team has studied included homeless vagrants, “street people,” who are just as frequent in the great European cities as they are in Manhattan. We tend to feel sorry for these destitutes, and not so long ago many of them, who seem unable to adapt to “normal” life, would have been diagnosed as psychopaths or worse. In fact, many of them have proven to be unfortunate, helpless individuals whose strength has been exhausted by catastrophes of various kinds. Nevertheless, it is again astonishing to learn how many of them have been able to transform bleak conditions into an existence that has the characteristics of a satisfying flow experience. Of the many examples, we shall quote extensively from one interview that can stand for many others.

Reyad is a thirty-three-year-old Egyptian who currently sleeps in the parks of Milan, eats in charity kitchens, and occasionally washes dishes for restaurants whenever he needs some cash. When during the interview he was read a description of the flow experience, and was asked if this ever happened to him, he answered,

Yes. It describes my entire life from 1967 up to now. After the War of 1967 I decided to leave Egypt and start hitchhiking toward Europe. Ever since I have been living with my mind concentrated within myself. It has not been just a trip, it has been a search for identity. Every man has something to discover within himself. The people in my town were sure I was crazy when I decided to start walking to Europe. But the best thing in life is to know oneself…. My idea from 1967 on has remained the same: to find myself. I had to struggle against many things. I passed through Lebanon and its war, through Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Yugoslavia, before getting here. I had to confront all sorts of natural disasters; I slept in ditches near the road in thunderstorms, I was involved in accidents, I have seen friends die next to me, but my concentration has never flagged…. It has been an adventure that so far has lasted twenty years, but it will keep going on for the rest of my life….

Through these experiences I have come to see that the world is not worth much. The only thing that counts for me now, first and last, is God. I am most concentrated when I pray with my prayer beads. Then I am able to put my feelings to sleep, to calm myself and avoid becoming crazy. I believe that destiny rules life, and it makes no sense to struggle too hard…. During my journey I have seen hunger, war, death, and poverty. Now through prayer I have begun to hear myself, I have returned toward my center, I have achieved concentration and I have understood that the world has no value. Man was born to be tested on this earth. Cars, television sets, clothes are secondary. The main thing is that we were born to praise the Lord. Everyone has his own fate, and we should be like the lion in the proverb. The lion, when he runs after a pack of gazelles, can only catch them one at a time. I try to be like that, and not like Westerners who go crazy working even though they cannot eat more than their daily bread…. If I am to live twenty more years, I will try to live enjoying each moment, instead of killing myself to get more…. If I am to live like a free man who does not depend on anyone, I can afford to go slowly; if I don’t earn anything today, it does not matter. It means that this