© Olivier Föllmi

Youth from the Himba tribe, Namibia.
The Himba tribe, living in the north of Namibia, is one of those in Africa that touched me most with their simplicity, beauty and joy of life.

Meetings
Text: Father Józef Tischner

Meetings are the deepest and most rewarding experiences that a  person can have in life. Anyone who has not met other people on his path through life can be said to have wasted that life.

It is very important for a person to change his view of the world from time to time. We shouldn’t look out on the world from just one window. To change one’s viewpoints is to rise above oneself, above one’s feelings and interests, and look at oneself as if seeing someone else. A  degree of freedom is a precondition to thought. Freedom gives us wings that allow us to rise above our own little world and look at ourselves from the outside. Only by comparing the internal and external image of oneself, can one approach the truth.

Józef Tischner (1931–2000) – philosopher and Roman Catholic priest, one of the great authorities behind Poland’s “Solidarity” movement of the 1980s. His book “Etyka solidarności” (The Ethics of Solidarity, 1981) has been translated into more than a dozen languages.