"Could you help me find a place for these two girls to live? They don't have a father, their mother is missing and we don't know if she will come back," a doctor said to me in tears. It was late afternoon in the adolescent clinic in a run-down neighborhood. A group group of medical students were helping where we could. At the end of an exhausting day at work, I found myself faced with a non-medical problem: the urgent need of those who had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat, until someone did something...

Long hours followed, accompanying two lonely and frightened girls. Finally we found a solution. The pain and sadness of these girls seemed to ease and a grateful smile appeared. In me, tiredness gave way to a curious sense of well-being: I felt happier.

Why does solidarity appeal? Why do many people feel moved - and moved - to devote their time and energy to help unknown disaster victims, immigrants or the underprivileged? Why does helping and serving bring joy?

And there are many other questions: Do I help to feel good and receive praise or is it out of a desire to serve? Am I a Good Samaritan only with strangers or also with those in my home and family? 

Brotherhood, concord, loyalty and love are some of the meanings of the word solidarity. Which of these meanings encourages me in my actions at volunteer activities?
The answers depend on the vision we have of the human being and existence. There are those who will find a ground-to-ground explanation satisfactory, with a more or less revolutionary hymn to liberty, equality and fraternity.

Others will emphasize the link between solidarity and Christian charity, which has been and is the greatest source of volunteer activities, and the testament of Jesus Christ: "That you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). It even seems that the word volunteer activities claims its relationship to charity, for love is the essential act of the will; and this good habit includes love of God, of oneself and of others.

In any case, the prompt and generous reaction to the suffering of others, as well as the growth staff that it entails in believers and non-believers, has a deep root. The structure of the person and the development of the personality point towards others and donation. 

The psychology of development observes that maturity is a self-transcending process of leaving oneself. The child becomes aware that he does not exist alone, he gradually abandons the "mine, mine". Later, the adolescent secures his place in the world, moving even further away from childish egocentrism. A greater capacity to love and to be faithful opens up.

Lasting happiness does not lie in the exclusive search for balance, in not wanting to complicate one's life or not feeling emotions. There is something that pushes outward from the person or, better said, sustains it from the outside. This dynamism, contrary to egocentrism, makes us more and more aware of "us".

As Piaget said, "the personality is oriented in the opposite direction to the ego: if the ego is naturally egocentric, the personality is the decentered ego". In the mature person there is harmony between one's own individuality and the conviction to live with and for others. This leads to overcoming selfishness and indifference, to desire a better world, to join forces for a global symphony.

The goal is not Huxley's Brave New World in which benevolence is a great value, but in the hands of the State, which distributes euphoric drugs to citizens turned into anonymous cogs. This illusory universe in which everyone belongs to everyone else, where God and charity are not necessary, is neither possible nor attractive.

Solidarity is not a utopia and goes beyond institutional compassion. It is not identified with having empathy or being close to a good cause. Solidarity is a social virtue related to friendship, which above all makes the person who exercises it better. It puts on internship what Aristotle called "love of benevolence", wanting the good of the other. To lend him financial aid is to make him see that he matters to us, it is to discover his sacred value and to confirm him in that value.

Hence the need to foster a fraternity that is also open to all in this "common home". It is a reason for optimism to see in Navarre so many students who wish to change the world, also through their well done studies; and so many people who are moved by the suffering of others; for, as Pope Francis has said, "those who do not weep grow old inside".

Why is solidarity attractive? Because we exist to give ourselves, as manifested by the structure of our personality and the experience of love. We need to love and be loved. No one wishes to lend or to be lent, but aspires to donation, to go out of oneself for the sake of others. Kierkegaard's intuition is continually confirmed: "The door to happiness does not open inward (...), but outward".