Ideal Organisation Structure

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A Time Of Realisation In Life

A time comes in your life when you finally get it... when in the midst of everything, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out - ENOUGH!

And you come to the realization that you deserve to be treated with love, kindness, sensitivity and respect and you won't settle for less. And you learn that your body really is your temple to take care of. You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different from working toward making it happen.

You learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls. You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are ... and that's OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions. You learn that people don't always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and that it is not always about you.

And you learn that it is truly in giving that we receive. It's all about the journey in life... What you may feel you lack in one regard, may be more than compensated for in another. What you feel you lack in the present, may become one of your strengths in the future.May you see your future as one filled with promise and possibility.

Learn to view everything as a worthwhile experience.

Anything ...

Never lose hope ... No One Is A Loser!

When he was a little boy his uncle called him “Sparky”, after a comic-strip horse named Spark Plug. School was all but impossible for Sparky.

He failed every subject in the eighth grade. He flunked physics in high school, getting a grade of zero. He also flunked Latin, algebra and English. And his record in sports wasn’t any better. Though he did manage to make the school’s golf team, he promptly lost the only important match of the season. Oh, there was a consolation match; he lost that too.

Throughout his youth, Sparky was awkward socially. It wasn’t that the other students disliked him; it’s just that no one really cared all that much. In fact, Sparky was astonished if a classmate ever said hello to him outside of school hours. There’s no way to tell how he might have done at dating. He never once asked a girl out in high school. He was too afraid of being turned down… or perhaps laughed at. Sparky was a loser. He, his classmates… everyone knew it. So he learned to live with it. He made up his mind early that if things were meant to work out, they would. Otherwise he would content himself with what appeared to be his inevitable mediocrity.

One thing WAS important to Sparky, however — drawing. He was proud of his artwork. No one else appreciated it. But that didn’t seem to matter to him. In his senior year of high school, he submitted some cartoons to the yearbook. The editors rejected the concept. Despite this brush-off, Sparky was convinced of his ability. He even decided to become an artist.

So, after completing high school, Sparky wrote Walt Disney Studios. They asked for samples of his artwork. Despite careful preparation, it too was rejected. One more confirmation that he was a loser.

But Sparky still didn’t give up. Instead, he decided to tell his own life’s story in cartoons. The main character would be a little boy who symbolized the perpetual loser and chronic underachiever. You know him well. Because Sparky’s cartoon character went on to become a cultural phenomenon of sorts. People readily identified with this “lovable loser.” He reminded people of the painful and embarrassing moments from their own past, of their pain and their shared humanity. The character soon became famous worldwide: “Charlie Brown.” And Sparky, the boy whose many failures never kept him from trying, whose work was rejected again and again,… is the highly successful cartoonist Charles Schultz. His cartoon strip, “Peanuts,” continues to inspire books, T-shirts and Christmas specials, reminding us, as someone once commented, that life somehow finds a way for all of us, even the losers.

Sparky’s story reminds us of a very important principle in life. We all face difficulty and discouragement from time to time. We also have a choice in how we handle it. If we’re persistent, if we hold fast to our faith, if we continue to develop the unique talents God has given us, who knows what can happen? We may end up with an insight and an ability to inspire that comes only through hardship. In the end, there are no “losers” with God. Some winners just take longer to develop!

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Nothing Is ... Forever!

Nothing Is ... Forever! - Dada J P Vaswani

The winds continued to whistle as rain came smattering down against the window pane. The typhoon was raging outside as a family remained safe in the shelter of their home. A little girl lay in her bed afraid of the rolling roar of the thunder. She closed her eyes tightly and prayed to God. She slowly felt the reassurance of her mother’s arms around her, “Don’t worry, it’s just a storm. It will soon pass.” “But mummy, why does God make storms?” she asked. The mother replied softly, “To make us  appreciate the sunny days.”

Friends, many times, we too are faced with storms, difficulties and depressing times in our lives. And we allow ourselves to be carried away by these storms. We forget that the storm will surely pass and give way to yet another bright, sunny day.

We live in a world in which nothing abides forever. Nothing abides because life is a movement in waves, waves come and waves go. Everything comes to pass. These problems that come to us, the difficulties that we find in our way, the obstacles that are set up on our path they will all pass. If only you remember this teaching that this too shall pass, whenever you are surrounded by a problem, you will see what strength and courage you get to face that problem.

Evaluate Your Existence

http://zumfeed.com/space/1222-26-pictures-will-make-you-re-evaluate-your-entire-existence.html

The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself...you cannot move forward --Steve Maraboli

Just One Thing: Forgive Yourself

--by Rick Hanson, syndicated from Greater Good, Jul 26, 2015

Everyone makes mistakes. But it takes skill to hush your inner critic!

Everyone messes up. Me, you, the neighbors, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Ghandi, King David, the Buddha, everybody.

It’s important to acknowledge mistakes, feel appropriate remorse, and learn from them so they don’t happen again. But most people keep beating themselves up way past the point of usefulness. In fact, they’re unfairly self-critical.

Inside the mind are many sub-personalities. For example, one part of me might set the alarm clock for 6 am to get up and exercise… and then when it goes off, another part of me could grumble: “Who set the darn clock?”

More broadly, there is a kind of inner critic and inner protector inside each of us. For most people, that inner critic is continually yammering away, looking for something, anything, to find fault with. It magnifies small failings into big ones, punishes you over and over for things long past, ignores the larger context, and doesn’t credit you for your efforts to make amends.

Therefore, you really need your inner protector to stick up for you: to put your weaknesses and misdeeds in perspective, to highlight your many good qualities surrounding your lapses, to encourage you to keep getting back on the high road even if you’ve gone down the low one, and—frankly—to tell that inner critic to Shut Up.

With the support of your inner protector, you can see your faults clearly without fearing that they will drag you into a pit of feeling awful. You can clean up whatever mess you’ve made as best you can and move on. The only wholesome purpose of guilt, shame, or remorse is learning—not punishment!—so that you don’t mess up in that way again. Anything past the point of learning is just needless suffering. Plus excessive guilt actually gets in the way of you contributing to others and helping make this world a better place—by undermining your energy, mood, confidence, and sense of worth.

Seeing faults clearly, taking responsibility for them with remorse and making amends, and then coming to peace about them: this is what I mean by forgiving yourself.

How?

Start by picking something relatively small that you’re still being hard on yourself about, and then try one or more of the methods below. I’ve spelled them out in detail since that’s often useful, but you could do the gist of these methods in a few minutes or less. Then if you like, work up to more significant issues.

Here we go:

   *  Start by getting in touch, as best you can, with the feeling of being cared about by some being: a friend or mate, spiritual being, pet, or person from your childhood. Make this feeling part of your inner protector.

   *  Staying with feeling cared about, list some of your many good qualities. You could ask the inner protector what it knows about you. These are facts, not flattery, and you don’t need a halo to have good qualities like patience, determination, fairness, or kindness.

   *  If you yelled at a child, lied at work, partied too hard, let a friend down, cheated on a partner, or were secretly glad about someone’s downfall—whatever it was—acknowledge the facts: what happened, what was in your mind at the time, the relevant context and history, and the results for yourself and others.

   *  Notice any facts that are hard to face—like the look in a child’s eyes when you yelled at her—and be especially open to them; they’re the ones that are keeping you stuck. It is always the truth that sets us free.

   *  Sort what happened into three piles: moral faults, unskillfulness, and everything else. Moral faults deserve proportionate guilt, remorse, or shame, but unskillfulness calls for correction, no more. (This point is very important.)

You could ask others what they think about this sorting (and about other points below)—include those you may have wronged—but you alone get to decide what’s right. For example, if you gossiped about someone and embellished a mistake he made, you might decide that the lie in your exaggeration is a moral fault deserving a wince of remorse, but that casual gossip (which most of us do, at one time or another) is simply unskillful and should be corrected (i.e., never done again) without self-flagellation.

   *  In an honest way, take responsibility for your moral fault(s) and unskillfulness. Say in your mind or out loud (or write): I am responsible for ______ , _______ , and _______ . Let yourself feel it.

   *  Then add to yourself: But I am NOT responsible for ______ , _______ , and _______ . For example, you are not responsible for the misinterpretations or over-reactions of others. Let the relief of what you are NOT responsible for sink in.

   *  Acknowledge what you have already done to learn from this experience, and to repair things and make amends. Let this sink in. Appreciate yourself.

   *  Next, decide what if anything remains to be done—inside your own heart or out there in the world—and then do it. Let it sink in that you’re doing it, and appreciate yourself for this, too.

   *  Now check in with your inner protector: is there anything else you should face or do? Listen to that “still quiet voice of conscience,” so different from the pounding scorn of the critic. If you truly know that something remains, then take care of it. But otherwise, know in your heart that what needed learning has been learned, and that what needed doing has been done.

   *  And now actively forgive yourself. Say in your mind, out loud, in writing, or perhaps to others statements like: I forgive myself for ______ , _______ , and _______ . I have taken responsibility and done what I could to make things better. You could also ask the inner protector to forgive you, or others out in the world, including maybe the person you wronged.

   *  You may need to go through one or more the steps above again and again to truly forgive yourself, and that’s alright. Allow the experience of being forgiven to take some time to sink in. Help it sink in by opening up to it in your body and heart, and by reflecting on how it will help others for you to stop beating yourself up.

May you be at peace.

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This article is printed here with permission from the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. You can learn more about the science and power of gratitude at the Greater Good Gratitude Summit.  

The author, Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist and author of Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and a member of the Greater Good Science Center’s Advisory Board.

Be The Change: Take a moment to recognize that we all make mistakes; allow yourself the experience of being forgiven.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

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Lesson In Simplicity

Compassion In Education

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. --Dalai Lama

"I Teach To Learn": Compassion In Education

--by Nipun Mehta, syndicated from servicespace.org, Aug 14, 2015

When Ward Mailliard’s students had a chance to visit Desmond Tutu in South Africa, one of them asked, "Bishop Tutu, what was it like to hold Nelson Mandela's hand as he was introduced as the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa?" "Oooo, that's something you can't describe," Desmond Tutu spontaneously remarked. And then quietly added, "I had a conversation with God and said, 'This is enough. Thank you.'"

How can we engage with that which can't be described? In our incredibly rich circle of 40 educators, we probed into the question of "Cultivating Compassion Quotient." The challenge with a question around compassion, or any such virtue in our inner ecology, is that you can't answer it. It's not that it's too complex for comprehension, but rather that our understanding is uniquely dependent on our level of awareness. That is, there are a million correct answers. And hence, it requires a very different mental framework to hold such inquiries. 

Learning, today, is heavily rooted in the material realm. It's almost an assembly line to get a job, to get money, to survive, and for the few who get past that -- to conquer. Material world is predictable, quantifiable and scalable. Subsequently, our focus shifts towards uniformity, our processes are prone to commercialization, and our innovations look like MOOCs. Materialistic endeavors are, of course, very useful to operate in the world, but it requires a very different skill-set to engage with our inner values. Prasad described quite well: 

Conventional learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills to function efficiently in known and recurring situations. It is the learning that allows us to add to what we knew before, develop a new skill without having to change our perspective and helps us to solve problems that have been recognized as problems. Conventional learning does not demand that we shift who we are in terms of perspective, assumptions, beliefs and values and it attempts to maintain the systems that we live in.

Our internal values, like compassion, grow in a very different way. Instead of an assembly line, it's more like gardening. You plant seeds and through the myriad different inter-connections underneath the ground, the shrub sprouts when the time ripens. It requires a kind of trust in the process, to water the ground even when there is no sign of growth. When Yeats said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire", he was referring to this quality. Content is important, but context is its essence. 

Today's unilateral focus on content is adept at material conquest, but not at cultivating our inner field of Compassion Quotient (CQ). 

"I boarded a plane one time, and a small shiny thing wrapped in golden foil somehow fell on my lap. Initially, I was startled. Perhaps subconsciously programmed by all those 'please report all suspicious packages' warnings, I called the stewardess to warn her about it. But she smilingly said, 'No, M'aam, we didn't clean that up, because there was a child with Cerebral Palsy in that seat, right before you came, and he wanted to leave that chocolate for the person that came after him.' I was so moved. It became the turning point in my life, when I decided to dedicate my life to teaching special needs children," Vinya shared in our CQ circle. 

Every teacher has such pivotal moments. And yet, as Vinya herself described, "But you forget. It's one thing on the todo list after another, and instead of reconnecting with that spirit, each meeting becomes a means to reach some quantifiable metric. Not only do you feel like a cog in a wheel, but you encourage others to become cogs too. It's dehumanizing." 

Clearly, such a culture is going to lead to burnout. "Over the last twenty years, more than twenty thousand teachers have worked for Teach for America. More than half leave after their two-year contract is up, and more than 80 percent are gone after three years. About a third of TFA alumni walk away from education altogether," Adam Grant reports in 'Give and Take'. 

One response to that burnout is technology. Two teachers in our CQ circle worked at Silicon Valley's Summit Prep -- voted in top 100 high schools in the country -- where every student gets a laptop, and teachers aren't allowed to lecture for more than 2 minutes. Two minutes?! Basically, they don't want teachers teaching. Their faith lies in their "blended learning", led by computerized curriculum. The upside to online, personalized learning is that it can create dynamic lesson plans based on the student aptitude, and indeed, Newsweek pegged Summit Prep in their 10 Miracle High Schools for "taking students at all skill levels, from all strata, and turning out uniformly qualified graduates." 

Yet, from the perspective of CQ, uniformity is actually a cost -- not a benefit. Qualities like compassion, kindness, and generosity can only thrive in a context of diversity, because inner transformation tread a unique journey for every mind. Moreover, if we strip out the nurturing care and presence of an intrinsically motivated teacher, what are we left with? Just content. 

Simply pouring content into student brains is a definite way to lose engagement. And sure enough, every teacher has stories of how kids are paying lesser and lesser attention in class. Do we use Ritalin to calm them down? We now gives medication to 3.5 million children (up from 600,000 in 1990). Or do we gamify their content, so it can feel more like video games they play? Yes, we do spend 9 billion person-hours every year just playing solitaire! Or should we just pay kids to go to class, submit their homework (and eat their veggies), as many schools are attempting? 

When we lose sight of CQ, we have no choice but to turn to these desperate measures. Fear of not having a job can't be the best way to motivate students or teachers. Addiction to an online terminal can't be the best way to engage a classroom. Replacing dynamic teachers with algorithmic curriculum can't be the best way to ignite a heart of learning.

Can we imagine a different design?

When the bell rings in the classroom, all the students race out. Can it be the other way around? What does it take for students to race into the classroom, when the bell rings? 

In our CQ circle at Mount Madonna High School, we brainstormed many new possibilities. What if we saw each classroom as a space to catalyze inner transformation? What if teachers were space holders that were rooted in WONK -- Wisdom of Not Knowing? What if we spent a bit more time understanding the power of self learning? Anne spoke about Kindness Circles, Audrey spoke about her experiment of spending a day with a vegetable seller in India, Min spoke about Honesty Circles. Even during the breaks, stories and examples were abundant, like this School in the Cloud vision: 

"On the other side of Sugata Mitra's office is a wall that connects to a local slum. Sugata decided to place a high-speed computer in the wall, connect it to the Internet, and watch what happens. To his delight, curious children were immediately flocked. Within minutes, they figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. In nine months, they had taught themselves enough skills to get a job as a receptionist." 

Pancho loved Buddha's articulation of a teacher's role: "First, remove fear in student. Second, impart knowledge. Third, don't give up until they learn." Ward similarly elaborated on using "curiosity is a gateway to empathy", inspired by Dacher Keltner's recent work on awe: 

When you look up into these trees, and their peeling bark and surrounding nimbus of greyish green light, goosebumps may ripple down your neck, a sure sign of awe. So in the spirit of Emerson and Muir – who found awe in nature and changed our understanding of the sublime – Paul Piff staged a minor accident near that grove to see if awe would prompt greater kindness. Participants first either looked up into the tall trees for one minute or oriented 90 degrees away to look up at the facade of a large science building. Participants then encountered a person who stumbled, dropping a handful of pens into the soft dirt. Our participants filled with awe picked up more pens. In subsequent studies, we have found that awe – more so than emotions like pride or amusement – leads people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for others, all of which are requirements for our collective life. And still other studies have explained the awe-altruism link; being in the presence of vast things calls forth a more modest, less narcissistic self, which enables greater kindness toward others.

In many ways, ServiceSpace itself is a multi-faceted learning platform. You could wake up to a DailyGood article in the morning, watch KarmaTube videos with your kids, embark on a 21-day kindness challenge with your colleagues at work, incubate a community project within a Laddership Circle, connect in stillness via a local Awakin Circle, experience generosity at Karma Kitchen. But there are no demarcations between students and teachers, and every space becomes a classroom and a learning opportunity. Anchors learn how to hold the emptiness of a circle, technology facilitates sharing of recordable content, and all participants orient themselves around the dynamic quality inner transformation. It doesn't require any marketing; our innate gratitude itself propels its spread. 

All of this, though, is in stark contrast with what our dominant paradigm currently amplifies. In a recent survey, kids were asked which of these three things would they like to give up: internet, smartphone or sense of taste. 72% chose to give up taste! 

In today's culture, we have started to resort to static, low-octane mediums to restore our sense of connection -- but we can do better. Way better. We can awaken our Compassion Quotient.

It was a telling serendipity that our dialogue was held at Mount Madonna School. Back in 1971, a monk by the name of Baba Hari Dass came to the US at the invitation of some spiritual seekers. In the popular "Be Here Now" book, Ram Dass had named "this incredible fellow" as one of his teachers. By 1978, Baba Hari Dass had started Mount Madonna Center in Santa Cruz mountains; every day, he would offer his prayers in the form of physical labor, often just carrying big stones from one place to another. Today, that 355 acre space has become a pilgrimage spot for thousands around the globe. Everything about him was humble, small, and invisible. And silent. He took a vow of silence in 1952 and has managed to teach profound concepts of non-duality without uttering a single word. 

"I teach to learn," he once wrote on his chalkboard. 

If we can teach to learn, and learn through silence, Compassion Quotient would certainly rise -- and we'd revolutionize the education system.

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ServiceSpace.org is an incubator of gift-economy projects that is run by inspired volunteers. Its mission statement reads: "We believe in the inherent goodness of others and aim to ignite that spirit of service. Through our small, collective acts, we hope to transform ourselves and the world."   

Be The Change: Next time you have the opportunity to teach something to another person, whether it be a child, colleague, student, friend, or loved one, consider the possibility of leading and ending with compassion.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Love Like Water

Love Like Water - Mark Nepo

Water in its clear softness fills whatever hole it finds. It is not skeptical or distrusting. It does not say this gully is too deep or that field is too open. Like water, the miracle of love is that it covers whatever it touches, making the touched thing grow while leaving no trace of its touch.

Most things break instead of transform because they resist. The quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.

Of course, we are human and are easily hurt if not loved back or if loved poorly. But we waste so much of life’s energy by deliberating who and what shall be worthy of our love when in the deepest elemental sense, these choices are not in our province, any more than rain can choose what it shall fall upon.

In truth, the more we let love flow, the more we have to love. This is the inner glow that sages and saints of all ages seem to share: the wash of their love over everything before then; not just people, but birds and rocks and flowers and air.

Beneath the many choices we have to make, love, like water, flows back into the world through us. It is the one great secret available to all. Yet somewhere the misperception has been enshrined that to withhold love will stop hurt. It is the other way around. As water soaks scars, love soothes our wounds. If opened to, love will accept the angrily thrown stone, and our small tears will lose some of their burn in the great ocean of tears, and the arrow released to the bottom of the river will lose its point. Only love with no thought of return can soften the point of suffering.

About the Author: Mark Nepo is a poet, teacher, storyteller and author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, The Book of Awakening. This excerpt is taken from The Book of Awakening.

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Get Rid Of That Guilty Feeling

Get Rid Of That Guilty Feeling by Dada J. P. Vaswani

Many of us find it easy to forgive others but find it impossible to forgive ourselves. The Roman philosopher Cato, admits this when he says, “I can pardon everybody’s mistakes except my own.” Yet learning to forgive yourself is one of the basic steps of cultivating the spirit of forgiveness for all. If you cannot forgive yourself, how will you forgive others?

Forgiving oneself is essential for self-acceptance. This does not mean that we give up our moral or ethical standards and justify all our actions. It only means that we learn to accept ourselves as we are, including our many shortcomings.

For some reason people persist in being harsh with themselves; they become inflexible and judgemental. I know a man who carried a lifelong sense of guilt because he could not become a doctor – something that his parents wanted him to do. Many mothers refuse to forgive themselves when their children do not turn out right. Wives blame themselves when a marriage breaks down…it is strange, but our acceptance of ourselves seems to depend on others’ acceptance of us!

Self-criticism is healthy up to a point. But when it makes us ruthless, merciless jailors of our own conscience, it is time to let go of guilt feelings and make a fresh attempt at self knowledge, self acceptance and cultivation of self-worth.

Reasons for which people refuse to forgive themselves may originate from a person’s culture, race, religion, gender or class. Our guilt may be due to personal standards that we have set for ourselves. Or, they may be due to ethical reasons for having done something that is wrong. Self-forgiveness does not imply condoning wrong behaviour. Nor does it mean that you do not feel repentance for your past actions. Accepting this repentance, feeling remorse is part of the healing process. But you must not let the remorse become a permanent burden. It is essential to overcome remorse and move on to face the future.

In Dostoevsky’s famous novel Crime And Punishment, the hero commits the heinous crime of murder. At first, he refuses to acknowledge his guilt, but is tortured by fear and insecurity. This leads to such intense self-loathing, that he confesses his crime and accepts his sentence – fifteen years of penal servitude in Siberia. However, he is unable to forgive himself, until he accepts God’s love and infinite mercy.

Persistent guilt feelings even lead some people to contemplate suicide. They feel they do not deserve to live. But this is a coward’s way out of the situation.

In the US, some courts give bold and innovative ‘sentences’ for criminals. They are made to do social work, or offer their services for the benefit of the less privileged. Such a sentence has an extremely beneficial effect on their psyche, enabling them to grow in self-respect and self-worth. This is the starting point of acceptance and progress. It helps them escape from the conflict and turmoil that rages inside them and to learn to forgive themselves.

Many of us carry on our hearts, heavy loads of guilt which rob us of our peace of mind. No man is perfect. Every one of us has done some wrongs in the past, near or remote. We must repent and, if possible, make amends. We must pray for wisdom and strength not to repeat the wrong and then forget about it.

The moment that an individual accepts and forgives himself, is the moment of renewal, a new beginning.

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The Search For Happiness

Effects Of Adversity

Effects of Adversity - Eranda Jayawickreme

Adversity may help people distinguish between events they can really control by changing their environment versus uncontrollable events. While they cannot change the environment in the latter case, they can control their response to them by accepting and adjusting their beliefs to fit with facts on the ground. Thus, on receiving a serious health diagnosis, I would respond positively by accepting the diagnosis and acknowledging that I have led a full life and would soon be going to a “better place.” Adversity may thus “humble” us in a way that is vital for our character growth, by educating us about the limits of the self, the limits of our control on the world, the weaknesses in our character, and the appropriate place of the self in the universe. In other words, adversity may free us from the tyranny of ego, by promoting a healthy sense of humility and helping us answer the question, “Why be good?” with the best response possible.

But we still don’t know everything about the effects of adversity. We don’t know, for example, what type and degree of adversity is “best” for our character, and it is important to be clear that some types of adversity provide few silver linings, if any. Not too long ago, Blackie and I traveled to a country with a terrible recent history of ethno-political conflict to talk with war survivors. During our travels, we heard heartbreaking stories of death, rape, injury, and loss. One young woman who remained positive and upbeat throughout our conversation had been severely wounded by gunfire. A second woman continued to search for her most likely dead son. A man of strong faith had no stable home apart from his visits to the treatment center we were visiting. We were stunned into silence, and as we drove off that evening, we asked ourselves, “Why be good when life is stacked against you?”

It may take a lifetime for these people to recover from such trauma, if ever. The fact that all of us will encounter tragedy at some point in our life does not necessarily mean that we should actively seek it out or be indifferent when suffering befalls others. And of course, we must do our utmost to protect people from severe suffering. But the people we met all had admirable faith, and some remained remarkably graceful and positive despite all they had suffered. The fact that these people were able to continue about their lives without succumbing to complete despair -- and even respond with forgiveness and grace -- is one of the greatest testaments to the human spirit and fundamental human goodness I can imagine.

About the Author: Eranda Jayawickreme is an assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University.