I was watch­ing the news last night while mak­ing this for a teacher/colleague. 

Amongst the many things about this teacher that I admire and want to emu­late is her abil­i­ty to see the good­ness and strength in every per­son she meets, and to see pos­si­bil­i­ties for resis­tance, change and growth even in the most dire situations.

It is not only that she sees strengths and good­ness and pos­si­bil­i­ties. More impor­tant­ly, she reflects it back to the per­son, lov­ing­ly point­ing out what she sees and cheer­ing every­one on, which makes every­one feel good about their abil­i­ties and wants to do good in the world.

While watch­ing the news last night, like many across the world, I felt incred­i­bly sad and angry. Angry at the sense­less­ness of it all. So angry that I thought if the world real­ly does end on Decem­ber 21 it would­n’t be half bad.

But actu­al­ly I don’t believe that the world will end on Decem­ber 21. 

Instead, I believe that we can all be agents of change, encour­ag­ing the good in one another.

 

“My friends, love is bet­ter than anger. Hope is bet­ter than fear. Opti­mism is bet­ter than despair. So let us be lov­ing, hope­ful and opti­mistic. And we’ll change the world.”
― Jack Layton