A Holiday Wish:
Look For Kindness in Others and You Will Find More of It
Election: discouragement, people pushed to extremes, culture and families can feel fractured, polarized:
Rousseau believes man is naturally good but institutions make man wicked
Humans better able to cope with harsh climate conditions of last ice age because had developed the ability to work together, cooperation more critical to survival than competition and struggle; humans crave connection, togetherness, and interaction
Studies: kids as young as 3 divide a cake equally, at six would rather throw a slice away than let one person have larger portion
Inherent goodness of people: Disaster research center at University of Delaware found that in 700 studies of disasters since 1963, there’s never total mayhem, crimes usually drop, adversity strikes and there’s a wave of spontaneous cooperation
Marshall WWII study: most soldiers never fired their guns (15-25%), most people with fear of aggression & inner resistance to killing a fellow man, most causalities were the work of a small minority of soldiers; Gettysburg study found 90% muskets from battlefield were still loaded, many double or triple loaded, loading it was excuse not to shoot it; humans have an aversion to violence
Hunter-gatherer societies rarely had war; thousands of cave paintings about hunting bison, horses, gazelle, not one depiction of war;
Be kind to every child for you don’t know what adversities they have faced; we all have stories about why we act the way we do
Sonder. It’s the profound awareness that every person you encounter has experienced a lifetime of hopes, fears, loves, and heartaches that you’ll never know. Each moment of sonder is a reminder to appreciate how little we truly grasp about others’ lives. Adam Grant;
Cranes made by Japanese girl: In 1955 a thirteen-year-old Japanese girl died of radiation-induced leukemia. Sadako Sasaki was one of many who suffered the after-effects of those bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japanese myth has it that cranes live for a thousand years, and anyone who folds 1000 paper cranes will have a wish granted. So, during her illness, Sadako folded paper cranes, and with each crane she wished that she would recover from her illness. She managed 644 cranes before she left this life behind. Sadako’s classmates folded the remaining 356 cranes so that she could be buried with a thousand paper cranes. Friends collected money from children all over Japan to erect a monument to Sadako in Hiroshima’s Peace Park.
The inscription reads:
This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on earth. Each year people place paper cranes at the base of the statue to recall the tragedy of war and to celebrate humanity’s undying hope for peace. In some places around the world, people fold paper cranes each holiday season to use as decorations and as a symbol of their deep desire for lasting peace.
Calling long distance: man calling wife from airport phone booth, operator said 1 minute left, man hurried but cut off before he could tell wife he loved her; no more coins, as he was walking away the phone rang, he picked it up and operator said that after he hung up his wife said she loved you, I thought you’d want to know.
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