To Be Hopeful in Bad Times, Episode 319
Difficult times in the world can easily drive us towards the worst of ourselves. When we become rigid, or narrow in our thinking, or too certain about the rightness of our position… or when we forget how to acknowledge the pain of the other.
But difficult times can also be when we choose to bring forward the best of ourselves, to live in our communities and our homes in the way, as Howard Zinn says, ‘that human beings should live’ when we are in contact with the compassion, courage and kindness that is our true nature. How might we begin to walk that path when it calls to us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
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Here’s our source for this week:
To Be Hopeful in Bad Times
To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we only see the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act.
And if we do act, in however, small way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presence, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself, a marvellous victory.
Howard Zinn
Photo by Kristel Hayes on Unsplash