Showing posts with label Desmond Tutu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desmond Tutu. Show all posts

Sunday, January 29, 2023

finding happiness in troubled times

 
 
 
 

Deeply moving and laugh-out-loud funny, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
 and Archbishop Desmond Tutu share science-backed wisdom
 of how to live with joy in troubled times.

 director Louie Psihoyos teams up with co-director Peggy Callahan on
 MISSION: JOY – FINDING HAPPINESS IN TROUBLED TIMES,
 a documentary with unprecedented access to the unlikely friendship
 of two international icons who transcend religion:
 His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Archbishop Tutu.
 
 In their final joint mission, these self-described mischievous brothers give a master class
 in how to create joy in a world that was never easy for them. They offer neuroscience-backed
 wisdom to help each of us live with more joy, despite circumstances.
 
 
 

Monday, September 12, 2022

flawed and fragile

 
 
 

 
 

We are able to forgive because we are able to recognize our shared humanity.
 We are able to recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable, flawed human beings
 capable of thoughtlessness and cruelty. We also recognize that no one is born evil
 and that we are all more than the worst thing we have done in our lives.
 
 A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty, cruelty, heartbreak,
 indifference, love, and so much more. We want to divide the good from the bad, 
the saints from the sinners, but we cannot. All of us share the core qualities 
of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous and sometimes selfish. 
Sometimes we are thoughtful and other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind
 and sometimes cruel. This is not a belief. This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which the hurt happened.
 If we look at any perpetrator, we can discover a story that tells us something
 about what led up to that person causing harm. It doesn’t justify the person’s actions;
 it does provide some context. . . .

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist. No one is born full of hatred.
 No one is born full of violence. No one is born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.
 But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful life experience,
 this glory and goodness can be forgotten, obscured, or lost. We can easily be hurt and broken, 
and it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the ones who have 
done the hurting and the breaking.

We are all members of the same human family. . . .

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives are inextricably linked, 
we can find empathy and compassion. In finding empathy and compassion, 
we are able to move in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately, it is humble awareness of our own humanity that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us, so very flawed and so very fragile. I know that,
 were I born a member of the white ruling class at that time in South Africa’s past, 
I might easily have treated someone with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated. 
I know, given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable of the same monstrous acts
 as any other human on this achingly beautiful planet. It is this knowledge of my own frailty
 that helps me find my compassion, my empathy, my similarity,
 and my forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.
 
 
 
 
 
 ~ Desmond Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu
 from The Book of Forgiving: The Foufold Path for Healing 
Ourselves and Our World
art by Leigh Wells