Welcome to this Blog

 

This Blog, This Year

Welcome to this blog, a place where I will tell stories of kindness, compassion, and empathy as I travel around the world. These chronicles will come in the form of personal reflections, interviews, and observations. 

My purpose and hope for this blog is to support a statement I say all the time while teaching: "90% of people in this world are good." I truly believe this. My experience with traveling to almost 30 countries (currently at 29--Senegal in 19 days will be the big 3-0), is that the majority of people want to feel a sense of purpose and happiness in their lives and to take care of their loved ones. 

Are there "opportunists"? Absolutely. When people are desperate, how can we blame them for taking advantage of an easy win? I know that if I couldn't feed my child, sleep in a home, or make a decent living, I would do what I needed to do to survive. There is also the media and the dark web and all the people within who have lost sight of the goodness in the world. Yes, there are extremists (in all countries, including our own--let's not forget we're one of the top countries to actually be a victim of gun violence), but that's a select few. The rest are just trying to live their human lives as best as they can.

So, as part of my year of professional development leave and the research project I am doing to deepen my scholarship, understanding, and practice of kindness, compassion, and empathy, I hope to relay this message of goodness. I hope to also teach you a bit about these concepts. I hope, for myself, to create a clearer "lens," per se, of gratitude and perspective. And I also hope to discover myself a bit more through the medium of writing.

Thank you for following along. Thank you, FGCU Roots of Compassion and Kindness Center (ROCK), for your support, patience, and encouragement. Thank you FGCU Lucas Center for your eagerness to purchase interviewing equipment and for your constant dedication to all things good and wholesome in the teaching realm. Thank you to FGCU's College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Language and Literature for approving this professional development leave--I promise to come back a better teacher as a result of this. Thank you to my many colleagues and friends who gave me advice and tips on how to tackle this. And, thank you to my husband and son. Conan, you have the biggest heart of anyone I know and show me how to be the best, boldest version of myself through your own interactions in the world. Sila, your constant inquiries and empathetic heart let me know that you are the ripple effect of all that I do.