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Compassion and Volunteering Abroad

Compassion and Volunteering Abroad

TED logo.I've attached a TED video I hope you will take 10 minutes to view.  If you don't have time right now, please bookmark this post and come back to it to view the video.  TED, as you know, is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.  It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from technology, entertainment and design.  But it has now of course grown and you can view more than 450 TED talks online, free, right now at TED.com.

Stafford with 4 village kids.A friend of mine sent me a link to Karen Armstrong's 10 minute talk (embedded below) on why we should revive the Golden Rule.  I started thinking about what I've been doing the past 35 years in my professional life, what GeoVisions does, and if our volunteer abroad and teach abroad programs (and those volunteers who participate) practice compassion, or do we focus mainly on ourselves?

"Always treat all others as you'd like to be treated yourself."  Armstrong points out also, however, that equally important is the negative version--"Don't do to others what you would not like them to do to you."
"Look into your own heart.  Discover what it is that gives you pain.  And then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else."

Volunteer and lion cubArmstrong continues, "Compassion is not just a good idea.  It actually works.  If you follow the Golden Rule all day and everyday, you dethrone yourself from the center of your world, put another there, and you transcend yourself."

Compassion does not mean "feeling sorry for somebody."  You cannot understand compassion if all you're going to do is think about it.  You also have to do it.  A compassionate lifestyle is challenging.  Compassion is not a feeling.  A person who lives compassion is empowered to challenge uncompassionate speech, disdainful remarks.

Hang in there to the end of the video and listen as Karen Armstrong explains C. S. Lewis' definition of erotic love vs. friendship and how we do not all have to love each other, but we certainly can be friends.

Have a great weekend. 

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