My Response Is Gratitude

POINT TO PONDER

"Feeling gratitude isn't born in us - it's something we're taught, and in turn, we teach our children."

                            - Joyce Brothers

STORY LINE

Last Sturday night on September 21st, 2013, Prabhjot Singh was brutally beaten by young assailants in New York city who yelled out slurs such as "terrorist" and "get Osama" as they proceeded to rip at his beard and break Singh's jaw.

Singh is a practicising Sikh that walked his wife and young son along the very same path where he was beaten, every morning close to their home in East Harlem. Singh had to have his jaw rewired and after he was released from the hospital, he became the latest in a much too long line of hate crime victims. 

When asked about the violence he suffered, Singh said that he did not feel anger or hate towards the men that attacked him. If anything, it strengthened Singh's commitment to the community and that forgiveness and education were needed. It surprised and moved me to read about Prabhjot Singh's response in the article below:

http://www.nydailynews.com/hate-victim-prabhjot-singh-feeling-gratitude-article-1.1466721

 

REFLECTION

Perhaps past fear, violence, and retribution there is a place where growth can occur? There's a passage from Shataram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts, that I would like to share:

             ...I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race. It's forgiveness that              makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in              endless retributions. Without forgiveness there would be no history." 

Comments

[microCEO]

It's a wonderful story. Interesting to know that this man is also a Professor at Columbia University and a resident doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital. How lucky New York is to have people like this. He makes a fine role model for us to remember. Glad that he is in good health after the attack.

“All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.”
-Bertrand Russell (1950, NYT Magazine)

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

[M]

Very good article-MS.