I would like to share with all the Compassionate Bloggers and readers a website that I go to when I'm feeling down called Makes Me Think. This website allows anyone to post a story from their daily life that is particularly happy, sad, or inspiring. After becoming a Compassionate Blogger and learning more and more about compassion, I saw a lot of overlap with the little stories found on this site.

 Here is one particular post I found especially compassionate:

As I have discussed in my previous blogs, “International Volunteering and Relief Work” and “Compassionate Man," I traveled to the rural town of Moshi, Tanzania, last summer for nearly a month to donate some of my time by volunteering. While in Tanzania, each member of the program was assigned a volunteer position according to their skills and interests. Some of us worked at schools, some were assigned to hospitals, others to women’s shelters, and a few worked with a local NGO entitled Tanzanian Organization Facilitating Community Development Projects, or “TAFCOM” for short. I was not assigned to work with TAFCOM but realized quickly that I was very interested in their mission and the work they were doing.

What are the A, B, Cs of emotional life? The best answer I have heard is Attention, Balance, and Compassion. A lot has been written about mindfulness as an ingredient or prerequisite for compassion. Mindfulness sounds like something magical, but it really is intense attention or attentiveness. Think about it. Isn't attention the essence of empathy, which is the first step of compassion?

Click on this link to watch a 13 minute talk by Daniel Goleman on why we sometimes do not act compassionately even though we are so inclined. He said it is because we may be self-absorbed and do not take  notice of the suffering around us. In other words, we are not in a state of attentiveness or mindfulness. Here is his short talk for the TED series:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goleman_on_compassion.html 

               Cyber bullying has grown rapidly as more and more people use the internet as a means of socializing. This new form of bullying is harder to define as well, because the reactions or visible intents of the parties are hidden behind computer screens. 

                As an avid gamer and internet user, I encounter this bullying every day. On forums, or any game that uses a chat system, users practice what is known as “trolling," or making posts purely with the intent of getting negative reactions out of people. While the writer may be doing this just for their own fun, these posts can hurt others who read them. While they may not be necessarily directed at a specific person, these posts are still bullying and show a deliberate lack of compassion that hurts others. And because the internet is mostly anonymous, cyber bullying usually has no consequences for those who bully. I must admit I have bullied others through “trolling”, and don’t realize the consequences because I, as well as everyone else, am sitting safely on the other side of the computer screen. 

Alice Herz-Sommer is the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world and this month she turns 107. She is the subject of a new documentary to be released in a few months. In the mean time, you can see and hear for yourself, in the YouTube trailer below, her vitality, her love of beauty, her skill in playing the piano, her laughter and joy in living.

Alice serves as a paragon of the triumph of the human spirit.

The first time you watch this video you will see Alice as remarkable for all of these things, but look also for her compassion and caring for others and her refusal to hate. Note how she cared for her son in the death camp, how she organized a choir, and how she maintains relationships with close friends. In short, she is a template for the passionately compassionate life.

 Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity" will go down in history as a gigantic comedic success. A Google search today for the Rally got 8 million hits, compared to Glen Beck's "Rally to Restore Honor," which only got a million hits.

Fans numbering 150,000 gathered on the National Mall for 3 hours, with millions more viewing it on cable TV. The huge crowd laughed and cheered as Stewart and friends poked fun at angry political pundits, fear-drenched political messages, and  partisan gridlock.

But just before closing, Jon Stewart gave a passionate 15 minute speech raving against political animosity, fear, and media exaggeration. American people, he argued, "work together and get things done every damn day. And the only place we don't is here (pointing to the Capitol Building) or on cable TV." Read the full text of the speech here.

   Mental illness is a major problem in our world: more than 50 million people in the U.S. alone have been diagnosed with some type of mental illness. Mental illness can lead to so many problems for individuals and society: poverty, homelessness, and relationship problems can very often be connected to mental illness. Fortunately there is an effective way to show our compassion for to this problem.