Volunteering at a holiday home for people with severe disabilities, I met a retired police officer who had been attacked on duty which had left her paralysed. She told me that “she had joined the police to help people” and I asked her if she hated the person who had injured her. She replied, “No, because there is too much hate in the world”.

I have been a part of this remarkable organization for almost a year now, and I have witnessed firsthand the power and immense depth of the human need for compassion and ability to give it as my fellow artists, writers, and thinkers incorporate this declaration in their daily lives. I say this because just a year ago I suffered from a terrible notion myself, which I have come to realize plagues us all in one way or another; the very issue of finding the basic human goodness within one’s self, which is something that I was struggling with for a very long time. We work hard to combat hate and ignorance in the lives of others, but what of the hate and the ignorance within us?

When I was a kid my summer job was to sell Kool-Aid to people at my mom’s rummage sales which she and her girlfriends had several times each summer. I remember overhearing one of mom’s customers complaining, saying something about being able to “Jew down” at our neighbor’s yard sale. I wasn’t sure why but I knew at age six that this kind of talk was very wrong and it was very offensive. Yet I would have thought nothing about hearing someone say that they got “gypped” at a rummage sale, car dealership, or a candy store. In fact it was not for another twelve years before I learned that Gypsies were a race of people with over 1,000,000 people in the US, and 10,000,000 in Europe, making them Europe’s largest ethnic minority.

Today I consider love. I believe that one cannot truly love others without loving oneself. It took time and a great deal of self-examination, but I grew to love myself, faults and all, after I stopped using. I still have moments when I slip and don’t love myself as fully as I should, but for the most part I have come to appreciate myself for who I am and the gifts I have to offer this world. I understand I am not a perfect man. I understand that I have so much growth yet to come. But I believe that my essence, the core of my being, is worthy of love, and I believe the same is true of humankind in general, that we are all worthy and that everyone at their core is an innocent child worthy of love, compassion, and respect. It is this belief that gives meaning to my life and my movement through this world.

An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. An act that has embraced its gloom A spark that had so many enlightened higher spirits, has died now, unlit, releases inner demons.   What are we now? Who are we now? The notion lies within the hands of the masses   Their stares reveals [...]

(English · português )Al hablar sobre la Navidad, no estoy intentando imponer ninguna verdad religiosa, pues dejo claro desde el inicio que aún que haya crecido católico en una familia ítalo-brasileña, no tengo ninguna religión, o podría decir que tengo todas, pues me abro a la posibilidad de aprender con todas ellas.

Over the course of the past seven years, I can’t count the number of survivors and liberators who have passed-on—individuals who are my heroes and inspiration. My friends who granted me the gift of forgiveness. Although death is a reality of life, it’s difficult knowing that these brave, resilient individuals are the last of their generation. They are the last with the ability to share their first-hand knowledge of the Holocaust.

(originally published in Capital Dharma) A friend recently told me about the stories she tells herself about other people, like the lady with the $3,000 handbag and the perfect hair and nails, the lady that smokes in front of her baby, the right-wing-wackos that drive her nuts, fat people, skinny people, poorly dressed people, smokers, [...]

I had to fight to get into honors classes even though I came from El Paso with good grades. Once I got into the “honors track group” I was underestimated and made fun of for my accent, my background and my way of relating to class discussions. Despite my idealist mind and family values of treating everyone equally and being diplomatic, I could not deny that Whites and Latinos were pitted against each other in sports, academics and other school events. Although we NEVER talked about it, there was no denying that day laborers lined the streets of this suburb and that my neighborhood “el Barrio” was not only majority Mexican, but considered “dirty and dangerous”.