Everyone is doing the best they can.

I try to uphold this belief that everyone is doing the best they can, that all people are inherently good and that our role as human beings is to offer compassion. This feels extremely difficult to do when confronted with rape and persecution. Can I, can we, start to look through a different lens? Can we offer compassion toward persecutors and know that our role as citizens is to change the system by changing ourselves? 

It is so hard not to be angry. (Why avoid anger?) It is necessary to be aware. Is everyone doing the best they can? I supposed that’s what we have to believe in order to uphold hope. How can we be so blind as humans to torture and rape one another? We, who are born into families of brothers and sisters, parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents... How can we look at another human being and not see the same love that surrounded us when we entered the world? Is hatred derived from the limiting belief, ‘I am not loved?’

Let us remember Hafez:

‘When no one is looking and I want to kiss God, I just lift my own hand to my mouth.’