This weekend, as we celebrate fathers here in Australia, I find myself looking into the eyes of a man I never had the privilege of meeting. My paternal grandfather looks back at me from an old photograph taken several months before his 60th birthday. He has kind eyes, the sort of eyes that make you…
Tag: compassion
A Tender Legacy
As part of a six-week course I am doing, I was asked to take a test to discover which emotions most strongly drive me. When the results came back, they stopped me in my tracks. The two emotions that rose above all others were empathy and compassion. They surprised me. Not because I have thought…
Life is Precious
A meaningful life is built when our daily choices reflect what we say matters most. Every single day we wake up is a gift —wrapped not in paper, but in possibility. We often move through our days as if they are endless,as if time owes us more,as if we can press pause on what truly…
Hurricane Milton
Compassion begins when another person’s suffering matters to us. As I sit on a park bench in my local park in Melbourne, the sun rests warmly on my shoulders, and everything feels calm. The sky stretches above me in a wide, endless blue. Birds sing from the treetops, and nearby I hear the bright, carefree…
Hope
Hope is not certainty that life will become easier, but the courage to believe that darkness will not have the final word. Have you ever wondered why, in the very worst moments of human history, hope so often seems to rise most clearly? It is one of life’s great mysteries. In the midst of war,…
