Don’t pass it on

Life should change you.

New evidence should change your mind.

Experience should make you wiser.

Mistakes should make you better.

But there is a kind of change worth resisting.

The slow hardening of a person who has seen enough disappointment to expect the worst from everything.

It happens while you’re busy being angry at the world.

You start seeing Hope as naïveté.

Trust becomes foolishness.

Enthusiasm becomes embarrassing.

Kindness becomes something reserved only for people who have earned it.

And eventually, cynicism starts masquerading as wisdom.

Don’t let it.

Seeing the darkness in the world does not require you to become part of it.

You can understand how cruel people can be and remain kind.

You can know how badly things can go and still expect something wonderful from tomorrow.

You can become wiser without becoming colder.

Perhaps that is one of the finest forms of courage.

Which brings us to today’s lesson.

Be the person who breaks the chain.

When someone gives you anger, don’t pass it on.

When someone makes you feel small, make the next person feel important.

When the world gives you another reason to despair, deliberately go looking for a reason to hope.

Laugh.

Encourage people.

Believe in people.

Be embarrassingly enthusiastic about beautiful things.

There will always be enough people explaining why everything is terrible.

Be one of the people quietly making it better.

Because one day, when all the arguments are forgotten and all the things we worried about have disappeared into history, what will remain of us will largely be what we left in other people.

So let life teach you everything it can.

Let it correct you.

Let it humble you.

Let it make you wiser.

But never let it convince you that becoming cold is the price of understanding the world.

See it clearly.

Know how difficult it can be.

And choose, anyway, to add something good to it.