TRUTH is (regarding the title question), life encompasses all of the above. When a year draws to a close, it's easy to think of it in terms of reviews, wraps, and retrospectives, and there's always a need for that kind of thing but it remains a fact of the modern times (collegiate or professional) that there is no longer an "off-season", only PRE-season.

As I sit here and write my last blog post for As We PROGRESS for 2011, I can't help but to state the obvious, “time really flies".  I stare in awe at how quickly my younger siblings are growing and how fast life progresses. During the year, finding time to reflect is very difficult considering all of the ‘uber-important stuff’ that we’re involved in on a daily/hourly/secondly basis. When I finally have some down time to reflect on how fast life moves, I can finally take notice of some of the constants in life.

The one constant that really occupied my thoughts today is CHANGE. Change is now my constant in life. In the past, I’d resist change and fight it. I mean, who really likes change? Change is unpredictable, absolute, and full of unknowns. Change is downright scary and devoid of any real answers about what will happen in the future. Life would be so much easier if everything just stayed the same. As I grow older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve come to accept, and even embrace, change. Over the past few years, everything that I have known has, in fact, changed. My life, in one form or another, has changed. At this point in my life, change is excruciating, painful, exciting and full of surprises. I have accepted change, warts and all, and embrace it. Change and I now are starting to understand each other.

So, now what? Well in essence the year is over. Now is a good time to pause and reflect on the past, make new determinations and plans for the coming year and just be grateful for what we have been given.

I hope you are not being a ‘Grinch’ this year and have embraced the Christmas spirit. Isn’t it good to use this time to congratulate ourselves on areas (no matter how small), we have moved forward. I am not sure what kind of year you have had but if it did not go as planned, this is the perfect time to reflect on the positives and negatives, most importantly forgive yourself and others for anything you might be bitter about and move into the new year with a great attitude. Move forward with determination and a positive spirit, always remembering to reach out and help where you are able.

As I reflect on my life this past year, I think of all the changes and all the things that have not changed. This is the time to take the pulse of where you are physically and emotionally with your experiences, to determine the status of the relationships you have maintained, to analyze your accomplishments and to determine what is in store for you in the coming new year.

We often find ourselves pondering goals for the new year, whether it is to become more productive, let go, exercise more, organize aspects of your life, find a new job, or become more involved in the community, the objective is to “jump start” the new year with excitement, activity, purpose and a plan.

Most of us don’t like to think about where we have been especially if we have had a bad experience. We don’t like to think about where we are now as it is heartbreaking. We don’t like to think about where we are going as it is truly the unknown.  But the end result is the uniting of yesterday, today and tomorrow into a new future where there is a place for hope, and a new beginning.

We are all in the mind-set of starting a new year with purpose; continuity, commitment and community are a part of our daily life, but we often lose sight of what our surroundings offer when we are overwhelmed with problems in our lives. However, each new year presents challenges that we will all endure but also an opportunity to reflect, grow and reach further than the previous year.

Wrap up, start over, roll over and continue! Faint not and never give up!

Best wishes for 2012.

-- Ashley

Ashley Mwanza

Today we find ourselves living between the “now” and the “not yet,” in that space we are met by so many disappointments. Disappointment is another instinctive response to the ebb and flow of life, which when intensified becomes discouragement, depression and despair. These three negative states are obstacles to all human endeavour. The challenge is in learning early to regulate, control and balance the emotional ups and downs so well that we never experience discouragement.

Disappointment is something that all of us have encountered one time or another. I think that I would be safe in saying that some of you are battling it right now. We dream and we hope and we set our hearts on certain goals. Then the time comes when we comprehend that our dreams are not coming true. This is an experience that happens eventually to every person. Doors slam hard in front of us. Opportunities seem to evaporate before our very eyes.

Chuck Gallozzi put it well when he said the word disappointment is made up of “dis” and “appointment”. “Dis” means separate, apart, or asunder. So, disappointment describes a feeling of dissatisfaction or anguish, which is experienced when we are torn apart from our expected appointment with fate. Yet, we don't have to experience pain when things don't go our way. The negativity surrounding disappointment exists not in the real world, but only in our mind. It is not the event, but our interpretation of it that causes pain.

2011 has come with its highs and lows, at times I have been left so depressed but I have learnt to accept the lows in as much as I welcome the highs. There are so many situations that don't work out in life. And, that's just the way it is. Sometimes, we can change these situations. Other times, they are fixed and unchangeable and there's nothing that can be done. All this disappointment can lead to low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness, especially if disappointment becomes a way of life. But disappointments are inevitable, we all have them. I write from experience.

Sometimes we fail to recognize how much life’s disappointments have taken a toll on us even as our bodies hold the stories. With pain in our heart, a bottomless feeling in the pit of our stomach, or a sense of collapse in our body, it can be difficult to know what to do. Disappointments are a part of the human experience.  But if you choose to consciously accept life's disappointments, you will discover meaning in your suffering. As sure as we live, disappointments will show up in our lives. Sometimes they may be small, almost petty or seemingly trivial; and at other times they loom large, heartfelt, and sometimes extremely painful.

Disappointments can be quite painful, regardless of their magnitude.  But in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Though we like to talk a lot in religious settings, about this word, hope with smiles on our faces, it is messier than we think. Fear, doubt, abandonment are all words that are cousins of hope as much as faith and freedom are.

Sometimes living with hope means crawling through tunnels of uncertainty with the odour of the past making us want to throw up. Sometimes, we wonder where in the world hope lives, for it doesn’t live at our address. Sometimes, we think our moment of freedom will never come for we’ve been chipping away at the same old same old for so long. Sometimes, as in the case with Andy in the Shawshank Redemption, hope means literally making your way through 5 football fields worth of excrement, the real stuff.

But, just as Andy modelled in this film, we have to keep crawling with hope that when we get to the other side, whenever and wherever this might be that something better will await us. Or, best stated by this film, “You better get busy living or get busy dying.” This is the choice that moving in hope offers us. George Weinberg affirmed that, "Hope never abandons you; you abandon it." 

Oscar Wilde believed  that what seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. This is supported by Joseph Addison who wrote that, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." So despite what you’re facing or have faced in 2011, it is time to move on in hope. Do not abandon hope.

True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.

Let us cross the great divide out of 2011 into 2012 with wings of hope. Faint not, never give up!

Have a blessed Christmas and a blissful 2012!

Ashley Mwanza

WE live only once, and that should be enough. During the down days, if you choose to keep in mind that you probably have more chances than others, more things to be thankful for than others, and more time to live on this Earth than others, you would be reminded that your life is indeed very precious. You are a special being and you are here with a path to travel.

There are many people who are grateful for you and you might not realize that. Life needs you and that's because life has given you a path that only you can travel, and not anyone else. 

Life is really short and instead of being burdened by the heavy "shoulds" and "could have beens", perhaps it's really time to get up and have the courage to face your mistakes, obstacles and troubles, and travel lighter for the rest of your life. Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

"We only live once, but once is enough if we do it right. Live your life with class, dignity, and style so that an exclamation, rather than a question mark signifies it!" - Gary Ryan Blair

Ashley Mwanza

IT IS an age old cliché that people learn from their faults and failings. However, these faults and failings must be pointed out for them to know they are there in the first place. When you make a mistake it is good to be upfront and honest with yourself, denial causes you to repeat the same mistake deceiving yourself to believe it will have a different outcome. Thus more emotional baggage and consequences taunt your trail.

Don't dwell on mistakes, but shake the dust off your feet and move on by avoiding anything that will take you down that path again. Sometimes mistakes can open up a new part of you. Identify what drove you to make that mistake and address it and make the needed changes.

You can only learn from a mistake after you admit you’ve made it. As soon as you start blaming other people (or the universe itself) you distance yourself from any possible lesson. But if you courageously stand up and honestly say “This is my mistake and I am responsible” the possibilities for learning will move towards you. Admission of a mistake, even if only privately to yourself, makes learning possible by moving the focus away from blame assignment and towards understanding. Wise people admit their mistakes easily. They know progress accelerates when they do

Mistakes are an excellent form of instruction. Unfortunately, once corrected, errors are usually forgotten, especially by the people who make them. We don’t like to dwell on our failures. That’s natural, but it also hampers our ability to avoid repeating errors. We need to embrace our errors and understand that they are the keys to more accurate work. Errors breed accuracy, if handled properly.

William George Jordan wrote The Crown of Individuality in 1909. Below are some powerful excerpts on the wrong and the right attitude we should have towards our past mistakes.

There are only two classes of people who never make mistakes; they are the dead and the unborn. Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. Without them there would be no growth, no progress, no conquest.

Life is time given to us to learn how to live. Some people like to wander in the cemetery of their past errors, to reread the old epitaphs, and to spend hours in mourning over the grave of a wrong. This new mistake does not antidote the old one. The remorse that paralyzes hope, corrodes purpose, and deadens energy is not moral health. It is selfish and cowardly surrender to the dominance of the past. It is lost motion in morals.

Musing over the dreams of youth, the golden hopes that have not blossomed into deeds is a dangerous mental dissipation. It adds weights, not wings, to purpose. “It might have been” is the lullaby of regret people use to suppress courage. Let us never accept mistakes as final. In the end, right living and right doing must triumph.

As we progress in life, we will continue to make mistakes. The key here is to step back and learn. Whatever lessons you gain from mistakes will be invaluable because you will not make the same mistakes. Lessons learnt stay learnt. Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. But the people who will come out ahead are the ones that learn from their mistakes and take that knowledge and use it the next time. Be wise.

"Flops are part of life’s menu. Everyone makes mistakes. High achievers learn by their mistakes. By doing that, an error becomes the raw material out of which future successes are forged. Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is."

Ashley Mwanza

Flag of the Republic of South Sudan 

“Scars remind us of where we have been but they don’t have to dictate where we are going,” the words of David Rossi (Character in 'Criminal Minds')

We all sail the waters of trials and tribulations and we become stuck, but at some point the tribulations ‘subside’. This is the point we need to move forward. A hearty congratulations to the people of  the Republic of South Sudan on the birth of their nation. We bore witness to the passage of history and the transformation of the map of Africa and the world. President Barack Obama declared: "Today is a reminder that after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible." It is indeed, and now is the time for the South Sudanese people to move forward. 9 July 2011 will be a day that not only the South Sudanese will cherish but the entire African continent and the rest of the world. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon mentioned that “nationhood has come at steep cost."

But, “what we need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring us to this very moment. And this is the moment we can choose to make everything new. Right now.”

When we hold on to the past we are usually holding on to a part of life that we will never get back and that is preventing us from progressing forward and realizing our future. The people of South Sudan can and will never forget the atrocities that lasted for decades. But now they have to accept that in our sad world we have to realize that pain is another part of life that we have to deal with. Yes, the pain of losing loved ones and more so livelihoods may prohibit us from thinking as clearly as we would like to, but we have to learn how to overcome this pain eventually so that our past may be released from our lives. We have to forgive those who have wronged us, and also apologise for the hurt we have caused and let the past go, so that we may turn around and face forward towards the future.

Johnnie Carson, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs a couple of months ago stated that, “these are two states (Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan) that are very much in the same boat. If one falls over, it’s likely that the other one would also fall over. We want to see a South Sudan that is strong and stable and we want to see a north Sudan that is also strong, democratic and stable and economically growing," he said. We all have a past.  But ultimately our past does not define us. It is there, but there is nothing we can do about it so we should work together, let it go and move on. The past is the past.  It is what it is.  We can’t change it.  If it is negative, then it acts as an anchor holding us back.  If it is positive, we can only lean on that so much and for so long.

Letting go can be painful.  It can even feel wrong in certain circumstances, but the only way we can move on is to let go. Today is the start of a better tomorrow for Republic of South Sudan. The 8 million plus inhabitants of the new nation must not remain mired in the quicksand of their past another day.  They have to embrace the moment they have right now to make a positive difference.  It is up to them.  Will they let go of their past and build a better future?

There is a foundational truth that underlies all change, which is, that in order to embrace the new, we need to release the old. If you want to go forward in your life, you need to let go of the things in your past that will impede or even prevent you from moving on. This can be likened to trying to walk forward while looking backwards; progress is less than satisfactory.

By continuing to dwell on events and set-backs a door is opened for resentment, hurt, grudges, self-pity, excuses, and bitterness to take root in people’s hearts and lives. The key to unlocking the door of our self-made prison is forgiveness. We do not have the power to change the past whether it be events or situations. Forgiveness cuts us loose and frees us to move forward and create a new future. 

Valentino Achak Deng, one of tens of thousands of child refugees who fled the war said, "tomorrow is a new day, and we are a new country ready to face our challenges on our own feet."  It is a tall order indeed, and their feet better be very firm on the ground especially those of President Salva Kirr. On the day of its birth, Ban Ki-moon noted, the Republic of South Sudan will rank near the bottom of all recognized human development indices, including the world's highest maternal mortality rate and a female illiteracy rate of over 80 per cent. “Critical issues of poverty, insecurity and lack of infrastructure must all be addressed by a relatively new government with little experience and only embryonic institutions," said Ki-moon. But with the strong winds having subsided, surely there is hope for a better tomorrow. 

Ashley Mwanza

YOU can’t be really creative if your mind is full of untended business. Many people procrastinate and never quite get around to doing the things that they consider really important or really rewarding. Why? Often because they are afraid they won’t do them well enough. As long as they don’t work on those elusive projects, they can tell themselves they would do them really well if only they had time. They never have to face the fact of actually attempting to achieve their real goal, and because they never do it, it’s a source of frustration and anxiety instead of satisfaction. Don’t get caught in this energy-sucking trap. Start that project. Paint that picture. Learn that language. BEGIN.

Ashley Mwanza

PRODUCTIVITY is about using less effort to accomplish things. Productive work is positive, relaxed and sustainable. Life should not be stressful and difficult. It should be full of energy and clarity, focus and momentum especially but not exclusively work.

Think of throwing a stone into a pond. The water responds to the stone in a perfectly appropriate way. The water does not move too much and neither does it move less than enough. It does what it has to do and then returns to what it was.Unfortunately, most of us do not work like water.

We are full of stress and anxiety, pressed for time, overwhelmed by details, and bogged down by worry and nagging chores left undone. We do too much and too little, often at the same time. We are frantically busy but we unconsciously waste time. There’s the common phrase; “I’ve been busy”, but you have been busy doing what exactly?

Ashley Mwanza

In the past week I had discussions with friends who are at a ‘crossroads’ in their lives. But after listening to them I realised one commonality. Strategy was lacking, or if it was there it was just not good enough. To be specific, they all have fuzzy strategic objectives. One form this problem can take is a scrambled mess of things to accomplish, a dog’s dinner of goals. A long list of things to do or accomplish, often mislabelled as strategies or objectives, is not a strategy. It is just a list of things to do. A strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge. Life is a challenge, devise a strategy.

‘To do’ lists usually grow out of ‘planning’ for one’s future, in which one comes up with things they would like to accomplish. Rather than focus on a few important items, one sweeps the goals into the ‘strategic plan’. Then, in recognition that it is a dog’s dinner, the label “long term” is added, implying that none of these things can be accomplished soon. Yet despite it all, they plough ahead trying to achieve the all the goals at once, mission impossible. A vivid example is the strategy of the mayor of a small city in the Pacific Northwest in the USA. His planning committee’s strategic plan contained 47 strategies and 178 action items. Action item number 122 was “create a strategic plan.”

This leads into the second type of a weak strategic objective, the “blue sky”, typically a simple restatement of the desired state of affairs or of the challenge. It skips over the annoying fact that one has no clue as to how to get to achieve their goals. One may choose to successfully identify the key challenge and propose an overall approach to dealing with the challenge. But if the consequent strategic objectives are just as difficult to meet as the original challenge, the strategy has added little value.

Good strategy, in contrast, works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favourable outcomes. It also builds a bridge between the critical challenge at the heart of the strategy and action, between desire and immediate objectives that lie within grasp. Thus, the objectives that a good strategy sets stand a good chance of being accomplished, given existing resources and competencies. 

Strategy involves focus and, therefore, choice. And choice means setting aside some goals in favour of others. When this hard work is not done, weak strategy is the result.

By now, I hope you are fully awake to the dramatic differences between good and bad strategy. To close off here are tips in crafting good strategies, which have a basic underlying structure:

1. A diagnosis: an explanation of the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as being the critical ones.

2. A guiding policy: an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis.

3. Coherent actions: steps that are coordinated with one another to support the accomplishment of the guiding policy.

To accomplish anything in life you have to be a strategist, and the core of the strategist’s life is always the same: discover the crucial factors in a situation and design a way to coordinate and focus actions to deal with them.

Some parts of this article are borrowed material from McKinsey Quarterly, June 2011, from an article by Richard Rumelt’s ‘The perils of bad strategy’ (the article is adapted from his forthcoming book, ‘Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters’, Crown Publishing, July 2011).

Ashley Mwanza

Spreading the word and doing anything to help at the same time is a great way to change other peoples' thoughts on the struggles of the world. It's as simple as telling your friends and family the difference you're making or the steps you're taking to help. With each new seed of influence planted in a person's head, the more likely that person is to one day take action themselves.

You may not see results immediately but keep at it. Stay positive, and stay happy, and stick to your beliefs. Over time, people will begin to see the kind of joy you live your life with and they'll want to be like you. Your efforts will have an impact even with people you never thought you could persuade! 

The chain of inspiration is the heart of civilization. All scientific and social advances are catalysed and carried forward by inspired links. You owe it to civilization and to life itself to be an inspiration for others around you. Without great role models, a community shrivels up and becomes decadent. If you are neither connecting to great men and women of the past nor inspiring the young ones for the future, you are not playing your role in this Universe! Be the inspiration others need today. 

Ivan Campuzano                                                                                                                                    (edited by Ashley Mwanza with additional material)

OUR attention is one the most powerful things we possess. Whatever we pay attention to is what we become conscious of. Ultimately consciousness and attention is one and the same. Unfortunately we live in a world where our attention is so divided that we have become lost in life, we have lost ourselves. We don’t pay proper attention to ourselves so we end up living an unconscious life.

Attention is a vitamin. Many people receive this vitamin through love, relationships etc. What happens when your lover no longer pays you the same quality of attention? You start feeling empty, not loved, malnourished.

Attention can manifest as a loving presence. Plants can have the right soil, the right amount of water, sufficient light, but without a loving attention the plant can still die. We are no different, we can have a healthy body, but without giving the proper attention to the essential aspects of our being, we too will not truly feel alive.

If you are to love yourself, give attention to yourself. You need to understand a fundamental principle, which is that whatever you pay attention to will grow. If you pay attention to yourself, you’ll grow as a person.

If you pay attention to suffering, if you become identified to it, it will naturally grow. Unfortunately, when we take a penetrating look at where we place our attention, many of us come to find that a majority of it is spent on trivial things.

You need to clearly see that any feelings of being incomplete, of being unfulfilled, are not coming from without, but from within. Many of us try to fill this hole by give all our attention to worldly pursuits in hopes that it will make us feel whole, but we will only find what we are looking for if we move our attention inward.

Having money, success, and material possessions is really nice, nothing wrong with them, but ultimately what we are looking for is spiritual fulfillment. The longing to feel at peace is coming from the aspect ourselves that is non-physical so obviously it cannot be satisfied through physical means.

Learn to not pay wrong attention. Switch your attention when it’s needed, try to remember blissful moments, remember that it is possible for you to experience other states of being. People tend to always gather and remember their miseries, they forget their happy moments, and life then becomes a hell, a vicious circle of the same dramas.

The ultimate thing to give your attention to is your inner witness, because the witness is pure unconditioned attention, awareness. Merge with the witness (get to know who you really are).

When you were a kid your attention was focused on the only thing that existed, that is; the moment. Which means you accepted life as it is, you experienced life totally and fully. The ‘experiencer’ was not separate from the experience, you were the experience. This is why many people remember their childhood.

The more you learn to pay attention to your inner witness, the more you will feel your pure essential presence emerge, which simply means you are being present to yourself, you and the moment are one. When you are present to yourself, you are “being” yourself, which feels amazing, because in this state we recognize reality, we know who we are, we recognize what it is to be authentically alive.

Susan Baroncini-Moe and Ashley Mwanza

Ralph Waldo Emerson reminded us that we should, “finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

But how do you bounce back from those moments of frustration and avoid feeling discouraged? Sometimes the best thing to do when you hit a wall is to take a step backward and reassess your position. Analyse the failure and look for the lesson. Look toward the future. Start planning from here forward and get back on track. One mistake won't make the Earth tilt off its axis and one failure doesn't mean your life is over.

Take some time and look at the bigger picture and see this moment for what it really is: a blip on the radar, if even that. Often, our gaffes seem much larger to us than they do to anyone else. Many times, mistakes aren't even noticed by other people. So gain a little perspective and remember that what seems massive to you might seem minimal to the rest of the world.

The best thing you can do is to decide before you make a mistake that you'll never give up in your pursuit to resolve it. That way you'll be prepared to keep going, no matter what happens.

Sometimes all you can do when you make a mistake or fail at something is to just get up, dust yourself off, and move on. There are times for thought and analysis and there are times for moving on. In fact, in a recent chat about entrepreneurial success, Sir Richard Branson was asked, "What's the best way to handle failure?" and his answer was, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."

There's nothing wrong with starting over. There's nothing wrong with backtracking and fixing something. The bottom is a great place to start because frankly, the only way us up. Start over. Start again. There's nothing wrong with it.

Paraphrasing Thich Nhat Hahn, when you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. If we have problems in our lives, we blame ourselves. But if we know how to take care of ourselves, we will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. Assess the conditions and adjust them to suit your growth. No blaming, no argument, just understanding, learn to understand your surroundings and how they affect your pursuit/s in life. Don’t blame, don’t give up, give it all you’ve got, analyse it and persevere.

Ultimately, the most important thing to remember is that everyone makes mistakes. Remember that if  you don't try, you can't succeed. Keep in mind that old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again," and make it a part of your mind-set, and you'll try, try, try until you do succeed...and you'll learn from every little bump in the road along the way.

Rewritten by Ashley D. Mwanza (Original text by Karl F. Stewart, 2000)

WE all realize that the world we inhabit is far from perfect, right? Even on a good day, there are some things we would undoubtedly all like to improve. The guiding principle by which you live your life is to feel love in your heart for humanity. But in this our sad world, if you say to your friends that you hate humanity, they’ll sit there quietly and silently nod their heads in understanding. People can relate to hate. But our society doesn’t relate well to love. Many human beings have trashed love as a global human experience. If you express love for humanity, you are often viewed as living in a fairy tale world, as being unrealistic, as being weak or of even being a religious extremist.

Most human beings today see hate, and its consequence, suffering, as a natural part of life. How many of you believe living life is only real if we hate and suffer and that love is an illusion? I’m sure there are many human beings today who would suggest that without hatred and suffering, we wouldn’t be human beings, and that life would be boring and flat. Apparently human beings have grown addicted to strong negative emotions.

Consequently, we continually live our mass depression, and suicide, thinking that life offers no other possibility. We kill our dreams for a better life and a better world with our so-called realism that life equals suffering. And be careful of any human being who professes to love humanity.

But who could blame humanity for being sceptical about love? During the last 100 years, humanity’s more recent generations have only seen death and destruction as the guiding rule for life. I need not list them, the list is endless.

Apparently, because of our continuing human tragedy, we have become numb to humanity. We see life in its relationship to ourselves, but not to humanity as a whole. As human beings we no longer want to know or be held responsible for what our ignorance and indifference is doing to our fellow human beings. The world we presently live in today is a very sad world indeed. And is this the world many of us were hoping to prosper in? Look around at the world we’ve helped to create. Should we be proud of ourselves, of each other, of humanity for what we’ve created?

Most politicians throughout the world are obviously totally indifferent to humanity’s suffering – in the majority of cases they’re the cause of it. The so-called political elite typically worry more about helping corporate special interest groups and themselves, than helping humanity. As compensation they’ve had their egos inflated and received crusts of bread for their slavery. Will they ever admit their responsibility toward humanity and finally decide to help create a world of peace and love? Will they ever see the ghetto they’ve turned our planet Earth into? But of course politicians are nothing more than a mirror of the individuals they represent.

Until we as human beings start to rethink what it means to be a human being on planet Earth, we will only continue to reduce the human experience down to its most deprived elements – indifference, corruption, torture and murder.

One of the main characteristics at the turn of the new millennium was, and was historically anticipated to be, that humanity and life as we know it today would change. Many might not believe in that prediction, but the indications are all around us. Humanity today has definitely come to a fork in the road. And we can either continue to move forward by default or decide to make a conscious decision to shape what our life is going to be.

The sad thing is that most human beings are clueless to what’s happening around them. Most of the world has failed to acknowledge the tragedies. And this indifference could kill us all. Humanity’s ignorance of or indifference to the changes that are taking place in our world won’t make those changes disappear. Whatever happens, we have always had the power to change the course of our history.

Misery isn't just something that "happens" to us.  We create a lot of our own misery ourselves by what we do, how we think and feelings we habitually hold. The good news is, this means we can change it and end it!

As human beings, we have been a tragedy. We have failed ourselves as individuals and we have failed humanity. Are we going to continue along this road of self-destruction, or are we going to learn to love in life? The choice is ours and always has been ours. Where’s our courage to assume our responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth?

In search of a bright side to Japan's ongoing darkness.

Thomas Mucha

With devastation across large section of Japan, radiation possibly leaking from a cracked reactor core, more than 10,000 officially dead, andharrowing tales of sadness and grief, it's hard to see how the country's ongoing disasters will not also seriously damage the Japanese economy.

But that's the argument the New Yorker's James Surowieki — one of this business writer's favorite business writers — is making today in this very smart analysis.

The economic example Surowieki first points to is, well, Japan. The 1995 Kobe earthquake led to dire warnings that the country's economy would need years, or even decades, to recover.

Instead, as Surowieki points out: "Twelve months after the disaster trade at the port had already returned almost to normal, and within fifteen months manufacturing was at ninety-eight percent of where it would have been had the quake never happened. On the national level, Japan’s industrial production rose in the months after the quake, and its GDP growth in the following two years was above expectations."

Similar results happened after California's 1994 Northridge quake, in South Carolina after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and in Sichuan, China in 2008 following an earthquake that killed some 68,000 people.

Why? Economies are, by their very nature, adaptive organisims.

Here's how Surowieki puts it (italics are mine):

"The biggest reason for this, as the economist George Horwich argued, is that even though natural disasters destroy physical capital they don’t diminish the true engines of economic growth: human ingenuity and productivity. With enough resources, a damaged region can reconstruct itself with surprising speed."

In fact, economists Mark Skidmore and Hideki Toya studied 89 countries that have been hit by climatic disasters. They found that economic growth and productivity in these places turned out to be higher as investments in new technologies and infrastructure replaced older, less efficent, systems. And the countries that recovered quickly were, like Japan, fully developed economies with efficient markets and easy access to captial. (Though the economists point out that geological disasters don’t seem to have the same effects on growth as climatic one).

So perhaps there is a ray of light in Japan's continuing darkness, at least on the economic front.

Let's hope so.

Ashley Mwanza

SEPARATED by thousands of miles but as close as the click of a mouse or a television screen, images of the devastation in Japan struck home world over on Friday 11 March 2011. Many of us depending on which side of the world you are woke up to the terrible news about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami out of Japan. We watched in stunned silence as the nation and its people were shook by a devastating earthquake. And then, we watched as they were inundated by the tsunami that followed. Fresh in our hearts is New Zealand and in the not so distant past Haiti, Pakistan and in more recent times countries such as China, Brazil, Australia, and now Japan.

In a land of people used to earthquakes, everyone is saying this one, which hit at 14:46 local time, is the strongest they've ever felt-and that's in Tokyo, some 400 kilometres southwest from the epicentre. Scientists are calling it the biggest earthquake in Japan's tremor-filled history. Preliminary estimates from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) put the magnitude at 7.9, which have since grown to 8.9. Estimates of the depth range from 10-20 kilometres. This earthquake was 178 times as powerful as the 1995 Hanshin/Kobe earthquake.

The tsunami alerts revived memories of the giant waves that struck Asia in 2004. Warnings were issued for countries to the west of Japan and across the Pacific as far away as Colombia and Peru, but the tsunami dissipated as it sped across the ocean and worst fears in the Americas were not realised. The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century.

The disaster occurred as the world's third-largest economy had been showing signs of reviving from an economic contraction in the final quarter of last year. It raised the prospect of major disruptions for many key businesses and a massive repair bill running into tens of billions of dollars.

An aerial view shows houses burning and the Natori river flooded over the surrounding area in Natori city, Miyagi Prefecture on March 11. (Photo: Yomiuri Shimbun / AP Photo)

The visuals of burning buildings surrounded by muddy floodwaters were apocalyptic and frightening. As aftershocks continued, officials in Japan tried to assess the damage, both in loss of life and infrastructure. But how do you put a price on a catastrophe? In the days, weeks and months ahead, the people of Japan will need our help. They will need prayers. They will need food, water, supplies to life. They will need supplies and aid to rebuild their cities and their lives. They will need our support. The death toll continues to rise and thousands are homeless and desperate.

We must do what we can to reach out across the thousands of miles, across the ocean, to help them rebuild and overcome this devastating tragedy. Calls have already been made to support those seriously affected by this disaster. Even if you cannot provide financially, please pray that these people are comforted in their time of distress.

President Obama said it best, in his press conference yesterday: “I'm heartbroken by this tragedy. I think when you see what's happening in Japan you are reminded that for all our differences in culture or language or religion, that ultimately humanity is one. And when we face these kinds of natural disasters, whether it's in New Zealand or Haiti or Japan, then you think about your own family and you think how would you feel if you lost a loved one, or if your entire lifesavings were gone because of the devastation.”

The unfolding natural disaster prompted offers of search and rescue help from over 45 countries.

It is the call of humanity.

神が世界のすべての問題を抱えた場所や日本を祝福.
Kami ga sekai no subete no mondai o kakaeta basho ya Nippon o shukufuku.
God bless Japan and all the troubled places in the world.