Moet?!

“Moet?!”

 

‘Moeten’ is voor mij een zwaar beladen woord…het is een woord die mijn haren overeind doen staan.
Ik ben allergisch tegen ‘moeten’, maar weet eigenlijk niet waar dat vandaan komt. Het vreemde is dat de meeste van mijn vrienden en kennissen met autisme precies de zelfde reactie hebben wanneer ik hierover praat.

Waarom zo een heftige reactie op zo een klein woord?

 Ik heb zoals veel mensen een latere diagnose gekregen. Vóór die tijd was ik eigenlijk bezig met overleven in plaats van te leven. Nu ik terug kijk, begonnen veel van mijn innerlijke dialogen met de woorden, ‘ik moet dit toch kunnen!’

Ik moet leren communiceren over mijn emoties….

Ik moet me meer bewust worden hoe ik overkom bij anderen….

Ik moet deze vriendschap toch kunnen redden….

 Hoe meer ik er over nadenk, hoe duidelijker het wordt dat het woord ‘moet’ net zo aanwezig was in mijn leven als het woord ‘logisch’. Maar wat is voor mij het verschil tussen deze twee woorden? ‘Logisch’ vond ik namelijk nooit negatief.

Je zou wel kunnen zeggen dat ‘logisch’ vanuit jezelf komt. Jij vindt iets logisch of niet. Als ik praat over moeten, heb ik toch vaker dan niet het gevoel dat het van buitenaf komt. Jij moet iets gaan doen. Of de verwachting van anderen of je eigen verwachting hiervan de oorzaak is maakt dan misschien niet zoveel meer uit.

Verwachting…is dit de kern van mijn akelig gevoel?

 Je groeit op in een wereld die je constant bombardeert met verwachtingen. Je ouders kunnen niet wachten tot dat je ‘mama’ of ‘papa’ zegt. Je familie wacht op het moment dat je de eerste wankele stappen neemt. De eerste keer dat je fietst zonder zijwieltjes is een ware feestdag! Hulp vragen aan je ouders. Vrienden maken op de middelbare school. Jouw eerste liefdes relatie…

De eerste jaren van je leven zijn eigenlijk een opsomming van verwachtingen, en dat is normaal.

Maar wat gebeurt er als je ontwikkeling niet volgens het ‘normale’ ontwikkelingspatroon verloopt wat leeftijd betreft?

Onze directe omgeving is geprogrammeerd om bepaalde reacties van ons als uniek individu te verwachten. Het is ook mede hierdoor dat ouders kunnen helpen met de ontwikkeling van hun kind. Hapert er hier iets aan dan weten ouders vaak instinctief dat er iets niet helemaal volgens de verwachte ontwikkeling met hun kind verloopt.

Hoe vaak zeggen moeders dat ze al tijdens de eerste weken een gevoel hadden dat er ‘iets’ met hun kind aan de hand was? Later krijgt dat kind dan de diagnose van autisme en alles valt op zijn plek. Ik weet dat mijn moeder, al snel naar mijn geboorte, ook het gevoel had dat iets niet helemaal klopte.

Maar terug naar verwachtingen!

Was ik me ervan bewust dat ik niet voldeed aan de verwachtingen van de wereld om me heen? Nee, totaal niet! Pas na mijn 16^de werd ik mij hier echt van bewust. Het is natuurlijk wel mogelijk dat dit op een heel diep niveau onbewust in de achtergrond speelde er vanuit gaand dat iedereen vanaf geboorte een bepaald zelfbewustzijn ontwikkeld. Toch een mogelijkheid?

Wat gebeurde er toen ik me begon te beseffen hoe moeizaam alles eigenlijk voor me was? Het klinkt misschien vreemd maar deze zwarte periode in mijn leven was gelukkig verspreid over een langere periode. Misschien voelde het daarom op bepaalde momenten iets minder heftig aan. Maar toch; als je geen mogelijkheid ziet om te voldoen aan alles wat je leeftijdgenoten als normaal ervaren dan, voelt dat als een zwart gat.

Als je er eenmaal in zit zie je met geen enkele mogelijkheid hoe je er weer eruit kunt klimmen.

De grootste les in mijn leven was dat ik heb geleerd om hulp te vragen van mijn omgeving. Ik wist dat ik het niet alleen zou gaan redden. Ik had mijn uiterste best gedaan en probeerde alles dat ik kon bedenken…ik was op; fysiek en mentaal.

Doordat ik hulp vroeg, begon ik me bewust te worden van de wereld en mensen om me heen.

Vanaf die dag ben ik in een stroomversnelling van bewustwording en groei gekomen. Ik besef nu hoe het woord ‘moet’ of ‘moeten’ je naar beneden kan halen.

Ik ben me ook bewust van het feit dat het prima is als je omgeving iets van je verwacht.

Meer belangrijk zijn de verwachtingen die je van jezelf hebt!
Zoals de ‘Kolderkat’ in de Disney film ‘Alice in Wonderland’ zo mooi zei,

“Als je niet weet waar je heen wilt, dan maakt de weg ook niets uit.”

Dus als je nog geen idee hebt wat je wilt gaan doen in aspecten van je leven, blijf dan maar in beweging en sta open voor nieuwe ervaringen. We ‘moeten’ niets in het leven.

Iets ‘willen’ is een ander verhaal.

New Years' resolutions?!

New Years' resolutions...I used to think this tradition a fairly strange thing one.

Looking back on the year gone by was something I could understand, but only then really looking at what you could change and possibly do better made no sense whatsoever.

Why would you wait for one moment in time in which to be truly critical about your actions in life?
Why not endeavor to do this throughout the year?
As far as I know, I have always tried to be aware of how I can improve myself, no matter what time of the year I find myself in. Why wait? Life can be so short. I am reminded of this again and again when I watch the daily reports showing people who have lost their lives because of senseless violence. We do not know when our time on this earth will be over and the start of a new journey will begin.

Then something happened to me. I received extremely good news regarding my health. It was only that I realised how much the waiting had been holding me back in an area of my life.

I now finally understand why the end of the year can be so important in making changes in life.

I don't know which is more important, the almost magical transition of a new year which gives us a chance to reflect, or the hope that a new start is within our grasp.
Transition or hope? I liken that moment of receiving my good news to the moment Big Ben strikes twelve.
The feeling you experience of finally feeling able to see new possibilities. New ways in which we can move forward, try new things, put ourselves out there.
Maybe this all boils down to the willingness to take a risk? Risks mean that there has to be an element of fear. Whether it be fear of failure, fear of making a fool out of ourselves or a failure to realise a dream we hold dear.
I am not waiting for the clock to strike twelve. Risks are the spice of life after all!
All you can do is try to limit the dangers you may encounter and accept that wanting to move forward in life may mean that you end up taking two steps back.

So the real question is, am I prepared to take the risk?

I will answer that question with another.

How can you not be prepared to move forwards?

Thriving on the Spectrum

I find myself with a rather large dilemma.

After being asked to participate in the 2012 Awares international autism conference I of course looked through the 44 people that would also be taking part. I am happy to admit that I was more than impressed with the online company I would be keeping, but also healthily intimidated.

You cannot help but consider why your name should be included on such a list.  
This therefore leads me to ask the questions; why should someone find what I have to say interesting and what makes me so different?

 Differences force us apart from the rest of the world and yet pull us all together. It is a complicated and wonderful contradiction. I could reel off a list of possible things that make me different from you. However, as we are taking part in a conference on autism, the most logical 'difference' that sets me apart is just that.

Autism.

I received my diagnosis at the end of 2008, a day that I will never forget. I embraced this change in my reality because I was ready to, even though I could not have foreseen the many consequences it would bring. The knowledge I have since accumulated about myself, my personal version of autism and the people around me is priceless. A gift that I would never return.
Yet for every advantage there will always be a disadvantage. That disadvantage is one that is becoming increasingly apparent each year that goes by.

I started off living life in my reality. When that reality came crashing down I entered a time of crisis and knew it was necessary to start my journey of discovery. I lived in a world of permanent fog which sometimes faded into a mist, but never fully cleared. The day Dr.Cees Kan uttered the magical word “autism” was the day the sun came out and cleared that persistent fog.

Finally I could again move forward in life.
However, once you have opened up the pandora's box containing that awareness, it becomes impossible to turn back time. I found myself moving away from the world I thought I knew, to one only I could discover.

The feeling of always walking slightly out of sync with the rest of the world is one I feel comfortable with. After all, I was taught to embrace being different and to enjoy being unique. Having an artist for a father will (thankfully) do that to you!

Yet now I find myself in a sort of no-man's land.
The world as I know it has changed. The world of autism is one in which I have not yet fully found my footing.

So where do I belong?

This question is, I believe, at the heart of every human being. We define ourselves through things such as our families, our jobs, our religion and our relationships to name just a few.

I define myself through myself, not the world around me. This is shaking my world as the 'self' that existed prior to my diagnosis, no longer exists in that form.

My former 'self' grew up in Wales in idyllic surroundings. My father was Head of Art at Atlantic College, a college for 16 to 18 yr old students who came from all over the world to study for two years. They came together to not just learn from the teachers, but also to learn from each other.

The world I was brought up in taught me to embrace differences and to enjoy and anticipate change. New faces arrived each year. New languages echoed across the campus. New students found my childhood hidey-holes and forced me to be more creative.
And yet some things stayed consistent. The seasons came and went, student faces always changed and yet the castle environment always stayed the same. I believe this introduction to change within such a safe environment meant that I was better able to prepare myself for the abstract life concepts I would later encounter.

I naturally seek to become aware of the consistent aspects in my life.

My three cats and dog make my house into a home and force me to be aware of the surrounding world.
My dog Kaya has helped me in countless ways and accompanies me wherever I go, even when I work. She becomes at those moments the center of my universe and provides me with the consistency I look for in life. She helps to reduce the negative consequences of having autism. I recently traveled without her and was amazed at the positive impact she has had on that part of my life.  
As I am writing this, all three cats are lying on the sofa next to me with Kaya curled up on my lap. How can you not appreciate the world when you are surrounded by so much life (and love)?

In answer to the question 'where do I belong', it is moments like this when I know exactly where I belong. Even though I have not yet found the balance, these moments where everything clicks into place are beginning to happen more often.

After discovering that autism was the key to understanding essential parts of myself, I focused my attention on getting to know the parts of me that had been buried for so long. With the help of my autism coach, my eyes were opened as to how many different strategies I had developed and why they had not worked anymore prior to my diagnosis. We worked towards getting to know the positive and negative sides to my autism which were, and still are, exacerbated by my physical disability.

Unfortunately my back has decided to age faster than the rest of me, which causes me chronic pain. When you go over the limits your body sets for you, it of course makes total sense that you will pay for this in some way whether it be tiredness, getting more easily sick or having some form of pain.

Due to the autism, I nearly always go over the limits my brain wants to set for itself and this causes a knock-on effect of causing stress and therefore the weakest place in your body getting the brunt of it. This would, in my case, be my back.

The threat of pain forces me to be constantly aware of having to keep a certain amount of balance in my life. Keeping a balance means that I cannot afford to let myself fully go in my autistic ways. An interesting dilemma!

This means making sure I use the life skills and coping techniques I have available to me to keep my autism more under control. I am especially aware of the amount of energy this costs me but I have accepted this fact of life for the most part.

I will never let myself be controlled by my autism but I will also never deny it or the problems it causes me. Denying that what also makes me strong can only make me weaker. The difficulties with my back could only be seen as something negative. Yet it is teaching me to be aware of how I and my body feel. I of course do not always get this right. However, I do not think that I would have been able to learn the skill of quickly implementing lessons learnt into daily life had this not been the case.       

In regards to my diagnosis, if I had not embraced and learnt from it, I would not be doing the things I am doing today. I give lectures and workshops about autism since 2009 and also take photographs for a living.

Contradictions to what most people would expect a person with autism to be doing in their lives.
I have my own business, Post Productions which involves a ridiculous amount of organizational skills. Skills that I am still developing and perfecting with the help of my two autism coaches as well as my business coach. Due to the work I am doing with my autism coaches, I am now more able to recognize the moments when I should ask for help. This has a positive knock-on effect on my productivity within my business. As I wrote earlier, every advantage has a disadvantage, and vice versa.
A member of the public at one of my lectures recently asked me if I would want to be 'cured' of my autism. As I am sure you can imagine, I first had to take a deep breath before answering. I proceeded to tell the lady that had I not been able to communicate and trapped in my own world, yes, you might use the word 'cure'. That is not a life I would wish for anyone, whether it be because of autism or for another reason.

In my case, no, I would not want to have my autism stripped from me. It is true that autism is a large contributing factor to making my life more challenging and sometimes downright tiring. And yes, there are days when I am fed-up, exhausted and wonder where I am going to find the energy to get up in the morning. It is also true that I not only have autism to contend with on a brain function level, but a physical disability to contend with body-wise.

Which one of these limits me more in my mind? Which one would I label a disability and limitation? I choose my back every time.

The lady looked surprised. Shocked that I had not conformed to her opinion whilst able to give clear reasons for why I would not choose to be 'cured'. I made sure to explain that I was not in any way against the scientific community looking for why autism happens in the human brain. The shear scale of the spectrum is reason enough for research to happen in that field.
I would not want to loose that part of myself, the good and the bad. But this is because I am capable of setting goals for myself in life and reaching them, whereas a lot of people with autism get stuck in the making of plans and not getting any further than this. I learn from my mistakes and actively confront myself with my weaknesses in order to further my knowledge and grow.

I think the more important question is, 'would I have not wanted to receive the diagnosis?'

My answer to this is a resounding no. The process of diagnosis happened because it was necessary from my point of view. Had I not had one, I would have stayed stuck in a monotone, problem solving state of mind where I would have missed the capacity to see alternative solutions.

The world might be difficult and sometimes impossible to decode, but it is a wonderful and magical place. I doubt I would see the magic in such a clear manner were I not so obviously confronted by my strengths and weaknesses on such a frequent basis.
This is something I would not change for the world.

'Autism is my gift, not a restriction.'

The Voice

The 'Voice'

 

The last few months have been a challenging time for me.

I have had to accept that sometimes, even when everything seems to fall into place as if it was meant to be, things still don't always work out the way I had expected.

I have always followed the little voice inside me, also known as your gut feeling. Whenever I heard that voice, I knew whatever the outcome; I would be making the right choice. The word 'fail' did not truly enter my vocabulary after this feeling. If what I expected did not happen, I would then rationalise that it was therefore not meant to be or I needed to learn something from if it had not worked. Had I been religious, I would have chalked it up to a higher power trying to teach me a valuable life lesson.

Experiencing this feeling was my way of knowing when I'd chosen the right path to follow. Now, for the first time, my inner voice had failed me. I am, even now, still reeling from the confusion and heartache this has caused.

I choose to first see the potential in people, not their faults. Apparently I have high expectations of people around me. I know this because friends, family and even my autism coaches have told me. When I look from my own perspective, I see how I measure others against what I expect of myself. A simple concept such as wanting to challenge myself to the extreme, distorts my view on how I interpret the behavior of the people around me.

When I see someone not pushing themselves to the level I push myself, my first instinct is to push for them. I came to a breakthrough a few months ago where I faced the distinct possibility of loosing a good friend through the pressure I put on him. Even though my initial reflex was to help in this way, I realised that I was forgetting to look at the person.

 

As a wise man once told me, your greatest advantage in life can also be your greatest disadvantage. This life rule of following my gut feeling, that had never failed me before, had now, for the first time, turned into my greatest disadvantage.

If you look at someone you love for example, and see how much potential they have, are you really seeing the reality of who that person actually is at this moment in time?

I have had to learn the hard way that this is not the case. You are superimposing another reality, your reality, onto this person.

Some of you might be reading this and think, ah, this is her lack of theory of mind that all people with autism supposedly have. However, when you really think about it, how often do you truly see the person standing in front of you?

We colour our world and the people in it with our own perception. We might hope that our children will have better lives then we did. Yet when you look at this example, who are we to say what will make our children’s' lives better...for one parent that would be growing up without money issues, for another getting a good education (i.e. college or university) and for someone else it might be the hope that their child will just be happy.

However, these hopes are all subjective. Your reality and opinions are coloured by your past experiences. Maybe you did not get to go to university but really wanted to. Or maybe you grew up in a household where money was scarce and you experienced the stress that goes hand in hand with that.

The other person has not had these experiences: you have. When we come to the subject of happiness, well, that is the most subjective idea of all. One persons' version of happiness can be another persons' version of hell. It is all a matter of perception.

So don't we all sometimes have difficulty with theory of mind?

I just have more chance of putting my foot in it if I get stuck in my idea of what would be the best path for someone to follow. Then again, if you watch the reality series' that are very popular at the moment for example; 'Toddlers and Tiara's' (where children take part in beauty pageants in America), the majority of children there obviously want to be doing something else rather than practicing how to walk, smile and turn. I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually seen a child who obviously thrived and loved to practice, perform and take part. The number of times I heard mothers' say with a smile on their face, 'I wish I had been able to participate in beauty pageants when I was her age' or 'I'm living through my daughter', can be counted on more than two hands.

If that isn’t an argument for looking at the similarities instead of the differences, then I don’t know what is.

So, if I see the potential of who someone can be as my reality, but am not able to link two versions of reality in order to get an authentic view, how can I rely on my gut feeling?

The answer is, I can't.

Crap.

What is possibly one of the biggest problems in life if you have autism? In my opinion, it is the feeling of doubt. What happens when someone is unsure about something? You get stressed!

People with autism live with stress on a daily basis. Going through life with high levels of stress causes our mind and body to live in a constant fight or flight mode. One of the rules I had put into place to help cope or sometimes even totally avoid stress had failed me. This caused me to re-evaluate my rule of following my gut feeling and I came to a shocking epiphany!

If our gut feeling is coloured by our life experiences, and had worked for me for so long, what had changed?

My age. I was older.

I have grown, seen more, felt more and learned more. The Monique I am today is not the Monique from 15 years ago, or even from 4 years ago.

The younger you are, the less experiences you've had which distort the 'voice'. Therefore the older we get, the greater the chance that the voice will be distorted by everything we are experiencing in life.

Will I now have to dig harder through the layers life has built up to hear my true gut feeling again? Will it be more difficult to hear the voice in all areas' of my life in general or only my personal life when emotions are involved?

I have no answer to those questions at this moment in time.

My hope is that I will discover the answers quickly, but as my sense of time is pretty dreadful, I know that it may take longer than I expect.

This is a human problem, not an autistic one. It would be too easy for me to pass this off as a side effect of autism itself. Yet I do see it as a response to my autistic way of thinking.

I have spent years developing ways in which to survive and thrive in the world. I have done this because of autism. It makes total sense that these ways will also have to adapt and change as I myself do.

So what is the difference between the present and the years before my diagnosis? It is that I am now fully aware.

Awareness is like opening Pandora's Box. Once you open your eyes to it, you will never be able to close them again. I have sometimes found myself envying a person with autism who has not yet had that awareness. Yet had I not opened my eyes, or had them opened for me, I would not be doing what I'm doing today.

My work is based on having this awareness.

There is a balance to everything in life. The Chinese figured it out and have shown it so beautifully with their yin and yang symbol. Even in this, there must be balance.

I find myself asking, how many people in this world are truly aware?

 

 

Monique Post 2013

Lezing over autisme en vrouwen!

Monique Post (@MoniquePost1) tweeted at 4:49 PM on Tue, May 21, 2013: Aankondiging voor lezing over autisme en vrouw-zijn bij Lunetzorg, Eindhoven, 29 Mei, 19.30-21.00.
Iedereen is welkom!

http://t.co/7Ky05FendJ (https://twitter.com/MoniquePost1/status/336856298530418688)

Autismetv.nl

So, tonight is going to be debut for a live online interview for the week of autism.
Exciting! The theme is autism and women, a subject that I am fairly qualified to speak about seeing as how I'm a woman with autism ;-)
I've been collecting views of other women on the spectrum and it has been fascinating to see how everyone has, pretty much, the same view about why autism is often not as easily recognized in women. Why we first get diagnoses focusing on either the consequences of autism (depression) or a wrong diagnosis such as Borderline.
It is frightening to realise that had I first had a diagnosis of Borderline, I would have accepted it. Yet the treatment/s are exactly the opposite to what someone with autism needs.

Can you imagine what state your brain will be in by the time you've gotten the correct information?!
No wonder women with autism have a high rate of depression, especially people who have had conflicting diagnoses!

One of the questions I'm going to be asked tonight is, 'do I think that autism is more of a challenge for women than for men.'
Can you imagine how arrogant it would be for me to say, yes, it's much more of a challenge...It is not worse or heavier, it is different. We have different challenges to men, but I would never say that those challenges weigh heavier compared to challenges men with autism face.
It's easy to think that way though. When you look at the expectations society has of women, the amount of different 'jobs' women are expected to be able to handle and how much we are expected to be verbally strong...then yes, it's easy to think 'we have it much harder'.
But look at what men have to face. Society expects men to not verbalize how they feel, to show no weakness in any area (apart from at home with your partner...talk about confusing!) and be dominant+ successful if possible.
I know a lot of men with autism who are very sensitive, whose emotions are extremely near the surface, who don't like to play the social 'game' (if they see it and understand the game rules that is) and who are fairly timid+ careful.
So no, auti men do not have it 'easier' at all.

Comparing our differences is necessary I suppose when it comes to the science part of how we are different to men...but in daily life I'd rather be looking at the similarities.
When we keep focusing on differences, we don't open our minds to connect on a deeper level. This is a big danger that we have to be aware of as people with autism, but also as human beings.
We need to get over the 'different' aspect, and focus on who the person is. Who the essence of that person is. Only then will we learn to connect to the world around us and care about what happens to others.

There is more in you than you think!

Our world is seriously amazing. Let me start off by stating that fact.

I recently watched an amazing BBC wildlife documentary about whales and the filmmakers who risk their lives to learn more about these graceful giants of the deep. I grew up watching these types of documentaries and the narrating voice of Sir David Attenborough can, even now, still send me back to my childhood days and a feeling of total security.

I love animals and find them fascinating beings. I think I have always felt a greater affinity towards animal-kind rather than human-kind. The words used to define our species felt so wrong to me.

Human-kind? When I begun to realize that I felt different to the outside world, kind would not have been a word that I would have associated with human.

But let me first tell you about where I grew up. This place has had a defining effect on the person I am today. I am the daughter of an artist, Marten Post, who was Head of Art at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. I grew up living on a campus where more than 350 students from 16 to 18 years of age from more than 80 different nations lived together, studied together and worked together. Students come from a wide spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds, cultures and creeds and many are accepted based on full scholarships.

The United World College (UWC) movement was inspired by a man called Kurt Hahn, an inspirational educator who believed in the innate ability in each child to make correct judgments about moral issues, no matter the situation they come from. He believed in education which called forth and developed the deepest qualities of character and compassion. After witnessing the First World War, this conviction only became stronger.

The UWC concept was conceived in the 1950’s at the height of the Cold War. Hahn believed that students aged between 16 and 18 would be grounded in their own cultures but still be impressionable enough to learn from one other. So much could be done to overcome religious, cultural and racial misunderstanding and avoid future conflicts if young people could be brought together.

I therefore grew up in an environment where differences were celebrated, compassion and helping others was the norm, your own personal responsibility and integrity was vitally important and where you were enveloped by a sense of idealism…one person can change the world.

The beautiful natural environment I grew up in was my reality. The celebration of being different was my ‘norm’. And then there was the outside world. Whilst looking back and examining my childhood, I realized something vitally important. I grew up in a society which was totally unrealistic when compared to the outside world. Whenever I left the safety of the college walls, say to go to school, I was confronted by a world in which differences were frowned upon and laughed at, compassion was few and far between and idealism was something that was practically non-existent in my fellow students.

At a young age I became very aware of my personal preference for which world I found to be the right one. And then I set about trying to bring some of that world into the outside one. I started up a school newspaper when I was 8yrs old, persuaded friends of my mothers’ to bake cakes to sell to college students and raise money for a local dogs home, and after seeing a children’s’ program about how African children were losing their sight because they could not afford eye surgery, I set up a stand at a crafts fair to raise money for the appeal.

I took to heart the concept of personal responsibility and tried to pass this onto others through my enthusiasm for life.

This taught me that it was possible to help people to care and have compassion for others.

But, I realize that my childhood concepts of compassion did not start off with humans, but with animals. I’ve always had a sense of right and wrong and hate it when I see an injustice happening, especially when the other being cannot speak out for themselves. Animals encounter this problem on a daily basis. We all know that. What I am saying is nothing new.

But I strongly believe that because I grew up with pets and animals around me, I was introduced to this hugely complicated concept ‘compassion’ in a way in which I could begin to understand it. If an animal cannot in the face of wrongdoing speak out for itself, then that is wrong. This concept transfers easily to humanity. If a human being is not able, for whatever reason, to speak out for him or herself in the face of wrongdoing, then that is not right. This may sound too simple, but I find the strongest concepts often are. Sometimes things in life are just that simple.

Compassion for another is one of the simplest concepts of the world, but one which can cause the most destruction if ignored.

So I leave you with a quote from Kurt Hahn, “there is more in you than you think”.

 And remember, one person can change the world. Now let’s go do that!