With all the news recently of exclusion (see recent posts on Abercrombie and Fitch here and here), I’ve been thinking about this quote from one of my most favorite movies, Chocolat.
“I think that we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do. By what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.”
It’s from the Pere Henri and given in an Easter morning sermon after a particularly difficult Lenten Season. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should. It’s worth it for the storyline and talent in the film.
Every day Facebook posts, YouTube videos, Tweets share stories of people doing good. These stories are more than just the kicker (definition: An offbeat or humorous story that typically is used to mark the end of the news segment and the beginning of the sports/weather segment. The kicker can also be used to end a newscast.) in TV news. The most powerful stories are observations or actions by every day people.
But aside from sharing these feel good stories online, they don’t often permeate our daily conversations. Humans are more likely to spread bad news than repeat good news (see previous reference to the study).
How can we change that?