My dad had this incredible kindness that oozed through every part of his body. He had the ability to look at life positively in spite of what he went through. He was a Holocaust survivor. When he was 15-1/2 years old, he was liberated from the Dachau Concentration Camp by American soldiers who risked a lot to save people they had never met.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the profound kindness and resilience of the speaker's father, a Holocaust survivor.
Daniel Lubetzky reflects on the remarkable kindness of his father, despite the immense suffering he endured as a Holocaust survivor. His father's ability to maintain a positive outlook on life, even after being liberated from the horrors of a concentration camp, illustrates the power of the human spirit and the importance of empathy and compassion in facing adversity.
In practice
When speaking at a charity event focused on kindness, this quote can illustrate the transformative power of empathy.
We need to understand the other side to impact the other side. We become much more effective as humans and leaders when we engage in hearty conversations with those who are different from us, not necessarily to change our opinions, but to build the empathy muscle.
Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.
The ideal is to build a culture of healthy discussion, where everyone's ideas are valued. At KIND, we want everyone to be comfortable challenging my or anyone else's ideas without ever feeling or making someone else feel that the questioning is a personal attack.
You have to be very careful. If you over-commercialize a social mission, it completely loses its soul.
To maintain our entrepreneurial spirit, we have to create a culture in which everyone remembers that every order, big or small - and every interaction, every moment - will define what our company is today and what it will become tomorrow.
The rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression - we cannot take them for granted. They do not exist willy-nilly across the world; they are very rare.
Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience.
There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.
That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
The emotionally sound person should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he really would like to do in life, and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or failure. He should be adventurous (though not necessarily foolhardy); be willing to try almost anything once, just to see how he likes it; and look forward to some breaks in his usual life routines.
If you don't want to live a life where you go to a job every day just so you can enjoy your weekends and get two weeks of vacation every year, then don't do it.
There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.
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