photo courtesy of Steve Goldsmith (fm lt to rt: Valerio, me, Kalyan, Jyotsana, Rahul, Mira)
On Monday, I gave a talk at Cal State Long Beach’s South Asia day called The Law of Love which traced the journey of Friends Without Borders’ friendship efforts in South Asia between 2005-7. The true message was about practicing the process of placing empathy and love at the center of what you do in the world. Many of the students who attended were doing so for extra credit, and so the energy level in the room wasn’t so high when I started. Of course, one of the methods of practice I shared were smile cards, and some of the ripples that have radiated from this. While it felt great to rouse some enthusiasm around this and see all my smile cards disappear with at least a dozen personal requests on how to get more :-), it was more gratifying to learn that the Indian Student Union of CSULB sent links to Ekatva tickets to their member lists. The best part were these 9 & 10 year old kids of faculty who came up afterwards to ask for my autograph 🙂 I made them give me theirs first, and the sweet notes they wrote are pinned up at my office. Priceless little joys!
Ponticulus Indica 