EDL 640: Module 2

February 13, 2025

Daily Peace Action: 

Hold space for those experiencing difficult times

In July 2024 my family received the devastating new that my brother's wife had stage 4 Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  They have two small children and the whole family has struggled to support them during this time.  As with all families there have been bumps in the road, quarrels, and sometimes hurt feelings. Since I live so far away, sometimes the only support that I can lend is to be a sympathetic ear. I am a person who loves to have solutions for problems, and I am trying to be mindful that my solutions may not be helpful. 

This peace action stood out to me because it made me think about a podcast that another family member recommended a few weeks ago. It is called The One Tool to Transform Your Relationships: The Let Them Theory. I have started this several times over the last week and then got sidetracked with other tasks at work and at home.  I think that knowing that this could be something that could help me manage my own feelings makes me feel that this will allow me to better hold space for those people in my life that are experiencing difficult times. 

Earlier in the week I chose to embrace idle time, and I ultilized that peace action to hold space for myself to fully engage in the podcast.  It was very emotional, most of it was a mother and daughter talking about how releasing the need for control over others can be stressful and hurtful, and focusing on your own thoughts and actions can free those around you to form healthier relationships. 

Peace Education Quote

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu's quote stood out to me because it reminds me of the way that we teach our students that small changes can result to larger changes over time. In reading, if a student wants to read Harry Potter, they must first learn letters, blending sounds, parts of speech, and so on until they can read a full book. A lot of people, creating a lot of little bits of goodness can cause changes from an individual level to a much larger scale.  I think of this when I see movements where people are challenged to perform acts of kindness on social media or when communities come together for social justice. 

I chose this quote because I was recently introduced to a book called Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis by Elin Kelsey.  In her book Elin talks about how it's easy to have an overwhelming sense of doom and gloom when we see the crisis of climate change and damage to the environment and that every tiny action counts!  

Reflection

I chose to read chapter 11 from A Force More Powerful. This chapter, The Intifada: Campaign for a Homeland, was interesting to me because it has to do with the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and I feel that any background information I get helps me to understand the current conflict and some context for why it has happened. 

When I first moved abroad, I worked at an all-girls' school in Kuwait. There I worked with women from many different backgrounds including several Palenstinian women. I had never worked in a place with people from so many backgrounds. It was through some of my friendships with my colleagues that I learned more about how Palestinians have been treated. Many of the women I worked with had moved to Kuwait because they could not find comparable work in their home country or had a significantly restricted quality of life. It opened my eyes to some of the injustices that the Palestinian people have faced. For this reason some of the information in the chapter reading was gut-wrenching, but not surprising.

I believe that every human being deserves dignity and many of the things that Palestinians have to go through on a daily basis are dehumanizing and strip individuals of basic dignity. It seems that for decades Palestinians have felt as though they are treated like animals in many facets of their lives. I think that is what sticks out most to me. When we treat other people as inferior, it is difficult to come up with solutions that benefit the greater good.