"As small as it may seem, a good deed is always worth doing"

                                                      -Spark Matsunga

Deed of the Day!

This past Sunday marked fifteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Students of Binghamton University in New York honored this with the fourteenth annual Mitzvah Marathon. The Mitzvah Marathon, with "mitzvah" meaning "good deeds" is hosted by the Chabad Center for Jewish Students as a day where students preform selfless acts such as making sandwiches for the homeless, a blood drive, donating money to CHOW, a local toy drive and writing letters to sick children and soldiers. As well as these acts, some of the Jewish students of the university recited special prayers for peace for the victims of this attack. After the deeds had been preformed, a large display of cards filled out by the students was hung in memory of the victims.

 

Source Birminghanmtonhomepage. com

What Is Good?

In ninth grade I decided that since I was officially a high school student, it was time for me to start watching the news. So one morning I flipped to Channel 5 instead of the usual MTV and opened myself up to the world of current events. Within the first few weeks of watching the news I noticed a pattern - everything was so negative. There were constantly stories revealing fires, kidnappings, bombings, and plane crashes. Every once in a while there would be a brief report on a celebrity that visited a sick child or family reunited with a lost pet. But that was it. The reporters never took the time to linger on the good deeds done throughout our world, or even our country. They didn't report on all of the good that attempts to outweigh the bad that is forced upon us. So even at the age of fifteen, it didn't take long for me to find out that not many people tended to focus on the good done in our world. Today, four years later, I still hold this opinion and continue to be frustrated with the lack of acknowledgement of the good done in the world, and this is why I have chosen to make this blog into one that explore and explain the good in the world and the different ways it can be viewed.
 
The title "Finding the Good in the World" seems pretty vague, and I did this on purpose. The topic of this blog isn't simply to report on the good that is happening in our world today, but to look into everything that is happening, even the supposedly bad and dissect it in a way that allows us to see it from different perspectives. Looking at the good in the world will connect with simple things such as the good deeds and charity done locally, nationally and globally. It will also dig deeper into the cultures and beliefs of people throughout the world, and how these can lead to the various beliefs of what it means to be good and what actions are viewed as good.

I think that it is important for people to not only recognize the good that is done in the world, but to understand that a crime to one person may be considered a good deed to another. It can be a strange and difficult thing to think about in some cases, but I hope to shed more light on it throughout the course of this blog. I want this blog to prove to people that there is good in the world, and that the acknowledgement of this good can inspire others to spread the positivity. I want people to read this blog and believe that behind the all of the horror that is forced upon us, there is a world that is truly and genuinely filled with good.