A friend recently told me about a news story about a remarkable person: Alice Herz-Sommer. She's a survivor of the Holocaust, and celebrated her 107th birthday a couple of weeks ago.
What's really astonishing about her isn't just that she lived to see her 107th birthday, or even that she survived the Holocaust. What's amazing is her wonderful attitude toward life. She was a concert pianist in Prague, during the fateful years of WWII, was sent to Auschwitz, and none of her family survived except her son.
But what an attitude of love and kindness she has. Here's what she says about the Germans: "I have pity for the entire German people. They are wonderful people, no worse than others. ... [What they did] was a terrible thing, but was Alexander the Great any better? Evil has always existed and always will. It is part of our life."
She says she eats chicken stew most days, doesn't drink coffee, tea or alcohol, and plays the piano for up to three hours a day.
But here's the most important thing, according to her:
"In a word: optimism. I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive."
I'm almost always writing, in this blog, about adult learning at Granite State College. And I think we all have something to learn from this adult!
Here's a link to the story, with a short video interviewing her - even showing her playing the piano so beautifully.
http://tinyurl.com/26c9sph
What's really astonishing about her isn't just that she lived to see her 107th birthday, or even that she survived the Holocaust. What's amazing is her wonderful attitude toward life. She was a concert pianist in Prague, during the fateful years of WWII, was sent to Auschwitz, and none of her family survived except her son.
But what an attitude of love and kindness she has. Here's what she says about the Germans: "I have pity for the entire German people. They are wonderful people, no worse than others. ... [What they did] was a terrible thing, but was Alexander the Great any better? Evil has always existed and always will. It is part of our life."
She says she eats chicken stew most days, doesn't drink coffee, tea or alcohol, and plays the piano for up to three hours a day.
But here's the most important thing, according to her:
"In a word: optimism. I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive."
I'm almost always writing, in this blog, about adult learning at Granite State College. And I think we all have something to learn from this adult!
Here's a link to the story, with a short video interviewing her - even showing her playing the piano so beautifully.
http://tinyurl.com/26c9sph
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