Over the holidays, I will be having dinners with the family and friends that impact me. Every day for ten days I will be writing about something I have learned in the first two months of this project.This is lesson 2.

Today is the darkest day of the year.  In Canada, many are struggling with the absence of light and the cold. Far from shutting down, this is a season of celebration across many faiths. This is revealing.

When I started this project, I wanted to show people what I saw daily – that people, all people, will struggle against extraordinary odds rather than give up. While the struggle may be gut wrenching to watch and may even be lost, everyone has some good the battle with whether they realize it or not. We can see this in ourselves and others if we choose.

That some of our most significant celebrations occur in a season of darkness is no accident. We are drawn to the light and when it becomes hardest to find, we make our own in our hopes and dreams and through our connections with others.

So when people challenged me about the positive nature of my work, I was a little bit taken a back. Talking about the sexual exploitation of children with C, discussing addictions with Richard or dissecting the stigma of mental illness with Isabel is hardly a retreat from the harsh realities of living in a difficult world.

We know that life can be difficult. What we don’t always admit is that we are choosing our response to those difficulties in everything we do. As much as I can, I choose not to despair. I don’t apologize for encouraging others to do the same and for trying to provide some help in doing so.

The truth is that it is easy to get discouraged. It is easy to be tired and it is tempting to give up. It takes very little insight and even less strength of character to see something difficult and turn away. Whether that repulsion takes the form of denial or despair, both responses relieve us of any sense of responsibility. To obsess about the negative until it becomes insurmountable is even easier than looking away.

It takes a much more sophistication to look clearly at the difficulties around us and to frame them as opportunities to engage. To get involved is to risk learning and caring and taking action. It is a heavy responsibility that the people I write about shoulder with grace. It is the also most profound response we can make to the challenges we face.

So I do not apologize for seeing the good in others. It would not even register if we did not have the adversity we face to measure it against. Good is not a naive concept that exists in a vacuum.  It is a response to the challenges and difficulties we encounter. And we need to be able to see it to use it.

In fact, we are so drawn to the light that we will make our own in its absence. We take the darkest days of the year to have our biggest parties. It is our way of beating back the darkness and welcoming the light.  It isn’t always easy as many of you will attest, but it is necessary.

If we don’t have the courage to see the good in ourselves and others, then we will be scratching around in the dark forever. The people I blog about are certainly extraordinary, but they are not alone in facing difficulties and trying to choose the responses that honour themselves and the people around them.

Whether you are like me and see the good in others more readily than you see it in yourselves, or whether you use your own sense of value to find value in others, is not the point. The point is that the bleaker you think the world is, the more necessary it becomes that you find the spark in yourself and others.