The Human Experience

Jeffrey Azize:
We would live homeless in New York without money or food, and try to experience life and attempt to find hope amidst the city's most hopeless.

Jeffrey Azize:
I look at those memories. I look at those moments. Everyone lives differently. When you go somewhere out of your own comfort zone, out of your own realm, and you enter someone else's, that's learning.

Dr. William B. Hurlbut M.D.:
If you treasure your own life, you should treasure other's lives.

Ojeda Smith:
Find those things that are universal to us all as humans. Find those belief systems. And then, let's experience it.

Lincoln:
Because the happiness is just strength... people don't believe that they can get out of the street. But I believe that I will be able to get out.

Dr. William B. Hurlbut M.D.:
The nature of life is to be hopeful

Jeffrey Azize:
You become more humble... you can feel the humility that the homeless people go through. And I don't know. It's different... my whole heart feels different.

Makoto Fujimura:
Really, it doesn't matter who you are, what your background is. You can converse on that experience. And that is what makes us human.

Makoto Fujimura:
But whatever experience we have, whether it is good or whether it's bad, we can always remember it and learn something from it. And it's those moments... when something touches you, something opens up something that you didn't realize before, you feel a longing, you know, that you never felt before.

Dr. Tony, Hope For The Children Foundation:
We have volunteers here now... they keep coming back. It's a life-changing event. They see children. They come in quite ill. They may even see one of our children die. And they contrast what these children have and what they've been through with their own life experiences. It's not what we gave them. It's what they gave us.

Mama Terri, Hope For The Children Foundation:
And the joy of living, this is what the kids have... because they want to live, so they don't mind how painful it is.

Makoto Fujimura:
When you see children, you know, I mean, it's great. Because everything that you know about life and all the suffering, all the pain that you might be experiencing even then, it kind of reverts to how fresh, you know, and how precious innocence can be.

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete:
The tears of one child, one innocent child... that is bigger than all the universe together... everything to me is questioned by the tear of suffering in an innocent child.

Anna Halpine, World Youth Alliance:
Many young people do not have a meaning and purpose to their life. They're looking to say, does my life matter? Do I have a unique contribution to make... when you recognize that you have a real mission, an indispensable contribution to make, then you embrace life, you celebrate life in a completely different way.

Anna Halpine, World Youth Alliance:
Where many, many young people today are saying, 'I need to experience in some sense that my life matters." The more mature person is not the person who has all the questions settled. No, the mature person is the person who enters ever more deeply, ever farther and farther and farther into the mystery and into the wonder.

Jeffrey Azize:
Have you ever had a moment where you feel like everything is just right in the world? Time stops, and the stars are in line. It was the first time in a long time I could feel peace in my heart.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson:
Just like playing music, each of us has our musical note that we have to play. And if you know that's your note, then no one can play that music. The whole composition is waiting for you to play your note.

Ghanaian Man:
In our culture, life is always a treasure. There cannot be anybody without a father or a mother. If your father dies, they will give you a father... if your mother dies, the family will give you a mother. So there is always meaning to life. You always find something or somebody to lean on and feel fulfilled. I think that this is also at the root of the joy that permeates our life.

Dr. William B. Hurlbut M.D.:
Suffering is a journey deeper into the heart of life.

Dr. William B. Hurlbut M.D.:
Even in the deepest suffering, there is significance. There is a meaningful process of positive possibilities. We have to recover the language of humanity. We cannot understand suffering without it... there's this struggle in life in every class of people... it's what we do with it that matters.

Michael Campo:
I wasn't the same skin color as them. I wasn't the same culture as them. You know, there was more difference than similarities, but the one thing that united us was the humanity. I was a human being, and that's all that mattered to these people.