When we got clean, we could do things other people couldn't—like help other addicts and alkies get sober. We could be as good as we'd been bad. We were useful; there was a place for us in the world. It had been fun to get high, but it was even more exciting to get sober. We believed in recovery. We believed in people. We believed in life, and we believed in God. There was a revolution going on. "For a while it was Camelot," a friend said.

If we absolutely can't feel good about something we're doing, then we shouldn't do it - no matter how charitable it seems. We also shouldn't do things for others that they ought to and are capable or doing for themselves. Other people aren't helpless. Neither are we.

Yes, we have the right to be mad at a sick person. We didn't ask for the problem. Although the ideal feeling is compassion, we probably won't feel this until we deal with our anger.

The chemically dependent partner numbs the feelings and the nonabuser is doubled over in pain—relieved only by anger and occasional fantasies," wrote Janet Geringer Woititz in an article from the book CoDependency, An Emerging Issue.1

The culture in which we live stresses looking out for number one. Without adopting such a self-centered value system, we can demand the best of ourselves while we are extending our hands to help others.

Compassion, however, should mean providing a mechanism to escape poverty rather than simply maintaining people in an impoverished state by supplying handouts. By doing this we give them an opportunity to elevate their personal situations, which eventually decreases our need to take care of them and empowers them to be able to exercise compassion toward others.

Breaking cycles of dependency, establishing cordial relationships between people of differing economic means, and reestablishing sound values and principles in our society can serve only to strengthen the fabric of our nation, which is what any government should want to do and which clearly promotes the general welfare.

I also praise the cooperative efforts in our pediatric intensive care unit. In fact, this togetherness permeates every aspect of our program here, including our office staff. We're friends, we work well together, we're dedicated to alleviating pain, and we're interested in each other's problems, too. We're a team, and Ben Carson is only part of that team.

I don't believe in being emotionally detached from patients. I work with and operate on human beings, all creatures of God, people in pain who need help. I don't know how I can work on a girl's brain--how I can have her life in my hands--and yet not become involved. I feel particularly strong attachments to children who seem so defenseless and who haven't yet had the chance to live a full life.

Everyone needs to find the one thing that brings out her passion. It's what we do and share with the world that matters. I believe it's important that we leave our communities in better shape than we found them.

We long to find someone who has been where we've been, who shares our fragile places, who sees our sunsets with the same shades of blue. Soul mates. They somehow validate the depth of our experiences.

Your wealth of experience makes you rich. Spend it on hurt people. They need it so badly.