My cell phone & wallet were pick-pocketed in Paris yesterday morning, just as I arrived in the city to help facilitate a global meeting of education policymakers and other stakeholders. Amid the worry, I found many things to be thankful for:
1. Clara, who descended on me like an angel, coming straight away to lend euros, take me to coffee, walk around the city with me to make my mind off my worries.
2. Friends to whom I reached out and immediately get empathetic support.
3. It’s great to have a mother, who, when I had lost something in elementary school and was devastated, told me, “It’s okay – someone else must have needed it more than you did.” I went back to those words.
4. So many strangers helped, from lending me phones to use, giving me directions to get me to places, patiently helping with questions while cancelling things and just trying to make me feel better… the manager of the hotel where I was staying, gave me an upgrade, saying, “I’m sorry this happened to you, and I wish I could do more, but maybe this will help…”
5. I also instinctively went back to the words – “forgive those who trespass against you” – and said a quick prayer forgiving the people who stole from me. I was glad for the freedom it gave in helping me to release feelings of anger & disappointment…
6. Empathy toward those who stole also reoriented me – what kind of situations must have they been in…?
7. A good grounding and an ironic incident, too, as I’m in the city helping to continue the work about what students need to learn, and specifically with a working group on teaching attitudes and values…. 
8. At the end of the day, it’s just things that can be replaced.
9. Late last night, my sister called the hotel where I would be staying the following night to give them her credit card number and she found out that my wallet and phone had been turned in to this hotel. My cash & credit card were gone, but everything else was still there. It turned out another tourist had found them abandoned, saw the name of the hotel from the notification from my phone calendar, and had brought it to the hotel.
10. I can’t help but think that while resilience may be an individual trait, it is developed and experienced in community. We are interconnected, in good ways and bad ways, in ways we choose to be, and we can either make each other stronger or weaker. It is up to us and the choices we make.
Connie K Chung, EdD 