I’m writing my first book for adults since Armchair BASIC. It’s called: Teaching Our Kids to Be Good People. It will be available as an eBook in September.

Since one person’s “good” might be another person’s “Are you kidding me?!” I knew I needed to be precise from the onset. So I asked my twitter followers, plus many of my most thoughtful friends, colleagues and family members “How do you define a ‘good’ person?”

Lots of intriguing and insightful responses galloped my way and I’m grateful. My plan is to dissect each one… all in good time. But at the moment, I’m focused on forgiveness.

That’s an aspect of “goodness” I hadn’t considered. Probably says something about me. I mean, I have overstayed my welcome at the Self-Pity Party, ahem… once or twice. So when one especially kind-hearted friend offered me this nugget: “A good person is forgiving”,  like a dog and a flying tennis ball, I was on it. Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

• What does it mean to be forgiving?
• How do you actually forgive someone? Which muscle do you relax or clench?
• What’s the connection between forgiving and forgetting? Are they mutually exclusive?
• What might you gain by holding on to your resentment? Anger? Self-righteous indignation?
• What might you lose?
• Why is it so $#*@ hard to permanently unplug a memory that continues to wound each time you project it onto your mental movie screen?

These are open ended questions, my friends. I don’t know any useful answers… yet. Love to hear your thoughts.

Follow-up: In the next 6 months, I’ll be talking about teaching kids to be good people at the 18th Annual Character Education Conference in St. Louis, the INTASE Educators’ Conference in Singapore, and at the 19th National Forum on Character Education in Washington, DC.