The principles of nonviolence have been part of my identity for years. As I encounter a village reduced to rubble, however, the devastation rattles my convictions. At such times, it has been the victims who have pointed me in the right direction. Once, at a hidden site in the jungles of Myanmar where a group of Rohingya people lived in constant fear of being discovered after their village was burned to the ground by government soldiers, I asked, “Do you hate them?”

Their response was one of bewilderment as they explained, “We cannot hate them, for by doing so, we would become like them.”

For them, the path to survival was forgiveness.