We are reminded of the comment by Linus in the comic strip Peanuts: “I love humanity – it’s people I can’t stand.

Teamwork is a dance – engrossing to perform and exciting to watch.

Indeed, lack of self-control may be at the root of all emotional disorders, so named because the person is controlled by anxiety and depression rather than vice versa. Everyone experiences negative emotions; what determines whether they escalate to full-blown disorders may simply be whether the person has the ability to circumscribe them.

Just as a muscle grows tired from exertion, the capacity for self-regulation becomes depleted after it is used. Also like a muscle, the capacity for self-regulation appears to grow stronger through regular exercise (after it recovers from the initial fatigue).

Self-regulation is highly valued. Even if we find them a bit tedious, we admire people who stick to an exercise regimen. We certainly value people who do not express every negative emotion they experience, those who are “low maintenance” because they can control their reactions to disappointment and insecurity. We can count on the self-controlled person to keep her promises because she will not be distracted in the course of so doing.

McCullough and colleagues have worked with a more circumscribed definition of forgiveness. They have defined forgiveness as motivational changes whereby a person becomes less motivated toward revenge and avoidance of a transgressor, and simultaneously more benevolent toward the transgressor.

Forgiveness is associated with a variety of traits that are of value for personal and societal well-being. Forgiving people appear to be slightly lower in a variety of negative affects, including anger, anxiety, depression, and hostility. Forgivers also tend to endorse socially desirable attitudes and behavior, and self-ratings of the disposition to forgive correlate negatively with clinicians’ ratings of hostility and passive-aggressive behavior.

Teamwork is a dance—engrossing to perform and exciting to watch.

In short, if one is entitled to everything, then one is thankful for nothing.

However, research with activists in the Civil Rights and antiwar movements of the 1950s and 1960s and of those who sheltered Holocaust survivors during World War II confirm that compassion, empathy, and social responsibility were core family values that motivated their actions. Once exercised in action, values of social responsibility and service to others may become integral to identity.