"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." -Dalai Lama As a Tibetan-American, I look up to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama not just because he is the spiritual leader of Tibetan-Buddhism but because of how kind-hearted, intelligent, and simple living he is. His holiness' words and teachings show me how to be a better person to myself and everyone else. Compassion and tolerance are one of the major practices I have learned through the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan word for compassion is "tsewa". Tsewa is the sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. In this life, all we want is happiness. No one wishes for suffering. However, suffering is an inevitable part of life from the moment of birth to death. We cannot control where life leads us. When we lose hope, we feel lost. We feel as if it is impossible to recover. This is where compassion comes in. If we decide to see the bigger picture, if we decide to the world on a larger scale, we will realize that we are not alone. This allows us to a more realistic perspective upon life increasing our motivation and determination to persevere. We can develop true empathy for others' suffering as well as a desire to alleviate their suffering. As a result, our own inner peace and power will grow. All of this is because of compassion. "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion". When we practice compassion, we let go of selfishness. We allow someone else to be in the center as we focus on them and them only. Through this, they feel loved and understood. They feel happy. We feel happy that they feel happy. It's a never-ending cycle of happiness all because of compassion."If you want to be happy, practice compassion". Compassion is all it took for me to see true happiness. Through compassion, I was able to get through the darkest times of my life. I was able to see that life is about suffering and how you recover from it. I was able to see that there was nothing was to be afraid of. The feeling of knowing that you were able to distinguish someone's troubled feelings, understood them and helped them will make you happier than being the richest man alive. After all, money can't buy happiness; compassion can.

I come from a world much different than the one I currently live in. I come from a world where luxury is a dream not even the richest man in the country can reach and poverty is a nightmare that slaps you in the face every time you turn a corner. India is a third-world country and although it probably isn't as bad as I make it sound, there is a sad reality in my statement. The landscape there is beautiful. As the vast turquoise sea graces the mountains, the cities boom metropolitans with a hint of the oldest culture in the region. But once you turn that corner I mentioned to get to your favorite coffee shop, you will see a 5-year-old child carrying a bucket of rocks, attempting to sell them one by one in order to support his mother and siblings. I was lucky enough to consider displays like this a distant reality. I had everything I could ever want when I lived in India. I was only 6 when we moved from there and I had no perception of sacrifice whatsoever. I had never had to give anything up until we moved to America. It was here where I realized what sacrifice was. It was here where I saw my parents restart their whole life. It was here where I had to give up my pretty pink princess bedroom and share a mediocre-sized colorless room with my older brother. To me, moving to America seemed like a step backward at first. It seemed like everything good we had, we gave up. But it was also here where I realized that what looks to be a step backward can actually be two steps forward. In America is where I learned that poverty prevails through international borders, but some places have better resources to fight it. In America is where I learned that hate prevails through borders but in some places the people are brave enough to fight it. In America, I saw the world on a larger scale and from there I was able to analyze the problems I had seen back home and the problems I see here. Here is where I also learned about racism, discrimination, xenophobia, and bigotry. It was here where I learned that one could be tormented because their eyes were a bit smaller than everyone else’s or because one couldn’t speak and pronounce English the same way everyone else did. It was only then when I realized that I wasn’t taking steps back and forth, I was taking steps on a treadmill. Every step forward was the same because another step back would eventually lead me back to the same spot. India was not a perfectly diverse place when it came to race, so when we did see people of different backgrounds, it was celebrated. We were happy that they found this country interesting enough to visit or even move into. India is a Hindu majority country and many Indians take pride in the preservation of their culture despite the wars countries have waged due to the common faith. They also take pride in the fact that multiple religious figures from all different faiths have visited the country because despite India being overwhelming of one faith, India has respected all religions. So in this new American world, I decided that I was going to use everything good I saw here and combine it with everything good I saw in my old world and fight everything bad I have seen around the globe. I started slowly by educating myself on multiple social issues. I took an interest in foreign affairs and international relations and with that decided to co-found HSDLAS Model United Nations. I became more and more involved in protests for the greater good and pushed myself to help people in poverty whether it was through speaking out against corrupt programs or donating and fundraising to people in need. From here on forward, I plan to study the world of both the good and bad, find the balance and spread it around the world through words and actions of diplomacy