Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching to love their neighbors then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.

To think and to feel constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

My identity is linked to my grandmother who's pure Filipino as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.

At NBC I wasn't really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic.

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.'

When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have it is a world that moves away from unequal unstable unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.

My grandmother always taught me 'If you don't have a home family and church you don't have anything.'

Don't get me wrong - I've gone to a club. But I'd much rather be with my close friends at home or a concert or on a trip. I'll go dancing with my grandma. She likes to cut a rug!

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history for instance because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.