Do you remember the time when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat agreed to some substantial ways for their people to get along? Do you also remember the little push that President Clinton had to give to one of them to get them to shake hands? It only looked like it came from our President. I suspect it came from God.

Thousands of years of hatred and animosity did not evaporate but something good happened in that holy moment of hand clasping.

If nothing else, it offered a symbol to the rest of us of the utter necessity of just getting along.

Has there ever been another time in history so rent by division and strife? Tribalism, racism and religious bigotry have, for too long, been the hallmarks of our age. Is it possible that this could be changing?

If so, it can’t occur among nations overseas unless it also occurs among neighbors here at home.

In my work, I have come to the realization that there is no single factor so destructive to humanity than the lack of forgiveness. It destroys not just families and friendships but nations and cultures as well.

I forget who said it but "No one can carry a feeling of unrelenting bitterness against another without paying a heavy price for it in the disturbed content of his own heart." Even if we allow our hatred to fade into our unconsciousness, it continues to fester. It alters the way we think, feel and act. It twists our souls into something ugly and turns us into a miserable, bitter, self-pitying race.

So much misery caused by our inability to forgive.

If that handshake meant anything to us, it should have been a clarion call to let go of the hatred toward others that is destroying our society.

Humbly, I suggest that such an initiative begins not with governments but with you and me. To integrate the art of forgiveness into our lives is to make a quantum leap toward a peaceful world that our children both deserve and desperately need.

How to begin?

Think small. Think local. Is there someone who has wronged you or been wronged by you? I would be surprised if there weren’t. Call them. Write them. Go over to their house and initiate the peace process.

Remember Clinton’s little nudge that really came from God.

You will be better for it and so will the world.