When one listens to the news or reads all the dire predictions about the planet it is easy to become pessimistic. However, yesterday in a Washington soup kitchen I found many reasons to be hopeful. Serving over four hundred chronically homeless persons was an array of young professionals from every walk of life. Before going to their offices or academic posts they regularly started their day with service to others. Most were in the twenty five to thirty five age range and in conversations with some of them they offered that after college they needed ways to become other centered. In an era when it was often posited that our next generations have moved away from social involvement it was  uplifting to see the opposite in action.