Like all the rest of the country I am so, so saddened by the horrific bombings at yesterday’s Boston Marathon. I have no personal connection to the marathon (except having been to see it run once, when I was eight or nine and my brother was running) but my heart just breaks for the families of the victims. Events like this are so senseless and horrible and there really are no words that can make them less so.

But I just read the widely-shared response of actor Patton Oswalt, and if you haven’t yet read it, I wanted to share a part of it here. He wrote: “So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

I truly believe that. And I want to add to it a personal story, which on the surface seems to have little to do with yesterday’s tragedy, but bear with me, the connection will become clear.

When my oldest girl (now 6) was quite small– 3 or 4 at the most– she went on an errand to the supermarket with her dad, and while shopping saw someone whose face had been horribly disfigured by what my husband told me later looked like scars from burns– so much so, he said, that it was impossible to tell whether the person was a man or woman. My girl came home and hopped up on my lap to tell me about the encounter; it had clearly made an impression, since she had never seen anyone with such severe injuries before. But what she said, telling me the story– these were her exact words– was: “And I just said to myself, Don’t be scared, Bella. Someone who looks different from you is the same inside. So I just smiled and said ‘Hi!” Like, No big deal.”

Now, I tell that story not because I think it’s evidence of any particularly awesome parenting on my part. We are members of the Bahá’í Faith, a chief principle of which is a commitment to combatting all forms of prejudice, and as such, of course our home is a prejudice-free zone. Of course we have talked to our kids and try to live by example the principle that we look at people’s hearts, not at what is on the outside. But at the same time, I promise you that I worked harder on potting training my oldest than I did on bringing that response out of her.

And that is why I tell the story in the wake of Monday’s tragedy: because it gives me so much hope of humanity’s basic goodness, so much hope for our future. Children are born with an infinite capacity to love. They may, sadly and too-often, be taught to hate. But with an absolute minimum of effort on our part, my girl’s instantaneous response to difference was acceptance and love; all kids have that capacity, I truly believe. We each of us come into this world with so much potential to be a force for good, to light the darkness and be a ‘shining lamp, and a brilliant star’ to quote a prayer I say with my daughters every night.

In the wake of senseless tragedy, it is so easy to feel despairing over humanity, that people are capable of so much hate, capable of inflicting on one another so much violence and pain. It is easy, too, to feel helpless, to wonder what we, alone, can possibly do. But we can do something. When, as Oswalt says, we spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear– we can look it in the eye and say, Today, I am going to change the future of the world. Today, I am going to remind a child of what we were all born to do– love each other. Love the world.

You will probably find that it’s much easier than you might think.