How accustomed are we to grasping the "collateral beauty" of things, events, and experiences, even the most disruptive and dramatic ones, those that expose us to disorientation and defeat, isolation and renunciation? How much and in what way can it be possible to treasure the dramatic eventualities that, often suddenly, strike individuals and communities, learning to seek beauty in catastrophe, design in defeat, solution in dissolution? That is, by learning to transform pain into growth, loss into new opportunities, social isolation into rediscovery of forgotten or taken for granted emotional relationships?
This issue of the Journal reflects on the role of pedagogy in giving value to that "collateral beauty" that formation can activate.