Compass Session 5: Coping with Life's Difficulties COURSE FULL
Details
This session is full for those who have booked and paid in advance. Please contact David for any late availability.
Compass is an 8-week series of discussions which will explore, and put into practice, the humanist values and virtues which underpin human happiness, resilience and flourishing. Exclusively designed and hosted by Dorset Humanists. No essays or exams or prior knowledge needed! All you need is a curious mind about human life and its challenges.
### Compass Session Five: Coping with life's difficulties
None of us escapes suffering. Illness, loss, disappointment, and injustice are woven into every human life. The question is not whether we suffer, but how we respond. Adversity reveals our character — it can harden us, isolate us, and breed bitterness or despair. Yet it can also call forth courage, patience, hope, and compassion.
In this session, we’ll explore the humanist understanding of resilience: not as stoic denial or shallow optimism, but as the steady cultivation of virtues that help us stay human in the face of hardship. We’ll look at examples from history and from our own lives — moments when people have found meaning, even dignity, amid great suffering. We’ll also consider the vices that corrode resilience: self-pity, bitterness, denial, and despair.
Through conversation and reflection, we’ll ask what it means to grow through adversity, to find acceptance when life is hard, and to support one another through the shared challenges of being human.
- From Tuesday 23rd September 2025, 6.45-8.45pm, for 8 consecutive Tuesday evenings
- Priority given to those who are able to attend all or most sessions
- Coffee/tea at 6.45pm for prompt start at 7.00pm
- Booking fee £15 includes complimentary membership of Dorset Humanists for one year. £10 booking fee for existing members. Free for those on very low income. Pay cash at the first session you attend.
- Facilitator is David Warden. David has degrees in theology and human resource management & development, and a diploma in humanistic counselling. He is an experienced trainer and course leader.
- Comprehensive course notes will be emailed after each session
- Email chairman@dorset.humanist.org.uk or WhatsApp 07910 886629 for any late availability
The whole course in outline
- The Human Quest: What does it mean to be a good person today?
- Friendship and Love: Why we cannot flourish alone
- Thinking Well: How to seek truth with humility in a polarised world
- Personal Growth: Virtues for self-understanding and fulfilment
- Courage in Adversity: How to face life’s challenges with resilience
- The Good Society: How to live well together beyond individualism and tribalism
- The Good Things of Life: Beauty, pleasure, and the art of living well
- Carrying the Compass: What this journey means for us and our humanist community