If you look carefully, can you tell who is suffering a storm in their lives? Maybe the fog of depression, the tumult of marital strife, the buffeting of indecision, the downpour of failure? Often a calm demeanor masks these inner storms. Maybe you’ve experienced some rough weather of your own. In all of these situations, your personal sunshine–a warm smile and cheerful disposition–can quiet the storms, or at least make people feel not quite so lonely until the sun shines again. Today, bring your sunshine with you; you never know who is in a stormy place.
Nowhere can you experience life from someone else’s point of view better than in a book. You can feel what it is like to be another gender, race, lifeform. Time is no limitation–you might experience life now, in the past, in the future. Opening those pages allows you to step inside someone else’s shoes. And that can’t help but change you, stretch your empathy, and expand your experience.
What would it be like if you could talk over things with those characters? Ask them about life in their shoes?
In a very cool project, doing exactly that, library patrons have the chance to check out a human book. Hopefully the human book they check out will be someone with a different life experience and perspective.
So check out a book, or maybe talk with someone as unlike from you as you can find. You’ll be surprised at all the things you have in common.
What tools do we need before we start to improve the world? What are we waiting for? Perhaps we are waiting for extra money or time. Perhaps we are waiting for retirement. Perhaps we are waiting to get all our own issues squared away first before we start thinking about helping someone else with theirs. Perhaps we are waiting for someone to ask us for help.
But consider Anne Frank. Forced to live in hiding to avoid the Nazi round-up and murder of Jews, she had little contact with the outside world. She, herself, was in mortal danger around the clock. She was just a kid, really, someone we think of helping rather than being the helper. And yet her attitude was so full of optimism and hope, it continues to shine now, decades later, lighting a weary world.
What a difference an attitude makes! She didn’t wait for the right time or resources. She didn’t wait until she could have a huge impact on the world. She didn’t wait until she was old or famous or wealthy. She didn’t even wait until she was safe. She started right then with what she had. A cheerful disposition, a concern for her family and the others in hiding with her, a willingness to step forward and try to make the world a better place.
What can you do to improve the world? Isn’t it wonderful that you can start right now?
Miep Gies was a young office worker when she hid and supported Anne Frank and her family, protecting them from Nazis and the danger of being sent to a concentration camp. After Anne and her family were betrayed and captured, Miep collected Anne’s diaries and eventually returned them to Anne’s father, Otto, who survived the war. That diary has been read by millions of people now, inspiring acts of heroism and showing, in a very intimate way, the horror of WWII as viewed through the eyes of an innocent, complex, lovely, vibrant girl, Anne.
Miep wasn’t famous or rich or particularly accomplished, yet she managed through her actions to shine a very bright light on hate and replace it with a more powerful portrait of love. Anne, too, wasn’t famous or rich or accomplished, although we can see now how she was a gifted author, but her words have been inspiring and a powerful force against evil in the world.
No matter our position or age or wealth or gender, we each can make a contribution that makes the world more bright.
What does justice look like in a world of extreme wealth and extreme poverty? Where the systems in place work to keep furthering that disparity? Is justice possible in such a system?
Abraham Lincoln once said:
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.
Consider this picture:
Removing systemic barriers to equity must be the work of those who seek justice, and, thereby, peace. There are those among us who would prefer to see themselves advantaged and others reduced in order for them to stay on top. These individuals may currently have the levers of wealth and power to their advantage. But they are outnumbered. As more people come to understand the graphic above, we can work together toward a more level playing field, and a more just and peaceful world.
Answer: Play. Question: What is something children do that adults need desperately?
What did you like to play when you were little? Can you remember losing track of time because you were busy tracking caterpillars or coloring or sculpting sandcastles or building a fort? Is there any way you can take a break today and play?
It can’t be all work, worry, stress, repeat. We need to find time to play, too.
Apparently, one day in 1922, Albert Einstein was caught short, unable to leave a tip on his lunch bill. Instead, he scrolled:
“A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”
Einstein hoped his words would prove valuable to the young waiter some day. Ironically, that scrolled message recently fetched over a million dollars at auction. More valuable, indeed.
But, setting humor aside, isn’t Einstein right? What are the moments that bring us joy?
Are they in the hustle and bustle and endless striving, or are they in life’s quiet moments, those moments with no posturing, no striving, no achieving? Just being.
One of the greatest frustrations of life is not being able to change the past, whether it is to remedy that stupid thing you just said or the larger elements of fractures in society leading to war. The only things we can really do with the past are to live with it, learn from it, and figure out how to move forward. For those who study history, seeing ugly patterns reemerge and take shape can be horrifying.
And yet, it is not all gloom and doom. Indeed, we are not helpless:
One of the curses of history is that we cannot go back and change the course leading to disasters, no matter how much we might wish to. The past has its own terrible inevitability. But it is never too late to change the future.”
― Heather Cox Richardson
We can learn from history what it takes to resist. We can remember who the real heroes were in dark times and emulate them. We can draw on community and coalitions to fight for the common good. We can continue to believe that integrity counts, that honesty and fidelity and honor matter, that kindness will always heal, and that love is, not only good, but the answer to any question.
We can fight. With whatever tools we have: words, money, presence, we can take a stand, doing our little bit of good.
As Desmond Tutu said:
Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
There are things in this life that break us. Usually they involve some sort of loss—of health, of life, of relationship, of stuff. Despair is a crippler. You can’t breathe; you can’t think; you can’t see a way out. The world becomes very small until it feels like you are living in a tiny bubble apart from everything and everyone, floating along fragile in your pain. At times like these, you have to force yourself to hope and to push through. Start with your breath. In and out, in and out, until it is smooth and full, rather than broken with the catch in your throat from the threatening cry. Keep at that, smooth and full, smooth and full, smooth and full until you can open your eyes and start noticing beauty, maybe, at first, in the tiniest of things. A drop of dew on the grass, the feel of breeze on your skin, laughter of a child, the bud of a flower, birds in flight. Keep at it. No one said it would be easy. Keep at it. Smooth and full, smooth and full, smooth and full.
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