Focusing on the good that can, does, and will come of every situation
I received a lovely email from an old high school friend Teresa Legg Morrison. Teresa and I sang in the Bartlett High School choir, over twenty years ago, in Anchorage, Alaska.
Thank you, Teresa, for sharing your moving story of finding the good in all things, despite some very tough times.
Anne
My mother left me a lot of things – children’s books, family photos, reams of music, her heavily annotated copy of the Messiah, art, 19-year’s worth of teaching supplies, linens, more linens, my great-aunt’s Spode china, a love of Brubeck, sense of rhythm, and most importantly, the ability and desire to spontaneously burst into song.
But the one I treasure most is a newspaper clipping she kept taped to her computer monitor…
I’ve been that woman, groceries all rung up, ten people in line behind me eager to get home at the end of a tough day, looking none too happy as I tear apart my purse looking for my checkbook, loose cash, or my credit card…and I can’t find anything…anywhere. “I must have left everything in my other purse,” I mutter apologetically as I keep looking, sticking my hand in pockets, telling my son to put the candy bar back, counting my change. I’ve got forty-three, no, forty-four cents. I stop. Nothing close to the $45 I need to take home dinner for my four hungry boys. I struggle to control the rising flush of embarrassment, ignore the impatient murmurs from the line, and appreciate the efforts of the trying-her-best-to-be sympathetic cashier. “Just leave your cart here,” she offers, “Come back when you find your wallet.” I promise to be back as soon as possible.
I’m relieved when I find my wallet quickly, retrieve my groceries and get dinner on for the crowd of whining, gnashing teeth. (Yes, I do live on the Island of Where the Wild Things Are…)
Dinner at 9 PM on a school night = not a good day.
So when I read about Carolee Hazard’s random act of kindness, paying for a total stranger’s $207 grocery bill, rescuing Jennie Ware when Jenni was having a day like most of us have had at one time or another…I just had one question: Carolee—where do you shop?
I need a neighbor like you.
Upon arriving home, feeling simultaneously proud and worried she’d just been scammed, Carolee posted on Facebook what she’d just done.
I’m sure she was as relieved as I was when I found my wallet, when almost immediately, Jenni paid her back. Jenni rounded up the check amount from the $207 loan to an even $300 – a $93 tip for Carolee’s compassion together with a sweet note saying Carolee should “treat herself to something nice.”
Naturally, Carolee went back to Facebook to report to friends that in fact, she’d been repaid, she hadn’t been scammed, there are good people in the world, and she’d even gotten this bonus money. And she asked for suggestions as to what to do with the money. Her friends are clearly a whole lot like Carolee because while I would have lobbied for the Dead Sea Scrub Facial at the salon, her friends’ recommendations included the Second Harvest Food Bank in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
Given she’d helped a woman take dinner home to her family – it was a better idea than mud on your face. A lot better.
Carolee liked this idea and matched the $93 with her own and sent it in. And of course, she reported her decision to her friends on Facebook.
Before long, her friends were matching the $93 and friends of friends were sending in $93 and then friends of friends of friends so Carolee set up a Facebook group called The 93 Dollar Club for families in need. Today, that group has 3300+ members and according to the Second Harvest Food Bank, one donor even gave $9300 in memory of her mother. As of November 30, 2010, the Facebook group had raised $113K+ from around the world – proving once again…there is good in all things and forgetting your checkbook isn’t the end of the world.
Practice for today: In honor of Pay It Forward Day – donate $93 to your local foodbank OR collect $93 worth of food from your overstuffed cupboards, unplug the kids from the video games (I’m speaking from personal experience – you might need to have a “unexpected” power outage) and take them with you to deliver a little comfort on a tough day. We’ve all been there.
And join the 93 Dollar Club on Facebook – just be sure to post it on your wall.
Patrick Joyce knows one thing. He will not live to see his children grow up.
“It’s like watching a great film and not being able to see the end,” he says. In 2008, Patrick was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or in the US, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the baseball player. In the UK, where Patrick, his wife Kathy, and their three small children, Reuben (7), Elliot, (2), and Nancy, (5 mths), live, it is known as motor neuron disease or MND. Patrick is losing his ability to walk, talk, eat and ultimately, to breathe. He is not expected to live to see his daughter enter kindergarten.
So, you are probably wondering…what is the good in this situation? Actually, it’s all Patrick’s idea, I’m just sharing his story. A friend sent me the link to Patrick’s website, www.patricktheoptimist.org and well, I didn’t know he had MND until I clicked on the link.
This man, who already needs help walking, and is struggling to talk, and yet he is determined to use what is left of his life to encourage others to do something optimistic every day. He says, “MND may be incurable but I am an incurable optimist. I know that through optimism we can find a cure for MND.”
And Patrick is leading by example…Patrick is an artist and as part of his campaign for incurable optimism, despite limited mobility, and decreasing muscle control, he is working on producing portraits of 100 incurable optimists. He’s well on his way (and may I say, as I fancy myself a fellow artist, he’s very good!) You can see his portraits and nominate an incurable optimist you know for the series at his website.
“I found out first-hand what MND does to individuals and families…I want to help stop this. I want to get better care for me and my fellow sufferers and I want a cure.
Daily Practice: For yourself and for Patrick, do something optimistic.
In 2007 Shawn Ahmed, a 29 year old Canadian from Toronto, heard the lecture that changed his life.
By many people’s standards, Shawn was on the cusp of “making it”… his parents, Bangladeshi immigrants, had worked hard, as had Shawn to get him to where he was at — a graduate student on scholarship at the prestigious University of Notre Dame. And then he went to hear Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, twice listed by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, talk about his book, “The End of Poverty.”
“Sachs talked about how it’s our generation’s responsibility to end poverty,” said Shawn. More than inspired, Shawn felt called to do something. He quit graduate school, packed his bags, grabbed his laptop and camcorder, withdrew the meager savings he had, and flew to Bangladesh to see how he could make a difference. Shawn acknowledges that not everyone in his family understands and supports what he did next…in fact, some of them probably thought he’d lost his mind.
He didn’t have an MBA, he didn’t write a business plan, he didn’t start a nonprofit, he didn’t start working for a charity, he started doing something – one project at a time. Shawn started the Uncultured Project, using social media (YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, & a WordPress blog) to connect people to his personal fight against global poverty. “It’s my journey to try and make the world a better place – one meaningful difference at a time. It’s about inspiring others to believe that we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty. Hopefully, this project can also show the big multinational organizations that there is a better way to engage people on the issue of global poverty.”
Shawn’s story reminded me of a story my friend Bill shared about driving his red and white VW bug in 1963 from Munich to India to work with Vinoba Bhave. Bhave was walking across India talking people into giving him their land and redistributing it the landless and untouchables. Bill was 20 years old. I’m sure his friends and family were a little worried he’d lost his mind too, but in the end, by following his heart, he changed the world. Today he is the founder and CEO of Ashoka and considered the “father of social entrepreneurialism.”
And Shawn’s work, with the support of the YouTube community, has made a significant difference. In less than four years, Shawn and the Uncultured.com community has helped rebuild a school, provide scholarships, disaster relief, food, clean water, school supplies, and much more in both Bangladesh and around the world. Today, the Uncultured project has over 4,300 Facebook supporters and 37,000+ YouTube subscribers.
All because a man heard a message, took a chance and followed his heart.
Daily Practice: just for today, follow your heart
Thanks to Kevin Espirito of Sammamish, Washington for the story idea!
First, I’m not a politician and I don’t aspire to be. Second, I’d be the first person to tell you I’m a Democrat, a Lutheran, a woman (hopefully obviously), a middle-aged woman (hopefully not so obviously), a Caucasian, 9th generation American and apparently a honorary hockey mom (since I grew up in Alaska); (the last one is technically not true because my kids sing and do Aikido, and my van died, but I digress…)
The point is I have my opinions about how things should be done and run but that’s not the purpose of this site. The purpose of this site is to focus on the good in all things. And sometimes that’s a challenge because sometimes those things are hard because the stuff that really matters is hard. Our opinions are sharply divided; our experiences real and raw, and sometimes its easier to fixate on our differences than discuss our common dreams and challenges.
Today is the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s historic “I have a dream” speech. I’d urge you to take seventeen minutes to watch it and remember its relevance today. If you don’t have seventeen minutes then hopefully you can five minutes to read it: http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html. [Read more...]
copyright - Mike Siegel - The Seattle Times
For the last month or so I’ve been taking the bus to work. This may not seem very monumental to most and frankly, I’m a little ashamed to say I’m feeling mighty proud of myself but you see, we live in Lake Stevens, a beautiful lake-side community thirty-five miles northeast of Seattle. We moved to Snohomish County from Seattle in 2005 for a variety of reasons — more house for less money, small-town vibe, and a lake ten times the size of the 100 Acre Wood. We could (and did) spend an hour commuting across the 520 or, we reasoned, spend an hour driving to our house a block from the lake with the massive old growth cedar trees, a stream where Kokanee salmon spawn, and the resident bald eagles, George and Martha, who have nested down the road since 1992.
But the bus ride from Lake Stevens to Seattle is a different story. It’s about two hours one-way. If I can talk my husband into driving me into Everett, that shaves off 1/2 hour or an hour of what could be a four hour round-trip. I might be crazy.
Why do I do it? It started because my mini-van died and so…we decided…rather I decided…to test out life with one car. I work as a consultant and don’t have to be in Seattle every day, so it made sense both economically and philosophically and besides I was making my 19 year old take the bus to college in Seattle and I figured I should be a good example. He still finds it amusing how impressed I am with myself. I was a little worried I’d feel out of place–given I’m your basic white, middle class, mini-van driving soccer mom.
Good in All Things is proud to feature the Partners in Health’s video “Walking the Walk” in our first issue. “Walking the Walk” follows survivors of the Haitian earthquake, many who have lost limbs, learning to not only walk again, but serving as an inspiration, and mentor to others who have similar struggles.
Partners In Health (PIH) was founded in Boston by Paul Farmer, Thomas J. White, and Todd McCormack to support activities in Cange, Haiti. They are joined in this effort by Ophelia Dahl and Jim Yong Kim, also a medical student at Harvard. These activities now include schools, clinics, a training program for health outreach workers, a mobile unit that screens residents of area villages for preventable diseases, and an ongoing study of sickness and health among the peasants of rural Haiti that will form the basis of Farmer’s 1992 book, AIDS and Accusation. Paul Farmer, and PIH, was the subject of Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. (To learn more about Partners in Health, click here)
The name of Lauren Larsen’s inspirational video is “I Saved Lauren’s Life.” It’s an amazing story of people from all walks of life who donated the blood that saved Lauren’s life. Lauren and her husband Jeff brought many of the donors together to say thank you, and to recognize their heroic act. Check out — “I Saved Lauren’s Life.”
Lauren Larsen’s life made a dramatic shift in the spring of 2000 when complications during her one and only pregnancy landed her in intensive care for five weeks. During her hospitalization she required roughly 200 pints of blood, platelets, and plasma, without which she would have internally bled to death.
One year into her lengthy recovery, Lauren launched a grassroots “give back” campaign, 2001: A Blood Odyssey, to honor the volunteer blood donors who had helped save her life. As part of this effort, she and her husband, Jeff, ran the 26.2-mile New York City Marathon in November 2001, raising $40,000 and 535 units of blood for nonprofit blood centers. [Read more...]
In 1996, I nearly died of preeclampsia during the birth of my third child. That day my life did a complete 180;(which, coincidentally, was also what my blood pressure was when I was admitted to the ER — 180/120 at 38 weeks pregnant) — it seems I didn’t take to dying too well.
And as a result, I decided to really live — to speak the truth, even when it was hard; to admit my mistakes; to be kind to myself and others; to be open to change; to listen to the lessons life was trying to teach me, and to make a difference.
So, in 1999 I founded the Preeclampsia Foundation. I went from being a 5th grade teacher with crippling stage fright, to an outspoken, pushy woman who would not take no for an answer, talking to World Health Organization, the March of Dimes, the Gates Foundation, to anyone who would take my calls. I even talked my way up to Laura Bush’s press secretary because I knew she, like me, had had preeclampsia. Suddenly, I had no fear. And no experience!
I wasn’t a doctor, or nurse, or nonprofit manager, or fundraiser, or database developer, or public speaker — but I had nothing to lose. I jumped in the deep end. I immersed myself in it all and didn’t care if I fell flat on my face. Nothing…nothing could be worse than what happened to me.
