Recommended Reading Soundtrack: Stand By Me by Otis Redding on Album Pain in my Heart
Feeling grumpy, crotchety, stubborn or a bit sequestered today? Get ready, because that is about to change, I promise! In pondering the significance of kindness in my life, as blogger Erica has challenged our community this week, I am finding myself deeply grateful for this opportunity to talk about the beauty of the human spirit. It is a place in our hearts that always draws us together, even when we think those words are cliché or just a bunch of hooey!
My mind stores up moments of kindness like a big jar of peanut M&Ms that teachers tempt kids with through a guessing game of how many are harbored within that glass. They are colorful, sweet and have the added bonus of not rotting our teeth. And I digress. Then I came across an awesome story on the Washington Post by Sarah Larimer and Casey Capachi titled “Today in uplifting internet news: Redditors help father who lost his infant daughter.” The story was like an envelope being opened on stage for Best Motion Picture at the Oscars and given the chance, I couldn’t help myself but open it. I didn’t even question opening it, as of course I have limited views on news stories here, seriously!
The story- a 26 year old father who recently lost his newborn named, Sophia. One of the few pictures he had of her with open eyes and alertness in tow was also full of her evident struggle to survive- hospital equipment. As the tears started pouring, my eyes and breath strained to read more of the story about a shooting star that flew across our sky for only a brief moment. He submitted this one picture to Reddit and asked if anyone could Photoshop out the tubes to create a memory that would survive for him and the mother.
“Since she was in the hospital her whole life we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes. Can someone remove the tubes from this photo?” Wrote the 26 year old father named Nathen Steffel
The father didn’t only receive a beautiful, single edited photo, he received thousands of messages and also some mailed presents containing drawings, even an embroidered blanket. This story is a beautiful representation of our capacity to love and how one request can be an opportunity for thousands of people to respond in kindness and appreciation for the preciousness of life and how it affects us.
The people that responded saw these parents’ pain in their own experiences. They saw themselves and wanted to give comfort and love. Beautiful compassion for the human experience that we all endure every day of both living and passing away. And I leave this blog post with one thing- thank you, Sophia, for gracing our world with this beautiful opportunity to remember how fleeting and luminous our lives are. Your kindness will help me remember to not lose sight of what is important in this world, how we choose to live our lives and “pay it forward.”
At the end of one of my favorite films, Scrooged, Bill Murray’s character gave a speech that no matter what, always made me crave more. I would sit up at night, even in the summer, and replay this one scene just to see the son of his assistant who had stopped talking since witnessing his father’s death, to say one thing, “And God Bless Us Everyone.” If you have time today, check out this article and re-watch the scene in Scrooged (Click Here!). Remember, “If you give, then it can happen, then the miracle can happen to you.”
Let’s Rock Big Love!
Best singing in car scene ever, courtesy of Wayne’s World!
Conclusion? Our commonality outweighs the perception of “different.” Toward the end of the Amy Goodman interview she asked Julian Assange, whose been living a life of his own imprisonment in the London Ecuadorian embassy, “What gives you hope?” He answered, “Well, hopefully the greatest legacy is still to come.” No matter what we believe, we can all choose to meet in that place of hope and be a part of that legacy. It’s making that choice instead of empowering the ego driven “need to be right” that holds the key to finding that freedom together.
We Are The Champions, My Friends
Oh, wait! I realized then that the humidifier in my bedroom fogged up my window glass on the inside, and the foggy world I thought existed on the other side of the glass, only existed from my side. In that moment, all I could do was laugh at how much my foggy window was emulating my life. All you have to do is mix in your experiences and how they have molded an inner landscape unlike no other, and you find yourself observing through your own foggy glass. I create my own obscurations and sometimes I just cannot see clearly through them.
“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.” ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
Yes, guilty as charged- I read it. And, I have to admit, I feel compassion for him. People who live in the public eye, whether they are “celebrities” or “politicians”, have drawn a tough lot in many ways. Everything they say or do is scrutinized, judged. The person that once existed in that shell of a body eventually becomes objectified by a media that has become a constant feeding source for the ego. They aren’t human beings anymore to the public that reads these stories or checks out their picture in People magazine. They become a story, an image to laugh at, an image to aspire to- but the human being, the world unto itself, slowly disappears in the words that try to paint a picture about them. The rabble will project their light and darkness on them and make them become what they want in that moment. It’s like an energy vampire feeding time.
In conjunction with this, I recently saw the film about one of our world’s most objectified women- Diana with Naomi Watts, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. I knew nothing about this film, and saw it on Amazon one night, wondering what the heck it was and its take on her life. To say the least, it was very well done. The film showed how difficult the life of Princess Diana became towards the end due to the media, eventually leading to her tragic death. She developed all of these strategies to get to places without the media’s knowledge, just to do something that we would see as mundane. Getting a hamburger for her was like obtaining a visa to visit Azerbaijan.
Born to Be 