summer
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Very nice post Victoria83, especially these words.
I've been thinking alot recently about many things and this happens to be one of them. There's a question that stays in my mind and I think about it often.....
Do people only choose to EXIST, instead of LIVING?...I wonder.
You know 2 nights ago when I experienced the negative and ignorant perception certain people seem to have towards others that are like and/or unlike them in whatever way(s) I had to find a way to move past being truly bothered by it. So I'm going to share a very brief story that happened to me again last night. I saw the homeless guy and his dog again on my way home from work and this time I stopped and had a conversation with him. He was stranded and just wanted to get back "home", I asked him what is it going to take to get you and your dog there? He said he almost had enough money and I said what is enough? I just need $32 more dollars and then I'm done. So I said here's $40 please please just get off the street and get you and your dog "home". The tears in his eyes and smile on his face was priceless to me I thought he was going to jump out of his skin from happiness. He hugged and kissed his dog and thanked me over and over and I said just take care of you and your dog, he said oh I will he's all the family I have. That broke my heart
Just think about it.....What if that was you? Put yourself in anothers shoes for just one moment, the impact on YOUR life can be far greater than you can imagine. It wasn't about the money to me, it was extending a hand out to someone who just needed a little help, it was about LIVING and the very special gift that I gave to myself.....food for my soul.....
"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
~ Carl Jung~
Great post, Lily! :yes: Gave you reps for it.
Similar thing happened to me too when I was in Toronto a few years ago. Had an "encounter" with a homeless person twice. One positive, one a bit negative. The positive one was with a younger person during one winter day. It was SO COLD outside. I had my winter clothes on and was still freezing my butt off, it was so cold. I was stopped by this person who politely explained to me that he needs to get to a shelter, but that it's not in the center and he has no money to get there and that he needed 5 dollars, so any change I could give would help. I gave him the whole five dollars because it was not much money and even the thought of anyone having to spend even a minute longer than necessary in the cold made ME shiver. So I wanted him to get into a warm building as soon as possible. Another time I was stopped by another homeless person in front of the Eaton Centre. He wasn't that polite and he was like "I need money! I'm hungry!". So I offered to pay for a meal and he was like "I don't like hot dogs! I don't like this...I don't like that!"....so I thought "Okay, forget it. If he can afford to be THAT picky....?". So I didn't give him anything. I mean, I had times as a student when I was pretty much starving, when I had absolutely no money myself. NONE. There were times I was searching through my coat pockets for any change I could find to be able to buy SOMETHING...ANYTHING. I would have welcomed ANY kind of food back then....and usually all I ate was spaghetti...with no sauce. Just the spaghetti cooked in water. That was often all I could afford. And I couldn't afford to be picky! (Well, I could have just called my parents and ask them to send me money, but I was too proud. I never told them I was practically starving. If they asked if I had enough money for food, I'd lie and say yes. My dad would sometimes somehow sense it and would send me extra money, because he knew I'd never ask for it myself). Anyways, maybe it was "rude" from me to walk away from that homeless person, but to me, if you are really hungry, you can't afford to be THAT picky. I mean, even I wasn't and I wasn't even a homeless person. I ate what I could buy. And often all I could afford was just the spaghetti, like I said. So, I know what it's like to be hungry and have no money, even though I never was "poor" and homeless. But it was because I was a student and didn't have much money and was too proud to ask my parents for money and wanted to manage on my own. And I also liked it because it was a very humbling experience. It's good to know what it's like to go to a grocery store completely hungry with less than a dollar in your pocket, or not being able to buy nice clothes, etc. because you don't have money. You learn to appreciate things so much more when you finally do have money. And you can understand better what it's like for those who don't have much money. You realize how fortunate you are that you can walk into a store and pack the cart full of groceries and not think about how much it all will cost, just as an example. Anyways, I liked what you said in the part I bolded. That's actually how I've always thought. Since I was little. I've always been EXTREMELY sensitive and I cry easily and if I see someone hurting or suffering, it hurts me. My mom told me that when I was around 4-5 years old, I was watching Bambi in the living room and then all of the sudden I just disappeared and my mom was like "Where did she go?". So she looked for me, and found me in my bed crying my eyes out and she was like "What's the matter??? What happened??!!". And she told me I told her between sobs: "Bambi's mother died!!!!! They shot Bambi's mother!!". :boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo: And that was too much for me because it made me SO SAD for Bambi that he no longer had a mother. And when I was around 7-8 years old and heard about Hitler and the holocost and everything it made me so sad for the jewish people. There was this show on TV about a family during the holocost and it was on TV in the evening and my parents let me stay up past my bedtime to watch it, and I remember I kept asking my mom if she and dad would have also helped the jewish people during that time. I remember I was like "Mom, we would have helped them and let them hide in our home too, right? Right mom??!!!". I just don't like seeing people hurting and I've never liked mean or rude people really. To me it#s not necessary to be mean or rude to others. I realize one can't like everyone. People are so different and not everyone can like the same things and that's fine too. There will always be some people one won't like or get along with. But I think one can still be RESPECTFUL to all people. You don't have to like or be friends with everyone, but you can still treat them with respect. I always have believed in treating people the way I'd wish them to treat me. And I think that if someone is mean to you and you are mean back....you achieve nothing but more trouble. Besides, if someone is mean to you and you are mean back....then that makes you just as bad of a person as that other one. At least in my opinion. If you do exactly what they do, then how can you critisize them if you are acting exactly as they are? If you lower yourself to their level then you are just as bad as they are. That's why I just try to ignore it if someone is mean. I won't let anyone take an advantage of me or treat me badly, of course not, and you don't have to either...there are other ways to handle it. I usually either ignore it or try to respectfully tell them my opinion, without calling names or "getting personal". But I usually do try to think why someone is like that as well. A lot of people are mean and rude and "tough", because they know no other way because all they have seen all their lives is people treating them and other people badly. So they haven't learned anything else. Or they are just hurting so much that they act tough to protect themselves from getting hurt. There was once this girl in my class in high school who was always a bit "rude" and "tough" and she always acted like she didn't care how people treated her. Her friends (yes..."friends"...) were calling her all kinds of names and they were all laughing at it (that girl with them) like it was somehow funny and as if the names were thought to be equal to terms of endearment. But I couldn't understand how anyone could feel good about being constantly called "pig" and "slut" and what not. I thought that MUST be hurtful, even though she acted like she didn't care. So one day we had this "diary" kind of thing during one class for a project, where each person had their own page, and everyone else could write things about that person on the page. So as expected, that girl's "friends" wrote all the insulting stuff (like I said, I guess to them it was all meant to be "funny"). So I wrote something nice on her page and something that hinted that maybe there was something under the tough outside after all. And when she wrote on my page I knew I was right about her. Because she wrote "If I'd believe in angels, I'd think summer is an angel". And coming from HER, who was supposed to be this tough "I don't care what anyone thinks, screw you all" girl...it meant SO MUCH to me. It made me feel so good inside that I was able to make her see that not everyone felt the need to be mean and rude to her and that she was alright and that I "knew" she had a heart that was hurting underneath the tough outside, and that I was able to show her that there was someone who DID care about how she feels.
So like you said, Lily, it often really are just LITTLE things that matter. Just a kind word, or a smile, or a hug, etc...it doesn't have to be GRAND things or loads of money or whatever...it begins with little things. And often the little things have even bigger impact than big things. Just like the example in the story that Susie posted showed. Sometimes little things can even save a life. So imagine if all of us would focus on doing little things every day and being a little nicer to other people....what an impact it would have when you count all the little things together?
(I love this song!! :wub
In Our Small Way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUp4fyzGQIc
Maybe you and I can't do great things
We may not change the world in one day
But we still can change some things today
In our small way
Empty words are not enough
Where there's hurt, we'll be a crutch
When there's thirst, we'll fill each other's cup
Because we care, we love enough to share
Maybe you and I can't do great things
We may not change the world in one day
But we still can change some things today
In our small way
In despair we'll be the hope
And the prayer that frees the soul
We'll be there to share each lonely road
Because we love, I know we care enough
Maybe you and I can't do great things
We may not change the world in one day
But we still can change some things today
In our small way
Just a little time is all it takes
What a difference just a smile can make you'll see
Love is all we need
Maybe you and I can't do great things
We may not change the world in one day
But we still can change some things today
In our small way
Anyways..."in other news"...:lol: I had a WEIRD dream with MJ in it last night. It was SO NICE...and strange and awful at the same time as well. I was in some cabin (I always seem to be in some cabin somewhere lately...what's up with that? :lol
with MJ and we were holding hands and I was holding on tightly to MJ's arm and cuddling against him because it was so comforting and in my dream we had been holding each others hands many times when the other one needed a friend or someone to support them, and in my dream it was a sign of "comfort and being there". And MJ was about to have an interview in my dream, so I was there to hold his hand and if I remember correctly I was thanking him for having held my hand for so many times when I needed it before that. So anyways, the interviewer comes in and MJ starts talking and he talks and talks and, as always, it is just absolutely FASCINATING to listen to him and he is talking about the most BRILLIANT stuff and I am just looking at him in awe and thinking "Wow,he is SO INTELLIGENT, it is mind blowing!!". I can't remember what he was talking about though, the only thing I can remember is that he kept mentioning Eros. :scratch: :lol: And some other old, greek figure or something like that...something from ancient history. And it was not about anything to do with sex or anything like that, I think it was about art and his love and passion for art and he was just telling the most brilliant stuff. And then I remember he did talk about feelings and emotions and he was totally excited and like he was about to "bust" from happiness and he was like "You know it makes me feel like..." and I remember he was waving his hands in the air in front of him to try to find the words to describe how he felt. And then all of the sudden he turned into this spirit like in the movie Ghosts that looks like that see-through kind of "plasma" kind of thing...and that "spirit" flew right into me through my stomach (yeah..what the...? :scratch::lol: :lol, you know sort of exactly like it flew into the Mayor in Ghosts, except it was not supposed to be any scary, mean, evil thing, but a GOOD thing... and it was somehow supposed to make me feel how he feels, like he'll show me how he feels "through me". :scratch: :lol: But then he somehow just disappeared before he was able to show me how he felt. (And somehow the interviewer was not there while MJ was telling all this stuff, or I wasn't aware of him until MJ disappeared). So after MJ was gone, I wanted to rewind the tape (because of course since it was an interview it was gonna be filmed)...to see how MJ "flew into me through my stomach" scratch::scratch::doh::doh::lol: :lol and see what happened. But instead of seeing the GORGEOUS Michael that I had been looking at with my mouth open (MJ was wearing the same kind of red shirt as in LWMJ), there was now an MJ that looked like a corpse. And that interviewer was like "He is gone..he is dead! Can't you see...his eyes are falling off...he is decaying...Look at him! He's dead!" and it shocked me to see it and see his body falling apart and I was like "You are so mean!! Go away!! Why do you do something like that??!!" to the interviewer because to me it was mean that he was showing me that. But right then he told me to look into the sky...and there was a shooting star, and I knew it was Michael. And there was a little boy in the sky who grabbed a star and started floating on the sky holding on to the star like an umbrella, and then there was another, and another...and it made me smile and I knew MJ was alright. And that's when I woke up. And when I woke up I could remember how GOOD I felt when I was holding MJ's hand, it was like the best feeling in the world, it was SO NICE and so COMFORTING...and then when I saw him as a corpse it was so awful! But like I said, it turned out to be a nice ending anyways, so that was good. No idea what that dream meant. :scratch: :lol:
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