There are a lot of days I feel pretty hopeless about our situation right now. The US Congress went on five weeks of paid vacation after resolving exactly nothing. The folks who create the problems spin the situation as if their opponent is the one responsible. Lies filter through every aspect of our world.
And some people don't believe in DNA. They live in states which take more money from the US system than put back but believe austerity will save us, don't get educated because it's a "waste of time," and don't believe in DNA. I'm not sure why this fact makes me feel really hopeless, it just does.
The feeling is akin to my frustration with vegans whose entire diet revolves around the fruits and vegetables created as a result of bees labor, but think beekeepers enslave bees.
Hopeless.
And then I read this:
Sixteen years ago a man ran in his first Olympics after narrowly surviving his country's civil war, and it led to new opportunities. Then one day he found eleven children huddled under a bus, and the mane helped them. Then the man's family helped, and then his village. Then a woman - the man's own mother - died in the village because she, like many before her, couldn't get to a hospital. Again, the man decided to help. Then, a world away, there was a magazine story, and its readers responded (by giving $75,000 to help). Now, in one village in one corner of the world, the eleven orphans - along with twenty-six more - eat two meals a day, attend school, play sports, and sleep in a good home. None of them, and no one they know, will die for simple lack of medical care. Because now there is a clinic, the Kristina Health Center, named for the man's mother. (David Wiley, Editor-in-Chief, Runner's World, September 2012)
And I remember.
It's not about fixing the whole thing right now.
It's not about fixing them or changing them or even impacting their thinking.
It's about being kind. It's about choosing love.
It's about doing what I can do to make a difference in my world, today.
And that's enough.
So when you feel hopeless - today, this week, this year - stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and look. What can you do, right now, right where you stand, to be kind, to choose love? You too might be out on your morning run when you discover eleven orphaned children huddled under a bus.
Who knows? Maybe just your smile and cheery "Good Morning" helps to relieve another person's gloom and hopelessness.
Do what you can do right where you are.
It's enough to change the entire world.
Update: There's also this guy...
-----
