An Act of Random Kindness

For some reason I have always liked the movie Evan Almighty with Steve Carell.  It is a feel good movie where Morgan Freeman plays God and gets Carell to build an ark.  The plot ebbs and flows, the ark gets built and the good guys win.  At the end of the movie Morgan Freeman writes in the ground with a stick, "ARK"...an Act of Random Kindness.  I experienced one of those today.

I have been the supporter of many - often in such a way that I feel used in the end - taken advantage of.  I realize it is my fault for letting people walk on me because I can be such a wimp.  Many times when I say "no", it really isn't taken seriously because I haven't been a jerk about saying no and therefore have felt blown off.  In the past there have been incidents where I have asked for one simple wish to be followed.  When it wasn't and I held my ground I was labled mean and inconsiderate.  I could give a list the length of my arm where I have looked the other way in spite of what I have said or meant and because I don't stomp my foot, I am ignored.  Today I got a surprise that gave me faith once more in Acts of Random Kindness.

I have mentioned my friends before - and boy, I have some good ones.  I got a package in the mail today from a group of my friends with a gift, picked just for me, that basically said, "thanks for being a good person and a good friend".  On a morning when I didn't want to get out of bed, when the future of where things could go looked bleak, a small box arrives that says "we care".  It was an Act of Random Kindness that meant more that can be said in this blog.  My friends went to some length to collaberate and find something that was so....right.  At a moment in my life when I sometimes wonder if my destiny is to be pushed around and taken advantage of, some very good people assured me that the philosophy of Acts of Random Kindness is neither wrong nor forgotten.  To them I say a very humble thank you.  I love you all.

Acceptance

It has been almost a month since I have written anything.  It has been a busy and thought-driven month.  Have you ever had an experience where you address a problem by first researching what needs to be done, fill yourself with hope that your research will provide the answers you want, and then realize you might just be chasing rainbows that you can't find the end of (don't ever end your sentences in a preposition)?  It seems like I have done a lot of that lately.  I have hoped against hope that some issues I have had to deal with would end up with a concrete, definitive answer of how to address the problem.  All I learned is what I have learned before - there are some things that are just not in my control.  One would think by now that I would have known that - I have certainly had ample events that have driven that point home.  Still, when one hopes so much that things can have a different outcome, but that it isn't in your control to do anything about that outcome, it is kind of like a punch in the stomach.  The next step then becomes obvious.  One sometimes needs to accept things they just wish weren't so.  I need to move forward with that thought, understanding that while I can still hope, I no longer have any need to worry myself with things I can't control.

Yes this post has been enigmatic.  It is really more for a catharsis than anything else.  In the end it really is, "que sera, sera,whatever will be, will be, the future's not ours to see, que sera, sera".

Peace out.

Today I am a copycat

I follow a man by the name of Robert Brault.  He is a free-lance writer who has contributed to many newspapers and magazines over the years.  I love his way of thinking and how he can so carefully craft words into something entertaining and insightful at the same time.  This is an old blog of his but is relevant to my life at this moment.  Maybe it will be for you too.  Enjoy Robert's words:

THE KIND LIE VERSUS THE UNKIND TRUTH (May 15th, 2009)

"I did not suppose, when I wrote the following line, that I was saying anything especially controversial:

'Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.'

-- or when I reiterated the view in this line:

'when a friend needs consolation, nothing will keep you so well until tomorrow as the truth.'

But twice I have seen the first line debated in internet chatrooms, the verdict each time being that telling a falsehood is always bad, opening a Pandora's Box to all manner of disaster.  How do I respond to this?  I respond by coming down coming squarely on the side of kindness.  I believe this puts me on the side of the God of both testaments of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, - the God who gave us the Ten Commandments and the God who gave us the Sermon on the Mount.

To my ear, the commandment against lying seems to have been carefully crafted to exclude the lie of kind intent:  "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."  The God of Moses had no trouble with clarity.  He was explicit in saying "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal,", these being clear assaults against one's neighbor.  But had He said, "Thou shalt not lie," his law might have been construed to condone an assault of truth against one's neighbor.  Instead, His commandment puts the emphasis clearly on the consideration of our neighbor's welfare.  The short form of the commandment is not "Thou shalt not lie"  but "Thou shalt not harm thy neighbor by thy word."  It is a corollary to "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ spoke of those "who say all manner of evil against you falsely."  He did not condemn those who say all manner of good of you, in the interest of your welfare, be it false or otherwise.  Here is the God who reduced the commandments to two:  Love thy God and Love thy neighbor.  In giving us the beatitude, "Blessed are the merciful...," did He intend to exclude from the merciful those who bend the truth so as not to hurt their neighbor?

I think of it this way - there is a distinction between the facts that we discern as truth, and the Eternal Truth which is God Himself, to whom our only allegiance is owed, and who has provided us the model of kindness and understanding that should inform our lives.  And so, for myself at least, the rule is simple:

"Love thy neighbor, and if it requires that you bend your understanding of the truth the Truth will understand".

--Robert Brault

When is our purpose in life discovered?

I don't quite know how to say thank you privately in a public place.  It is difficult and perhaps enigmatic as well.  In the last couple of days I have learned that sometimes people come into your life and end up having a profound effect on you or family in ways that were never planned or even contemplated.

For the last "quite some time" our family has gone through some pretty devastating things, some many people know about; a couple of issues only a very small handful of people are aware of.  In the last 72 hours there have been peaks and valleys that have left me breathless just trying to keep up with everything.  Then out of the blue.....

A person we have grown close to over the past almost 6 years began talking about past experiences in her life.  She is such a great person with a generous heart - that much we have known for a long time - but she started encouraging some people that are very close to us in ways that we have been incapable of.  It is said that experience is the best teacher and that if you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you are better able to understand what they are going through.  For years I believe one of my life's purposes has been to comfort people who have lost children.  When something like that happens to you, the parents who are left behind do not have to "begin at the beginning" of what it really is to lose a child - unfortunately I already know.  The person I refer to in this blog has been able to reach someone we love very much in a way that it simply isn't possible for me to do because I haven't "walked there".

Is it possible that this person came into our lives almost 6 years ago in a way and for a purpose completely unrelated to what she has been able to do for one of our loved ones in the last couple of days?  I don't know.  Everyone has their own belief system but at this point I really think this person was a integral part in the grand scheme of our life and that the good she can now provide some members of our family is invaluable and was planned long ago by something much bigger than we can ever be.

I realize this post is confusing at best.  What I really want to do is to say thank you to someone who has helped in such a big way with such a big issue.  You never know what form your help or comfort might take.  But hopefully you recognize when you see it.  Thank you friend.  You might have just found one of your purposes in this grand scheme called life.

Where were you?

I just finished watching a show on John F. Kennedy.  For those of us old enough, each one of us likely knows the exact place we were when we heard the news.  I was in 5th grade, Mrs. Ramaker's class.  She was called out of the room and we could see her hand go over her mouth as in making some sort of gasp.  Bobby Chrastil (R.I.P.), being the kind of kid he was slipped out our classroom door to hear the news that was being delivered to our teacher.  He is the one that actually delivered the news to the entire 5th and 6th grades (at that time our school housed two grades per one classroom) although I must admit his delivery was not quite that of Mrs. Ramaker's.  She was able to explain the ramificatations for us as a nation and the significance of it all.  It was the first time I really thought about how the world works together and that there was in fact life beyond the boundaries of Saline County.

For the people of the next generation your reference to news like that would be the bombing of the twin towers.  I am quite certain we all know exactly where we were when we heard the news.  By that time I was old enough to appreciate the ramifications of this horrific act upon the free world.  It is hard to think that there are now humans "out there" that only know of this incident because of history books.  If you think about it, children who were born in 2001 are now 10 years old, likely in the 5th grade and learning from their teachers that there was life before TSA security lines at airports.

We have all had our personal moments that we will never forget that have shaped us individually, made our lives better or worse, or forced us to make different decisions based on the "bump in the road".  There are not a whole lot of moments that have shaped us as a nation where our experiences are similar because of something that happened to us as Americans.  Yes there are degrees of this experience.  I know one young man that lives in New Jersey, an hour's train ride from Manhattan.  His rendition of this experience and the terror that ensued for people in that area heightens the reality of what happened and how individual families were impacted.  For some of them, personal defining moments were sadly created.

In the end for me it has made me revisit how significant moments like these create people who share one common demoninator - we are Americans who love our country and our humanity for all is brought to bear in critical universal moments such as those described above.  Sometimes terrible things happen that bring out the best of what people can be.  We can all do better and it shouldn't take an act of terrorism for us to do something special for our neighbor.  Can you do better?  I am going to try.

Cancer

I could have titled this entry a number of things because this particular subject on this particular day came to me in a dream.  Since there was a "joke" placed in a public place last night that referenced something funny and cancer in the same sentence, I decided that would be my topic of this post.

Cancer was one of my defining moments.  It wasn't the first nor it was the last - but it was a big one.  I was diagnosed with a very rare and life threatening type of breast cancer on my birthday in March 2002.  In my case I woke up one morning in late January feeling something was not right.  After spending a week or two deciding if I should even go to a doctor (there was no lump or anything I had ever read about as a warning sign) I went and was placed on an antibiotic for a month which, for obvious reasons, did not work.  That doctor sent me to a surgeon.  It was a Friday afternoon.  By Tuesday I was told I had cancer.  Talk about a change in direction!  It is a feeling a little like playing the child's game blind man's bluff.  Someone puts a blindfold on you, spins you around several times, and then wants you to go in a particular direction and find something or someone.  The needle in the haystack.

After major chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant, a major surgery, twice a day radiation, another major surgery, and two recurrences of this disease I am still here to write about it.  My life is not the same as it would be if I didn't have this disease.  In almost 9 years I have had a space of 15 months where I have not swallowed handfuls of pills to keep me going. But since I will never know what life would have been like without this happening to me, I don't know what I'm missing.  I could waste a lot of time feeling bad about what I'm imagining I'm missing but what's the point?  It won't change the facts.  I have enough other things I worry about.

Along the same theme are those people that have loved ones who have cancer.  The care-takers, the daughters, the sons, the husbands or wives.  They have experienced a defining moment as well.  Their lives will never be the same.  I think of a friend of mine, Michele, who had just moved to a new state with her husband and three children when her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Michele's mother was not as lucky as I have been but neither have the loved ones that suffered when her life was taken.  For the rest of my life I will always look at cancer as not only affecting the person that has the disease but of the other people that have suffered because of it.  Their lives have changed directions and how they manage the rest of their lives has somehow been altered.

If you don't know someone that has cancer or that has lost their life to this insidious disease, you will.  It is then no longer funny.  In the meantime, if you are the one with cancer, just keep moving one foot in front of the next, you never know what is coming down the pipeline in terms of drugs or other types of care.  I'm lucky.  My daughter was in the 7th grade when I first learned of my disease.  They couldn't promise me I would see her graduate from the 8th grade.  She graduated from high school in 2007, spent two years in New York City, is back in Montana and onto other things.  I have the ability to watch her mature and grow into a woman who may someday write her own blog.  I have watched my son go from boy to man.  He has married, is a father of one and about to be two, coaches baseball, helps neighbors and friends, and is a heck of a business partner. 

Life might not always be what you think it's going to be, but it can be something good if you just let it be.  Peace out.

Defining Moments

By now nearly everyone has been educated on the concept of defining moments in one's life.  It is a place where, in a moment, your life takes a 90 degree turn and goes in a different direction.  I personally have had a very small handful of defining moments and remember my first one with clarity.

I attended a boarding school for girls my last two years of high school.  It was one of the best experiences of my life and I will write more about it at some point.  But my first defining moment came at Saint Mary's Hall.

There was a century old tradition of an all girls drill team at my school.  It was small and an elite status came with being a member of the squad.  I tried out so that I could be a member my senior year.  Until then almost everything I had done had been easy.  I was a pretty good student, a good athlete, a good friend.  I liked being good at everything I did.  Lots of girls tried out and over the weeks I watched as more and more girls were rejected from the possibility of making the squad.  It came down to three of us left.  You can guess the rest of the story.  I was cut and my two friends went onto Hell Night and made the cut.  I was devastated.  But in the years that followed and even still I think back to the important lesson I learned.  I learned that because you fail at one thing does not mean that you are a failure.

My father had a saying he used frequently.  He used to say, "perfect is good enough".  That is pretty hard to obtain - perfection.  I learned to be happy with trying my best, working hard, and learning that praying didn't hurt either.  Being perfect isn't necessary.  Being true to yourself and what you can do is.  I hope other people will have moments of clarity in their defining moments as well.  I will write about my other ones as I get the notion to.