RESERVING THE SUNRISE

It's Sunday night, and for the past four days I woke up at 5:45 am unable to fall back asleep. There was nothing on my mind keeping me awake, just an eagerness to be in the world.

And so, I walked. 

There is no greater illusion than New York City at 5:45 am on Saturday or Sunday morning, when normally frequented places of volume and mass are vacated and black. And the loudest sound is that of the street cleaning trucks that flow through the streets once a day doing what will be undone in just a few short hours. And the only people that exist are the garbagemen, the homeless, those that sell fruit at the fruit stands, and those that keep the 24/7 shops going - for us, for them. 

I walked at 5:45 am and eventually the sun started to rise and rays and sunbeams of tangerine and scarlet started bleeding out of the sky and into the trees, and when I got to it, the water of East River. I felt so lucky that I couldn't sleep and was overwhelmed with the beauty of it all. And in my deepest heart of hearts, I briefly got upset wondering why the world was created so that so many people miss the sunrise. 

As the sky began to turn a dull shade of blue/grey, all those people who I had been awake with just two hours earlier were joined by everyone else. And I watched the way they moved through life. People. People like me, walk by a thousand beautiful things a day and never notice. We're just busy and living. 

So I came to a conclusion: Maybe the sunrise is reserved for those who deserve it most. For all those people who are awake at 5:45 am putting in motion the day for the rest of us - the garbagemen, and coffee shop owners, and street cleaners. Maybe it's reserved for those without a home or the wanderers of the night who can't sleep at all. 

Those people, at least, have one thing that the rest of the world doesn't have… 

a daily reservation to the sunrise.

THE STORY OF HOW WE BEGIN TO DREAM.

It's a hard thing to carry other peoples' stories with us. We already hold the story of our lives, but then it's compounded with the stories of everyone else who's entered and exited. Sometimes we can spend ten years knowing someone and only a small part of who they are becomes part of us and sometimes we can spend ten minutes with someone and they shape who we are forever.

I find out peoples' stories. That's my job. I've been doing Assisted Voluntary Return interviews (voluntary return is the process that occurs when migrants living in one country volunteer to go back to their country of origin). 

The office I'm based in is the last stop for migrants who've come to this country in search of protection or in search of new opportunities. They come to us when they realize that no status will ever be attained. That their dreams of building a life in a new place are over... at least for now. Most of them have spent time in detention - they're imprisoned for being. And now, they want to return. I try to trace their lives so that we and our international partners can help to find lost documents and to then to hopefully give assistance for reintegration - housing, job search, medical needs. Every day I carry these stories with me... 

He was 21 years old, from Burkina Faso, and he had this really unique style and way about him. His mohawk was perfectly combed, jeans light, tight, fitted, and he was wearing an ice blue t-shirt, which made his already dark skin appear even darker.

His family moved to another West African country when he was very young to escape a family dispute. His father, mother, and younger brother were killed there - wrong land, wrong time, so he left, because there was nothing to stay for.

I asked, "Why do you want to go back?"

He said, "I'm young... You know, Im just a boy. I can't do anything here. I've been locked up. There is so much to do in my life."

I stared into his face. I imagined my life by the time I was 21: I graduated high school. l lived in Ghana. I saw so much of the world with an American passport - I came and left so many places without thinking twice. Sure they were beautiful, but I never understood the value of the stamp, the visa, the permission. I fell in love. I fell out of love. I hiked mountains for fun. I had a dog. I had a home.

I came back to reality and thanked him for his story. I wished him luck and told him we would try to help him return. I smiled. He said, "God bless you." 

And then, I closed the door, realizing that the one thing we had in common at the age of 21 was that we both had big dreams.

Photo source: http://www.warrickpage.com/#/features/edhi-orphans/pak_edhi_012

LEARNING TO HEAR THE SIRENS.

This is what I know to be true in the world:
There is no greater feeling than love - receiving it, giving it, being in it.

We can't change people, unless they want to be changed.

It's normal, in this universe, for the sun to come up every day.

A cup of hot water, honey, lemon, and ginger can make a cold seem so much more bearable. 

And, a single moment can change everything.

I experienced my first rocket siren two nights ago.

I'm not sure if any of you have seen the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?" but there is a specific scene where one scientist refers to Columbus arriving on the Caribbean shores and he says that none of the natives had the ability to see the ships even though they existed on the horizon, because they had no previous knowledge of flipper ships. It was only when the village shaman noticed very odd ripples in the sea, that he began to assume that there was something more there. After days of looking he saw the ships and then told his village so they were finally able to see them.  

When the siren went off I experienced this - this inability of senses to even detect something, because of never experiencing it before. I had literally just unmounted my bike after coming home from school, and I started making small talk with the people who own the restaurant across my street and all of a sudden the owner ran out and said, "At lo shamat?! You didn't hear?! Come here!" and he pushed me into his restaurant and told me to sit on the ground under the stairs and when I finally crouched down I heard the noise - this piercing sound I'd never heard before in my life.  

Everyone reacts to these moments differently. 

I was silent, and honestly, for once in my life not a thought ran through my head and when the sound ended we all got up.

One of the waiters was complaining about how the sandwich he'd finally made for himself got cold, and the owner was talking about his dissatisfaction with the government's policies for the past 20 years, and then the other waiter turned to me and said (in Hebrew), "Why did you even come here? You could go anywhere - Milan, London, Paris - why here?"  

I literally said nothing. I just couldn't speak. Ten minutes later I felt my body shaking. That was the extent of my reaction and I just continued doing exactly what I had planned to do all along. I went to my gym to pick up the headphones I lent my friend earlier and it wasn't until I was there in the mall where my gym is that I finally processed everything, because a large group of humans stood in the basement together some crying, some laughing, some talking. There was a grandfather with his grand daughter telling her a story to keep her there so they wouldn't have to go outside. There were so many couples holding each other. I felt like I was in a museum on one side of the glass and every one else was an exhibition. The only thing I did was call my neighbor and ask if we had a bomb shelter in the basement, and he laughed at me, and asked if I was afraid, and I said "No, but I need to know", and I don't think I was lying. 

So this is how it happened, and this is how I experienced my first siren, and everyone experienced it differently. And, at the end of the night I was happy to be with an old friend who could be with me so I wasn't alone. 

But in the back of my mind this is what remained: for every siren, there's a missile. And every missile has a story: A person who chooses to launch it (and maybe they're being launched at too) and a person or place that receives it, and lately, I'm much more concerned with that. What amount of pain, anger, education moves humans to feel that they have the right to control the destiny of another human? What amount of rockets, bombs, violence can create a society where that no longer matters? When did place become more powerful than peace? When did anger become more powerful than kindness, compassion, and connection? In my heart of hearts, all I wish for in this universe is a common understanding among humans that life is too precious, too sacred, to destroy.

Today, I woke up and the world didn't stop - because how can it? Love still feels the best, and people are still the same, and the sun still comes up every day, and hot water, honey, lemon, and ginger still feel good with a cold, but now I know what the sound of a siren is, so next time I'll hear it. 

themindisapowerfulthingtowaste.blogspot.com/learningtohearsirens

THE REALITY OF MOVEMENT.

My life is about movement. I do it. I study it. I’m fascinated with it. 

I think about why people move and how they pick where they’re going. I think about who gets to move and then I also think about who doesn’t. I think about why I don’t want to stop moving and why others never want to start. Mostly, I think about how movement shapes reality and how powerful that makes movement.

Two months ago, I left New York.

I woke up one day with the East River Parkway as my running track and the Empire State building in my background. In that world I was dating a lovely human in Harlem, and I wore nice clothes to an office every day, and I had amazing friends – the type of friends that would wake up at 3 am and find me if I was lost or if my keys were or if I felt alone, because the city is big and sometimes people feel alone.

In that world sitting in coffee shops and meeting strangers was my favorite past time, and I took subways and buses to get to where I needed to be (unless I elected to walk, which was usually the case), and I was happy, because for me, there’s no other choice in life than to be happy.

Two months later, I’m in Tel Aviv.

I woke up today and I biked to school and the boardwalk by the beach was my road and my background was a city with some buildings that look like they could collapse tomorrow and with others that look like they were built today. I fall in love at least twice a day and I’m learning to trust new people and I hope that they are the type of people who would wake up at 3 am, because I lose my keys a lot.

In this world meeting strangers is still my favorite past time. I do it everywhere. And biking has created an awareness of everything for me, because I’m not shielded from the world and the world’s not shielded from me, and I am happy, because that’s my choice.

My decision to move wasn’t an easy one. I could have picked numerous other realities, and that is my blessing – that’s my privilege! But this is the reality I chose for myself.

And lately I’ve been thinking a lot about life and location and how some of us can literally alter our realities based on where we live at any moment in time, but it’s a privilege only reserved for a select few, because there are plenty of people who dream of making a similar decision but never have the opportunity.

I think about my existence in terms of all the places I’ve been and I think of the different mes that would exist if I had just stayed put: one me would be floating around a broken New York City feeling more pain tangibly than I can right now at the site of hurricane damage; one me would be dancing on a beach in Ghana listening to reggae music; one me would be speaking in Turkish and enjoying black tea and clapping to the sound of a bağlama; and the last me would be sitting at the park I grew up going to in Colorado with my parents and brother and mountains and smiling humans.

I don’t dwell in all of those realities, I just think about them, because I’m living in the one I chose for myself, and I wish that everyone in the universe had the right and opportunity to share this freedom with me. I wish that everyone had the right to be who they are in the place they love most. Sometimes it's still so hard to believe that so many humans don't.

So for now, I am hoping to dedicate this reality to exploring more about movement...

and the power it has to shape reality. 

THE BEST THING ABOUT NEW YORK.

There are 8 million stories surrounding each other every day. 

THE GRAVITY OF EMPATHY

One day the wind was blowing so hard in Manhattan that I seriously believed my five foot body would be picked up and carried in the air like a hot air balloon. I could feel the force of gravity fighting with every human being that I passed and every street sign and every car. The trash that Manhattan accrues on the street didn't stand a chance - pieces of paper and half smoked cigarettes and paper cups flattened by cars were all passing me like daytime strobe lights.

I could tell that something was going to happen that would make me sad, because it was a moment when nature and I were fighting each other...  this time, I lost.

Every morning for the past year, I'd bought an apple from the same fruit seller - Kahled from Afghanistan. Kahled's dark, leather-like skin and deep set brown eyes, made his sulfur color smile stand out, and he greeted me every day with it kindly.

In a single moment, Kahled's entire fruit stand toppled to the ground. My heart broke. 

Hundreds of apples, oranges, grapes, plums, and peaches rolled through the street in every direction. Kahled looked around - he didn't know which way to go. So his feet just stayed planted on the concrete sidewalk as he watched his fortune roll away.

I began to run to collect fruit. It wasn't a reaction I processed in my mind or really even thought about. It was a reflex to pain.

As I grabbed my armful and headed toward the stand, I began to notice that I wasn't alone. Everyone around me was staggering to collect fruit. Three men in grey suits. Five women in black high heals. The bum on the street with the sweat pants with holes in them. The tourists. The delivery men. The mom and daughter. The dad and daughter. The barista who stepped out for a cigarette.

It was as if for a moment the gravity of empathy was more powerful than gravity itself.

And I thought, what if empathy came as naturally as keeping our own two feet on the ground? 

Gravity or gravitational forces are really just forces of attraction. Kind of like the attraction that exists when you can't pull yourself away from a certain human because you really like him or her and can't explain it. Except in this case, it's the Earth pulling on you and keeping you on the ground. The pull is gravity at work. 

Every object in the universe that has any mass at all has a gravitational pull or force on another object. The size of the pull depends on the mass of the objects. 

What if the weight of a person's situation was weighed in mass? What if we were so moved by human pain that we were drawn to acts of kindness?

Maybe those rare moments are signs of a force that we don't even know exists... one where mass is determined by the amount of human need and gravity exists as empathy.

IN MEMORY OF LIFE.

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I will admit that I did some things as a child that were probably by all normal standards considered very strange.

For example, I remember spending the time that it took between closing my eyes and actually falling asleep brainstorming places that my family could hide if the Nazis came to find us. 

And while most childrens' first memories are about playing in sand boxes or riding on carousels, I have etched in my mind the first time I saw tattooed numbers on my great aunt's arm and the first time I realized that the girl in the picture in her den wasn't my father’s sister, but my great aunt’s daughter who was taken to a death camp with her younger brother and murdered.

My grandmother had a severe stroke when I was very young and it was often hard to read her emotions, because she couldn't speak or move the right side of her body. But, I will never forget the first and only time I saw her cry intensely as my dad told her that my brother was in a play about the Holocaust, and I remembering wondering if they were tears of pain or tears of pride or both.

 All of these memories are the ones that are deeply etched in my mind.

I’m sure that for many, this would all seem very strange. All of these memories were produced before I was even 8 years old.  And maybe it was too much. Maybe this transmission of pain through generations was wrong. As a young adult, however, looking back I wouldn’t trade these memories for the sand boxes or the carousels, because above all these memories gave me a distinct sense of hope.

Today marks Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day to commemorate the Holocaust, and the day is all about memory. Today, we, as Jewish people (though many Jewish people are probably unaware of this day) take a vow to “NEVER FORGET”.

All my life, in classes, in college, at Jewish programs commemorating this day “never forgetting” has been about ensuring that such an atrocity should never happen again, and of course, this purpose is meaningful and it is a purpose I deeply believe in.

My early college years were in the midst of the horrible genocide that wrought Darfur and so much of the Jewish student community rallied around the cause by remembering what happened in our past to change the present. And, so many Jewish advocates relay their intense feelings of angst for communities in pain with our communal pain that comes from remembering our own history.

But today, I am remembering the hope – a feeling I find much more difficult to draw out amidst the monstrosity that was the killing of 6 million Jewish people and 3 or 4 million more who were killed in vein and the suffering that came in between and after and the innocence that was stripped from the world.

As a little girl, while I saw the numbers tattooed on my great aunt’s arm, when I discovered that the little girl in the picture wasn’t my father’s sister, when I saw my grandmother cry, I also have simultaneous memories of looking at the survivors in my family and asking myself, even as a young child how they held onto life.

8 years ago, I went on March of the Living an international, educational program that brings Jewish teens from all over the world to Poland on Yom Hashoah to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built during World War II and then to Israel.

During my experience, my tour group was accompanied by two survivors – a husband and wife named Sam and Regina. I distinctly remember standing in Auschwitz where Regina had been 60 years prior and listening to her story.

Regina told us about a friend of hers who had given up on life. When Auschwitz existed as a death camp its barbed wire had electric current running through it and many prisoners chose to committed suicide by grasping the wires. Her friend was ready to face that same fate. It was the midst of winter, and they were literally freezing, with minimal clothing, blankets and food.

But on that particular day the sun was shining through the clouds and Regina could feel the rays heating her weak body. She told her friend to look up into the sunshine and said that as long as the sun still existed there was hope in the world, and she saved her life. A few days later the camp was liberated.

I’ve carried that story with me through life, along with the stories of my grandparents and great aunt and uncle, and I still can’t make sense of them. They are stories that make me pause and think about how much there is to live for – even in moments of immense pain.

I feel guilty on this Remembrance Day for turning my personal introspection and focus on life. Millions of people were killed as a result of senseless hatred. Nothing will ever negate that. It’s a burden we as humanity must carry with us every day. People are lost every day. But I can’t help but reflect on how, amidst this horror, people still found something to live for.

There’s difficulty in remembering painful histories. We don’t want to disrupt a carefree existence with the burden of carrying memories with us. But amidst the pain there is something incredibly meaningful about how deeply so many people wanted to survive.

I hope that while we make the pledge to Never Forget, we’re also reminded how to hold onto life, because after the tattoos numbered on arms, and the photographs of children who were taken and killed, and barbed wires, and tears there was a life worth living for. I learned that from the survivors.

 (I included pictures of my grandparents' life after the war.)

SOUL MATES.

I believe in soul mates because of them.

LIFE, IN ROAD SIGNS.

We don’t really understand this, but it’s true that every day is an adventure –sometimes great, sometimes horrible.

One year ago, I was out dancing with my friend Sarah in Washington, D.C. and she felt a lump on her neck and shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer. In one night, her life experience was shaken. We were out dancing and four months later she was receiving chemo treatments in a hospital bed.

And two years ago, I entered a gym in Izmir, Turkey to replenish my body and the manager that I talked to for ten minutes about the price of my membership ended up being my boyfriend for the next year and a half, and I loved him, deeply. I entered the gym to go running on treadmills, but I left believing that there are people who exist in the world who we can trust with every part of our soul and who can believe our flaws are our greatest assets.

And last night I fell asleep in New York, assuming that the sun would rise today and assuming that my heart would continue beating. Now I’m awake and alive, but I don’t know what lies ahead.  

There are ways that the world reminds us of how human we are and the limits of our control: natural disasters, man-made disasters, birth, dreams, the inexplicable force of love, and of course, based on the privilege of what and where and who we are born into many of us feel varying degrees of all of those things. Sometimes I wish we had street signs to show us the magnitude of existence the same way they show us directions, like stop signs that said “STOP & BREATH” or green lights that indicated it was safe to choose another path or one way signs with a disclaimer that we couldn’t really turn back or warning signs that something big and life changing is ahead. Maybe then we could begin to understand that every day really is an adventure.

Now Sarah is in remission. I would like to publicly acknowledge that watching her go through cancer was the single most inspiring journey to witness in my life to date. Instead of letting her illness consume her existence, she decided to let her existence consume her illness and spent the months of treatment living life as it should be lived – knowing that every moment was precious, delicate, and beautiful. She is one of the strongest people I know.

And, my relationship ended, because it had to, because we were far away in so many ways, and because sometimes saying good bye is the only way we can begin to live.

And today my new adventure begins, as it will tomorrow, and until the end of time, and in my head I’m just following the sign that says, “DO NOT PASS”, because I don’t want to a single moment to go by unlived.

ULTIMATE CONFIDENCE.

I admire women who can walk around the locker room naked. 

EXTERNAL LIFE DRIVE.

I was showing pictures to a friend on my computer. The screen froze, faded to blue, and died. Everything I'd saved for the past 5 years was gone.


My hard drive crashed on my first lap top in college, but I wanted to believe that this time my information was indestructible. So, when I came to the realization that I’d lost everything – my photos, my articles, my saved files that marked a moment in time I wanted to save, I didn’t even get upset. I knew there was no point. And when the computer store asked me if I wanted to pay the extra $300 to attempt to recover anything, I said no, because it seemed like too much to trade in for my technological diary.


And then, a miracle happened. I got a call from the computer store saying that, in fact, nothing had been erased, and that my hard drive had not crashed, rather the small internal chord that connects hard drive to computer had a malfunction that they fixed and everything was there.


Relieved, I took my computer back and I opened it up to look at everything I might have lost. I looked at every picture that I forgot that I had – every image of humans who were important enough for me to take their picture. And I looked at every reflection I ever wrote - some that were too personal to ever share, but that I saved for myself.  And looked at all of my music - all the songs that took me to moments I would have otherwise forgot.


And I came to a realization in looking over it all: if we're not searching for the things we're missing, we might never even know they don't exist.


I wish we had an external hard drive for each minute, to save all the things that might change the course of our existence, or to save the things we never knew we lost, especially the people in the universe who we don't see through distance and time and experience.


My computer malfunctioned, and when it was returned to me I was given back life’s records that reminded me of the things I had promised myself to pursue or the things I had to keep to remember all of the stuff in life that I value as important. It gave me back minutes I might have lost, because everything we don't remember becomes nothing and everything we don't see never existed.


Just another reminder to keep searching.

PAINTING LOVE.

If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out. 


[Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer]

SHEDDING OUR SKIN: The Power of Forgiveness

In 2010, the South Bronx was named the poorest district in the entire nation. According to a census at the time, “Thirty-eight percent of the district’s residents, totaling 256,544 people, (were) living below the poverty line; 49 percent of children in the district (were) living in poverty.”

One of my closest friends in New York is a 38-year-old black man who grew up in the South Bronx. He’s a trainer at my gym, and by all comparative measures it would seem as though we have nothing in common. But we’re human, and we laugh a lot, and we like to work out, and we both have light eyes, and we both think that life is beautiful, and that’s enough, because humans don’t have to be alike to love each other.

It’s almost been a year since we met, and about half-way through our friendship, my friend told me that he had something serious he wanted to share with me. He told me that when he was 18 years old he was a drug dealer and spent the next four years of his life rising in the drug ring in the Bronx and he made a lot of money and he lived a life style of luxury and financial security. But at 22 he shot and killed one of his best friends after the drug world pinned them against each other. The murder sent him to jail for 12 years.

 When he finished telling me the story, I just looked at him for awhile, trying to imagine a person with such an amiable, charmingingly, positive vibe even so much as hurting another person. And I tried to imagine this man sitting in front of me with such a fervor for life locked behind bars for 12 years. And I tried to imagine 12 years in my head – and how long even one minute can seem like when you’re waiting for something - like when you’re waiting in line for a bathroom when you really need to pee after a movie and every person who went to the movie is also in line. And I tried to imagine carrying the weight of the responsibility of another person’s life on my shoulders, and suddenly I wasn’t scared, or shocked, or mad at him – I felt sad for him. Sad that he felt like at the age of 18 he had no other options, and sad that some one died as a result, and sad that the some one was a friend, and sad that my friend missed 12 years of freedom.

And in my moment of feeling sad he said to me, “Don’t feel sorry for me. It was a blessing. Now every day is a blessing and a new chance to start over.”

And it made me think about the power of forgiveness and how badly I wished that people could just shed their mistakes like we do skin after a bad sunburn. And it’s like a sunburn, because even though whatever pain we cause or receive hurts in the beginning, we all deserve new skin – new chances.

It’s strange to conceptualize that all of us only live life once, and that there’s no do-overs, no erasers, no rewind buttons. There’s also no guide to tell us if the decisions we make are the right ones, and as a result, we all make mistakes (if you find one human that hasn’t, please inform me).

And I just stared at this man with one of the kindest hearts I’ve ever known sitting in front of me – a new person – born and reborn – and I ached for all the times I ever chose not to forgive someone, because we can learn to be better, and I got mad about the times I was never given a second chance, even if my heart was in the right place.

I’m sure there are still people in the world who hate my friend for what he did – because we are human, and we do feel deeply, and there’s no way to replace loss in life, but it would be nice if everyone had the opportunity to grow some new skin.

HAPPINESS, DELIVERED.

I wish we could deliver happiness just like we deliver flowers and balloons and cards.

How it Feels to Have a Stroke, Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor

THOUGHTS ON PAPER CUPS & STRINGS.

To you, out there,

I’ve been thinking a lot about you – you became such a huge part of my collective memory. We did so much together. When I run, I think of you. When I close my eyes before I sleep, I think of you. When I hate myself for not being pretty enough, I think of you – and how you told me you’d love me old, young, 200 lbs larger, or through any disaster. When I drink coffee, I think of you. When I dance, I think of you, and that room that we would dance in every night with your favorite electric blue lights that shined just enough to let me see your smile. And then I laugh thinking about how we got yelled at for staying in that room every night too late, because the security man outside felt uncomfortable that I was there since I didn’t work there.  I think of how we built an imaginary future together. It was so detailed that I feel like I lived it in another life. And, I try to think myself out of thinking of you, but it doesn’t work.

And all this thinking makes me wish that we could transmit our thoughts on cups and strings, you know like little kids learn to make in science class, so that every time I think of you, you would know, and then maybe you wouldn’t be so mad at me for thinking that I never thought about you after I left.

And,  it would also be good to have it for friends who exist in different cities and across realities, because sometimes every one is so caught up in what their doing that we don’t have time to pick up a phone and say, “Hello out there, I’m thinking about you” but we are thinking about the people we care about.

Your cup on a string would be so full of my thoughts that it would break and I’d have to send you a new cup every day, or maybe I would attach multiple strings with different thought processes, so that at least all my thoughts wouldn’t run on one wire and become too powerful to serge through at once.  And if there were multiple strings they would be categorized like this: a string for memories, and a string for new possibilities, and a string just to say, “I CARE ABOUT YOU” all the time, and a string for feeling sorry, and also for feeling happy that everything happened.

Even with all the technology in the world, I could never convince you that I thought about you when we weren’t talking, but if you could hold a cup half way across the world with a string attached to it then maybe you’d know that I did and do love you, and that I will continue to think about you until the end of time.

MIRACLES IN MUNDANE.

They sang, and it mattered.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FEELING.

Sometimes I can feel the realities of the world straining on my shoulders, and it's all too much for me. The good and the bad -- the beauty of human kindness and how many colors exist in everything and the ugliness of unrelenting hatred and the greyness that spews out of that.  

And, lately it seems that there are a lot of people who feel helpless in a world where so much is happening. I find myself in conversations with friends who watch news stories and then get sad by the things they can’t do to help all the people in the world who are feeling pain. Or, I get an e-mail with a sad story in it, about some human, in the midst of Botswana who is sick and the person who sent it to me will write something like, “I read this every day and try to figure out how I can change this.” Or, I sit with someone watching the news about Libya and she throws her arms up in the air and says, “This is all too much now.” Or, I hear something in my office about a trip someone has been on to some place in the former Soviet Union where people deal with the struggles of poverty every day and they tell me that they’re moved and they wish they could do more.

And then I think about those same people in day-to-day life and how they treat people that are right in front of them. I think about how the same guy who sends me sad stories about people from Botswana is the same person who deserted a girl he loved at a bus station when she came to visit him on a free weekend, because he got too drunk to be mindful of the time she was coming in, and I think about how the same gal who is suddenly overwhelmed by Libya, just told me how ugly some girl was walking down the streets who she doesn’t even know, and about how the person who saw poverty in the Soviet Union never even stops to acknowledge the homeless man begging on the streets. And, I think about all the people who want to change the universe, but they forget how to love and give and support the people they interact with every day.

I am just like them.  I’ve done things I regret, made choices I shouldn’t have, hurt people I love, judged wrongly. I’m flawed, and we’re all human. But I like to believe in the power of little moments of kindness and positivity. I like to believe that maybe if I just smile once at a stranger, I can alleviate a little bit of pain that the world is having.

I like to believe that if every person who existed in the world invested more care in the people around them, then every one, every where would be happy. Maybe we can’t fly across the universe; or maybe we don’t have the money to give to organizations; or maybe we can’t perform surgery that will fix diseases; or maybe we can’t build walls strong enough to prevent oceans from consuming land or floors sturdy enough to stay intact when the earth shakes; but we can hold doors for people. We can be there for our friends when they’re hurting, and we can put band aids on people who fall, and we can learn how to smile at people who don’t look like us (have you ever stared at people and noticed how different we ALL really look?).  

And maybe, slowly, we don’t have to feel helpless, knowing that the world really is ours and that our actions are far more powerful than we ever knew they could be.

(Photo credit: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Georgia, FSU 2011).

BODY ENVY.

These two ladies were hangin' out at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. I thought about how they were chosen to stand as models for people every day in one of the cultural epicenters of the world, and how every day they were admired. And I looked at their naked, full, curvy, bodies, and I wished that people in real life with those bodies could be valued just the same.

MUSICAL HIGHWAYS.

Isn’t it crazy how music has the power to take us to different moments in our lives? Today, as I was waiting for the bus in the snow, I was listening to a song that took me to a different country and re-introduced me to a moment where I was lusting after a guy that eventually broke my heart (he was the only one who ever did that to my heart, other times, I think I did that to myself in breaking other peoples hearts).

And, then it took me on a run – the longest run of my life – where I played the song on repeat for nearly an hour and a half, because I was so high from the guy who broke my heart giving me the song and telling me that it reminded him of me.

The song never made me sad. The heart break past, and then I carried it with me to new moments and new travel and new adventure. So, when I listened to the song this morning it was like traveling through a series of moments in my past in a 2 minute and 25 second span.

And I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be amazing if songs could really take people on adventures through different space and time? What if we could use songs to lift people out of hard situations, so that if someone was suffering after an earth quake we could play them a song that would transport them into all the happy memories they ever had? And that way they could know that one day they could be whole again – that as long as they stayed hopeful they could feel joy again. 

(Image from: http://www.pennymindflower.com/)