"Don't Let Me Die Still Wondering...."

"...What it was, I left behind...."

What kind of footprint am I leaving on this earth? How am I making and impact on this world, and more importantly, is that impact positive or negative? We are all going to leave our legacy on this earth. I think it's important to know what that legacy is.

I haven't been on here for a while, because I haven't been inspired in a while. I have been looking for inspiration in all the wrong places, namely, anywhere. Inspiration is something that looks for us. Our only job is to be ready for it. I was out for a run today, and my walkman played this song, which got me thinking about what impact I'm going to have and how important it is for me to know what that is. If I don't know that, how can I possibly move on? For a lot of us, a lot of our fear of death stems from not knowing what comes next, my fear of death stems from not knowing what I did before.

I guess what I'm saying is, instead of always focusing on what we have to look forward to, we need to balance that time with looking back on what we're leaving behind us, and decide whether or not we're proud of that. That is our legacy. We can't guarantee any tomorrows in our story, but it's full of yesterdays.

Number 7

A woman nearly died today. She was in the shampoo aisle of her local grocery store when she had a caridac episode. She slumped up against her shopping cart, stumbled to the back of the aisle where she came to a stop when he cart wedged under the counter. For ten minutes, she was standing there, in and out of consciousness, supported only by her arm being caught in her cart. During this ten minutes span, six people walked past this woman. Six people stepped within five feet of a woman who was dying. Six people did nothing to help her. Six people did not even acknowledge her existence. Luckily, there were seven people who walked by.

What has happened to us? What does this say about us as a society? Is this the best we can do?

How is it that six people can walk past a person and not respond to their distress? Are we really that broken as a society? Have we all become so self centered that we didn't notice a dying woman? Or did we notice and just not care?

Obviously I'm disgusted by this turn of events. I had such high hopes for humanity. Unfortunately most of humanity isn't living up to those expectations. We have to come together or we are going to fall apart.

Stop for a moment, and be a human.

Self Centered Preservation

It seems to me that I circle back to a lot of topics from time to time in one way or another, and this is one that I circle back to quite regularly. We seem to be heading down a road of "survival of the fittest" but in a very unique way. Instead of the people who are smart, charismatic, or even just good being rewarded for what they do, the people who are willing to push as many other people out of their way as possible are the ones who reap the rewards. Why is it this way? Why do we allow things to become this way? Most importantly, why do we think this type of behavior is acceptable?

If we were placed into a survival situation, let's say we're involved in a shipwreck and end up stranded on an island somewhere, what are the odds that everyone would team up to improve the situation? Would this group of survivors band together, combine skill sets and resources, and find a way to improve the lives of everyone who is in this terrible situation? Would we hold back some of our resources and some of our skills, in case things get bad? Would we hold out completely and make a run for it on our own? Would we bully our way into getting the best of the supplies for ourselves and make sure we survived, others be damned?

Unfortunately, while we all like to say that we would be in the first group, struggling together to carve out the best of a bad situation, more likely than not, we'd be faced with a tough decision and see more and more people in the last few categories I mentioned above.

My question is, why? Why, do we continue to push toward self centeredness and self preservation, regardless of the lives affected by our actions? If we all spent as much energy on improving the lives of everyone around us as we did on improving the lives of ourselves, maybe we wouldn't have to improve our own lives so much because they'd already be great.

Just a thought....

The Fear of Helping

It amazes me just how often someone has the opportunity to help others and doesn't. I've been reading a bit on the genocide in Rwanda from 1994 and the thing that really stands out to me is the amazing number of people who were warned about the event, but did nothing. The UN knew about it, the Americans knew about it, the Belgians knew about it, and very very few people made any steps toward stopping it from happening. It got me thinking about why this was the case, and the only thing that makes much sense to me is that they were afraid of making enemies by stepping in.

There are a lot of people who say they are good people, and there are a lot of people who are genuinely good people, but unfortunately, there aren't a lot of people who back that up. There are times when being a good person, and knowing what we need to do isn't enough. There are times when we have to step in and do something. There are times when we have to stand up. Standing up is easy when there are no risks, and there are alot of people who are willing to do that. I'm curious as to how many people out there are willing to stand up when it is hard. When they are going to have to work to set things right. When it is going to cost them something to make the world a better place. When they are going to make some enemies.

My thoughts are a little disjointed on this subject still and I will probably make some revisions to this before it's all said and done, but for now I'm going to leave you with this. Stand up. Sometimes the consequences are worth the rewards, and sometimes the rewards aren't even yours. There may be times when you have to give up something in order to make this screwed up world a better place. And that is when we need to stand up. That is when we make a difference. Don't be afraid to help.

The Declaration

There are some things that should go unsaid, but there are a lot of instances where these things aren't apparent and need to be reiterated. Be a good person is one of those things.

The whole purpose of this blog, and of the Global Transfusion Movement as a whole for that matter, is to encourage others to go out and make the world a better place. Unfortunately, this is quite a large task, and there isn't a whole lot of help coming in from the world at large. This got me thinking about why this isn't happening the world over? Why isn't it human nature to make the world a better place? Why are we continuing to push against the societal good?

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer. If I did I assume there would be a peace prize in my future. What I do know is that we have to start standing up and fixing this problem now, before we reach the point of no return. We can fix this world. At least I hope we can fix it. We may already be too far gone at this point to be able to be cordial with one another again. We may be destined to continuously degrade beyond the point of casual disinterst to a genuine disdain or hatred for one another. But I personally can't imagine living in that world. I can't sit by and watch the world my kids are growing up in deteriorate into a world of hatred and strife.

I am making my declaration. I am taking a stand. I am not going to sit by and watch the world fall apart. And I'm not going to sit by and take baby steps any longer. The world needs to change and it needs to change on a global scale, and the only way the world is going to change on a global scale, is by recruiting people on a global scale. World change requires world participation. Let's go out and get it.

Focal Points

There is a lot going on these days. And if you are anything like me, you're trying to take it all in at once. I spend all day trying to stay caught up on just the most crucial of things and still have a lot of things that fall through the cracks. This is all well and good, but when I finally had some time to sit down and reflect on the things I spend my time focusing on, one things became apparent. I waste a lot of time on trivial things.

And I don't mean trivial in the sense of trying to keep up on celebrity gossip or the newest trends in music. I mean trivial in the sense that my involvement in them will have no great impact on the world at large. And ultimately, the world at large won't be any better or worse because of them.

Now, these things all have their place I suppose, but we need to look at the bigger picture. What are we not focusing in on as a society because of the amount of time we spend on the trivial? What kind of impact could we make if we just spent some small amount of time that we normally spend on trivial things trying to make the world a better place?

The only way to find out for sure is by turning off the tv, putting up the computer, getting out into the world we all know to be severely broken, and making a difference.

Hearing vs Listening

The title of this blog is pretty transparent. I'm not using any symbolism or word play. I'm not trying to be obscure or creative in any special way. I'm not even trying to make a deep and impactful statement. I'm merely saying that there is a difference between hearing someone speak and listening to someone speak, and we, as a society, have taken a turn toward hearing more than we listen.

When you hear someone speak, you know what words they say and you hear them speaking. You can even at times repeat the words they said and make them know that you heard them speak. But hearing them isn't enough. We don't know what their meaning was. You don't know what their purpose was. You don't know what their words meant at their core. And that does no one any good.

Listening is different. Listening doesn't always necessarily mean responding. Listening doesn't always mean being able to recite verbatim what the person you are listening to says. Listening involves allowing the words to be processed by your brain, and understanding their essence. Listening is knowing what the person is saying to you, even if they don't know that themselves.

We spend so much of our time focused on responding to what someone is saying, making sure we get our 2 cents worth in, that we don't bother listening to what we are actually talking about. Stop for minute, listen to what someone is saying, and make sure you are making all the difference you can.

Thanks for listening.

The Casual Hello

What happened to the casual hello? The head nod? The simple wave? The good morning? Have we digressed so far as a species that we can't exchange the most rudimentary pleasantries with one another?

As I crossed paths with people at work today, I noticed that no one was saying hello. No one was acknowledging my presence. This persisted for the better part of the day when an unfortunate reality made itself known. I was just as guilty as the people I was walking past. I was the guy who couldn't take less than a second out of his day to say good morning.

A change had to happen or this was going to be an unpleasant day for everyone. So I took things upon myself to say hello to the people I saw. This set of actions, unfortunately, led me to another harsh truism. Even if I was willing to say hello, there were very few people willing to reciprocate. No one was willing to give a passing stranger the simples of courtesies.

How have we come to this, and more importantly, how do we fix it? The world is broken at the most basic of levels, and the only way we can fix it is one person at a time, one life at a time, one day at a time.

Let's all do our part.

The Importance of Unimportant Things

I have been very very busy of late. That being said, I've accomplished nothing of any importance in the last two or three weeks with the exception of sitting in the waiting room for my daughter to finish with her surgery. I have also taken to reading a few good books and thought a lot on exactly what is important in life.

I will spare you the tedious details of work and socially contracted committments from the last two weeks and merely sum up what these things have taught me. The importance of unimportant things. While work pays the bills and there is usually a sense of satisfaction gained from certain social commitments, neither of these things provide me an increased sense of self worth. That being said, playing board games with my step-son and making sure he only wins so much as to still enjoy it without winning so much that he thinks he should win all the time, sitting on the couch with my wife watching the same 4 seasons of The Big Bang Theory over and over again until we can quote them verbatim, and laying on the floor with my daughter while she watches the same "Mickey" movie over and over again, were all things that I did not get a chance to do these past few weeks. And these are the things that are truly important. These are the things that prove to me that living is more than just waking up every morning.

Sometimes, you don't realize just exactly what is important until you've had time to live your life without it. Unfortunately, sometimes when we begin living without something, we can't always get it back.

Enjoy what you have while you have it. And make sure you know just how important it is. Everything I had to do without the past few weeks, I was fortunate enough to get back. We aren't always as lucky.

Stand Up and Own Yourself

Today is National Down Syndrome Day. Which couldn't come at a better time given this particular piece of news. Based on this information, I've spent a little time reflecting on how we as people draw from our experiences, and how we take life's little curve balls. I've also reflected on how we own our lives, both the parts we can control and the parts that we can't. And that is going to be the subject of this blog.

All of the changes that occur are part of what make my life what it is. There are some changes that I love, more than my life itself at times. There are some changes that take place that make my life much more stressful and much more difficult too, and those things are all things that make up parts of my life too. I couldn't have some of the things I love if I didn't have the things that I don't. Regardless of how I feel about a given change in my life, a given aspect of my life, or a moment of my life, it is still mine. I still have to take responsibility for it, whether it is something i brought upon myself, or had thrust on me by fate.

Seeing a family sue over the birth of their child fills me with a lot of emotions. While I try to keep personal opinions relatively free of judgement of any kind, I do still believe that everybody gets to make their own choices in life. Even if at times they are the wrong choices, they are still the choices that they made. My only hope regarding these choices is that the people who make them can stand up to them and own them.

I'm not sure I'm making a lot of sense because of my sleep deprived state, but I want to stop my tirade for a moment and make sure that I get my overall point across. Life is going to be what it is going to be. And your life is going to be yours, nobody else's. You may not always like the life you have, and you may not always want your life to turn out the way it does, but at the end of the day, your life is yours. You have to own it. And standing up for your life, and allowing yourselves to be brought to account for your actions is the only way to make sure you are living and not just going through the motions.

KONY 2012

I very rarely come on here and take up a lot of anyone's time. Unfortunately, there are some things that come up that must be shared. That we as a people, as a human race, need to know that can't be read in just a few minutes. This is one of those things. Please take the time to watch this video if you haven't. We need to stop this now and make sure the world is rid of this type of thing forever.

"Individually we are a single drop. Together we are an ocean." Let's go out together and make this a thing of the past.

Questions & Answers

I’ve recently been put into a situation that has caused me to question how well acquainted I am with myself. I know what I do and I know how I do it, but what I don’t always seem to know is why I do it. And that is the question the leads us to the final answer, of “Who am I?”

Before you start speculating, I haven’t had a difficult moment in my life occur; I’ve just had the personal satisfaction of calling into question my knowledge of myself. The good news for me is that I’ve been given some time to reflect and now know more about myself.

I’m not a lot of things. But what I am makes up for all of that. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a son, a brother, and grandson, and nephew, and much less commonly in my rapidly progressing age, a friend. But beyond that, I am a man. A man looking for answers to life’s great questions. And while I look at these questions, I turn up more questions than I do answers. And for a good part of my life, including most of the future if I know me, that is going to frustrate me. But at the end of the day, the questions are what are important. The questions are what make me feel alive. The questions are what keep life interesting. They are what keep us searching for greatness in life.

At the end of the day, I am a lot of things, but who I am is a student. A student of religion, philosophy, science, art, humanity, and life. And when curiosity runs out, the reason for being here runs out to. We don’t always need to have the answers, we just need to train ourselves to ask the right questions. And who I am is a man looking for questions.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Before anybody thinks I’ve gone crazy, the title of this blog is a grammatically correct sentence. It just takes a little understanding, a little time to work through, and a lot of patience to try and understand. First off, let’s start with part of the lesson, and then we’ll move on to the English class.

Sometimes, life can get a little muddled. The world itself seems to take a turn for what can best be described as a confused mess. It can be very “buffaloing” at times. And a lot of the time, we try to take the whole thing in at once, and only end up making things a whole lot worse. But to paraphrase an old saying “you can’t eat a buffalo in one bite.” You’ve got to take it all in stride. One step at a time, one moment at a time, one day at a time. You’ve got to make the best of it. By beating yourself down because life has beaten you down, you’ve made life extra miserable. To quote Harold Arlen “To commit suicide in Buffalo would be redundant.”

Now, to our English lesson. To understand the title of this blog, you have to understand the three different uses of the word “Buffalo”

Buffalo – A city in NY state (used as a noun adjunct for the purposes of this lesson)

Buffalo – An animal

Buffalo – a verb (To Buffalo) meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate

Now that we have all of the word defined, let’s start to put this sentence together.

Buffalo (city) buffalo (animal) Buffalo (city) buffalo (animal) buffalo (verb), buffalo (verb) Buffalo (city) buffalo (animal).

Still confused? Let’s add in some extra words and use some synonyms to help us clarify.

Buffalo-origin bison that other Buffalo-origin bison intimidate, intimidate Buffalo-origin bison.

See, that wasn’t that hard. When you take it one step at a time, think through things, and see things for what they are, they really do make a lot of sense. And you’re not any worse for wear having gone through it.

The Moment It Hits You

Sometimes in life, you have a moment, when it hits you. No matter what “it” is, there is always sometimes that moment when “it” just makes sense. There are times when life provides you with a moment of clarity, and it’s important that we are there waiting with open arms to draw it in and make it our own.

I've recently had one of these moments. It came on over the course of several months, and the information just sort of trickled in and sat in the back of my mind over time. Then, in a moment of stillness, a moment of silence, a moment of inspiration it hit me.

What “it” is in this situation doesn’t matter much. But what does matter is that we take the time to notice “it” when it happens, and we remain open-minded enough to embrace “it” for what it is.

Life has a way of working itself into the shape it wants to be, we just need to be able to accept it and make it into everything it can be.

Chase the Sun

Every morning the sun comes up, and we come up with it. It begins on one side of the world and moves across the sky, setting as far away from where it started as it can. As we go about our day, we rarely take a moment to notice the sun moving through the sky, taking it’s journey from one place to another. But maybe we should be focusing on it more than we do. There is a lesson in it’s routine that all of us benefit from.

At the beginning of any new day of our lives, we begin in one place and no matter what we do or how the world turns on, we ultimately end up where we were destined to end up anyway. The lesson we can take away from this very simple fact, is that while we may not always end up where we want, we will always be where we where our destiny was taking us.

“Chase the Sun” is a saying that goes around at times and is generally taken to mean to follow your dreams. Something I think we all need to take a moment to think about is that while following our dreams is important, we also need to take some time and let our dreams follow us to our destination. Whether our dreams get there first and we have to go and get them, or we get where we need to be and let our dreams come later, we will always end up where we need to be. And as the sun accepts it’s fate, so should we. Life will find a way, and we should hold on to our life as something that while not always as predictable as the movement of the sun, but it will always end up the way it is meant to.

In Between

In Between

“Who I am is in between what I want to be and what I am….”

There are times when we are all less than perfect. It’s a universal truth in fact, that nobody is perfect. Yet we all still strive to be that way. Why? A struggle to be perfect does nothing but frustrate us when we fail. This is the first part of my plea for the day. Give up on trying to be perfect. We aren’t perfect, we’re human. And quite honestly in my opinion humanity is a much better thing to celebrate than perfection will ever be. “To err is human.” And being human is something that we all have in common and we should take into account when making decisions.

That being said, there is a second part to my plea today, and that is to be better than you are. Nobody is perfect, true, but there is a latent power in all of us to be more than what we currently are. We can all suffer to make some improvements to our lives, even if they are just small ones. This is something that I bring up a lot and something that I hold very near and dear. We are all better than we give ourselves credit for, and we can make this world a better place if we embrace that and strive for the betterment of the world.

Two very conflicting points of though, but still both are very necessary observations that all of us can take to heart and grow from. No I will never be perfect, but I do have the abilities in me to make myself better than the man sitting here today. What steps will you take to make yourself in between perfection and who you are today?

The Sounds of Silence

I’ve been relatively quiet on here lately, and I wish I could say that it was done purposefully to emphasize the point of this blog. Happy accident I assure you. It did however help to inspire this blog, so I hope the message hits home.

Silence. Calmness. Stillness. Tranquility. All of these things make up major parts of my character. They also make for a great lesson in taking it all in. There are times when we are all exceptionally busy. And when we get that way, we, a lot of times, lose sight of those little things that are important. And that brings me to my overall message. Make sure to take some time for yourself, and make sure that some of that time is spent just enjoying the silence. While few of us have the opportunity to experience the true solitude that nature would bring us, away from the hustle and bustle of the human world, we can still find a source of tranquility that is accessible to us.

Again, a brief message from me, but still something that is very important to us all. Taking time to hear the sound of silence helps us keep a certain peace of mind that will make our lives better, and by extension the lives of those around us.

A Change of Faith

Many people face challenges every single day of their lives. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that all of us face challenges of some sort at least once or twice a week, if not more. Some challenges are small, some challenges change our lives forever.

Those of you who know me personally know that I’ve had a lot of moments like this in my life, especially over the last few years. And those of you who have known me for more than a few years know that I didn’t always handle stress well. I was a very angry adolescent and was shaping up to be a very angry man. I was waiting for the world to provide me with some justice. I was waiting for the world to be fair. And at that point it dawned on me that the world wasn’t going to change for me. Life wasn’t going to make itself any easier. It wasn’t going to just start making sense. I had to look at the world with a new perspective. I had to be the change I wanted to see in the world.

This was a wholly new concept to me, so I didn’t really know how to handle it. I knew how my life had been up to that point and I knew that things weren’t exactly going my way. I had to look at the root of my problems, and that root, I knew, lay deep within my soul.

For the purpose of brevity, which is my style as you can see in my other postings, I will spare you the details of my tedious journey for attempted redemption and repeated failure. Suffice it to say, my salvation rest in religion, and not the one I was currently a part of. Not to take away from that particular faith, but it just didn’t work for me. What I needed was a change in perspective. My world was falling apart, and there was nothing I could do, but change my view of it. So I began to study the various religions, philosophies, and sciences for something that could help me explain this crazy messed up world of mine. And after a time of searching, I eventually found my paradise. I found the change I needed to make in my life to help me get through the tough times. It wasn’t easy to make the changes necessary to improve my life, but it was however worth the effort. I have found a sense of peace and calmness that I hadn’t known before. I have found a way to manage life’s little difficulties and improve the quality of life for myself and for those around me (I hope). And I haven’t looked back.

A lot of times we find ourselves struggling to explain life. We look for meaning in things that have happened and we look for answers to the tough questions of life. However, when we are looking for these answers, we spend so much of our time looking externally for the answers, we don’t always look within ourselves for the answers we seek. Even though that is where those answers are generally found. Now, I’m not saying that any time you have a bad day you should go out and change your whole lifestyle. I just think we should all make sure we take some time to reflect on our own lives and make sure we know who we are and what brings us comfort. That way, when life throws us something we aren’t necessarily ready for, we know where to turn to help get us through it.

Auld Lang Syne

As we welcome in a new year, we all usually like to take a moment and look back on the year we’ve had. The people we’ve loved and the people we’ve lost. The amazing experiences we’ve had, and the opportunities lost. Who we were at the beginning of this year compared to who we are at the end. This is all a natural reaction to the passing of time.

That being said, I’ve been reflecting on the changes that have happened around me over this last year. My memory being what it is, it’s sometimes difficult for me to remember who I was 12 minutes ago, much less 12 months. One thing that has changed for me is my desire to help people. I’m not entirely sure where it came from, but in the last year I started the Global Transfusion Movement (via facebook.com and now this blog). This movement’s only goal was to encourage people to be better, treat others better, and make this crummy world a better place. Now that I’ve been on this mission for almost a year now, I’m not seeing the impact I would have liked, and it makes me wonder if it’s an impossible mission. The whole “marketing strategy” for GTM was to have our members spread the word to their friends and for us to grow and make a difference that way. But with that not happening and the world around me not changing very much, it makes me wonder if it’s worth it? Is there any way to make an impact, or is this world just destined to devolve into a complete cesspool? A very disheartening approach to what I hoped to be my life’s work (outside of raising my family of course). But then I realized something very crucial to the success of my mission. I can’t change the world, but I can change my world. I can make things better for my family, myself, and the people that I affect every day. And with any luck, those people will get on board and start making a difference, but even if they don’t, that’s ok. If I can leave the world just a little bit better than it was when I got here. If I can make small improvements each day, or each year, then the world may never be a good place, but it can be a whole lot less terrible than it is now. And if all this movement, all this blog, and all this time does is make the world just slightly better, than it’ll be worth it.

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. All the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as you ever can.” – John Wesley –