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.