If I Had A Hammer

One of my black clouds started descending on me last night after watching the news. There is a good reason that I almost never watch, listen to, or try to think about the news anymore and the person reason is one word, five letters. (It's Trump, okay. It's Trump.). However, I somehow clicked onto a newscast.  Big mistake. After about 5 minutes, I was so depressed that I felt like crying. Seriously. I had to switch away from that news channel before I sunk any deeper into a funk.

So I was just sitting in front of the TV, vegetating in my misery, and switching from show to show when I ran across one about magic. Teens and spell-casting. I switched again and caught another show, this one about medieval teens and spell-casting.

source

Now, I am a Christian so I don't dabble with any kind of sorcery - not dark or light or shades in between. However, I did start to wonder what kind of magic or superpower I would choose if I was into that kind of thing. Or what if I just found a genie in a bottle?

I'm pretty sure that, even in a make-believe world, asking for more wishes would be dirty pool. So with just 3 wishes, I'd need to be careful. Of course, I could wish to feed the world's hungry or to cure diseases. But I think there are more important things to worry about. 

My first wish would be to make sure that positive things were more popular than negative things.

I know that there's a lot of social ugliness going on these days. Thanks to that loose cannon in the White House and all his butt-sucking minions, we seem to be living in some kind of parallel universe where all the wrong guys won all the big wars. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. I don't know, but my point is that reports of the deaths of civility and decency are greatly exaggerated.

There are more kind people than we hear about. There are more examples of selflessness and neighborly concern than we will ever hear about. Nice is not news. Just like fully clothed and ordinary-looking people don't usually have million-plus Instagram followers or Facebook Likes.


But nice is out there. Kindness is out there. There are people who check on their neighbors (while we only hear stories of the person who was lying dead in their home for weeks). There are parents who still raise their children to be decent adults without turning them into self-entitled brats who would murder someone in their sleep. There are poor and disadvantaged people who aren't selling drugs or doing drivebys or addicted to opioids and being idiotically racist. There are wealthy people quietly using their money and position for positive and selfless reasons.

There are men and women still looking for a solid relationship in which they can be faithful and loving, lifetime partners. There are men and women who don't fit every negative sexual and social stereotype we put on them. There are young people who have goals and dreams that they are willing to work hard for. There are people who have made really bad mistakes who are trying to work past those mistakes and do better.

Yeah, so that would be my first wish. To have people focus on the positive. I just want to live in a world where all the good things about people are more celebrated. It might kill off the genre of reality television but, well that's another positive. And, with everyone focused on the uplifting and positive things in the world, I'm sure we could take care of hunger and diseases.

I do have some ideas for my second wish but I will hold that for another post. I'll just save the third wish for an emergency. You never know, we might need that one down the road.

Peace
--Free

When Life Hands You Lemons...

When life hands you lemons, make...

Blah, blah, blah-ba-de-blah. Just another cute saying. Unless you put it into action.

After I read about this family - who turned an unfortunate happening into a beautiful event, I had to ask myself when was the last time I did something for anyone.

To be truthful, as generous as I would like to think that I am, I'm really more apt to break out into a rendition of "What Have You Done for Me Lately" than I am to be a quiet blessing to someone in need. And, you know what? Shame on me. My mother raised me better than this.

I can only count one decent thing I've done in weeks and weeks, and -  still being honest for the moment - it wasn't totally without selfish motive. (Loussac Library has set out places for food to be donated to hungry children. I dumped in a couple bagfuls a week ago. Generous of me if you don't count that I had just cleaned out every pantry in our apartment. Cleaned out of all the can goods and box-stuffs that the roommate and I never use. Don't even know why we had them in the first place, so... Yeah. Hold that applause for us two greedy, over-fed bitches.)

My parents taught me that generosity isn't giving a dollar when you have ten, but giving ten when you have eleven. In the case of my sorry-assed donation to those hungry children, I had ten dollars and gave ten cents. To children!

While there are young ones out there, in need of basic nutrition, I'm hoarding boxes of cereal (when I eat cereal once about every other Saturday) and 3 bags of brown sugar because, heaven help me if I ever run out of brown sugar for me coffee. Isn't that kind of pathetic? Even worse: my roommate has, at this very moment, a Costco-sized box of breakfast sausage in our freezer. That heifer don't cook! How big of us to give away three-month old food that we were never going to eat... Basically, we gave those children our throw-away food. We gave them our garbage.

(Right now, If I believed in ghosts, I'd be looking for my mother's hand smacking me upside my head.)

Since I read about the Fowlers, I've been telling myself that I really want to be better about sharing. I want to be a better person. The next time I have a chance to do something for someone - with time or money, or whatever - I want to give ten of my eleven.

I hope we all take the Fowler family up on their challenge to start a trend in giving.

Peace
--Free