A Promise Not to Text

February 9, 2011

Discover how you can help prevent car accidents.

My grandson was killed several years ago but by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. So I know the pain of suddenly losing a person you love very much. It is doubly painful to know that the accident could have been prevented.

That is why I want to share with you a video my brother sent me yesterday.  I think everyone who has ever texted (apparently it’s a real word) should absolutely watch. It is ten minutes but can save a life, maybe even yours.

The AT&T “Don’t Text While Driving” documentary below focuses on several young people who were texting while driving; it was the last thing they would ever type. The CoolestOne.com, where I first saw the video, says it should be shown in every high school. I agree. Even more, every parent should require their children to watch it.

And if you text, watch it even if you don’t “usually” text while driving. Any distraction that takes your eyes off the road has the potential to kill you or another person. Is the risk worth it to get that message typed immediately?

After you watch the video, be sure to scroll down and read the rest of the post for a text challenge.

After watching this video, I wondered what I could do, besides putting it in my blog and sending it to family and friends. Then it hit me. Start a campaign to get people who text to promise not to text while driving. I was about to start one on this post when I went back to the CoolestOne.com and discovered they had created the following pledges:

I pledge I will not text while I am driving.

I pledge I will not text while driving and will use only hands free calling if I need to speak on the phone while I am driving.

I pledge I will not text or use my phone while I am driving. If I need to use my phone, I will pull off the road to a safe location.

I wonder if the pledge might catch on more quickly if it were written in “text” language. I frankly don’t know what that would look like since I don’t text. But send me your contributions of any of the pledge statements above in the shortened words and phrases you would use if you were to type it on a cell phone.

Then send that text — when you are not driving — to everyone on your contact list. See how many of them will be willing to take the pledge with you.

I will post all contributions on this blog once a week for three weeks so more people can see it.

Since it takes two to have a text conversation, here is one more suggestion. Pledge not to engage in texting or a cell phone conversation with someone who doesn’t have a hands free phone if you know the intended recipient is behind the wheel. The other person may not want you to stop the conversation, but at least you won’t be responsible for encouraging him or her to drive distracted.

How much better to later see your friend healthy and in person than laid out on a cold slab or reduced to ashes in a jar.

Trust me. I know of what I speak.

P.S. I don’t insist that others be politically correct, but I did wonder why all of the young people who were shown in the video were white. Surely people of color also text while driving and many of them have been killed as well. Perhaps none of those families were willing to be photographed. It’s just something I tend to notice since I live in an interracial area and seeing people of all one color always strikes me as unusual. It doesn’t distract from the power of the video; I just think it would be more impactful for more people if there were teens of other races.

How to Pass On Your Passion

October 8, 2010

If you need to move out of an organization you started, do you do so with joy, or will there be grief and regret?

Wednesday evening about one-hundred of us stood on the patio under sturdy tarps covering food stations contributed by several restaurants for the occasion. (It was the end of our first winter storm — one week after our record high of 113 degrees.) We were celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Wellness Community-Foothills, a non-profit cancer support program in Pasadena, California. As a co-founder, I was one of the honorees at the $75-a-person event.

Although I am no longer on the board or give workshops, when I was involved, I did whatever I could to support an organization that has served tens of thousands of cancer patients and their families.

After I was given a lovely bouquet and a certificate of appreciation from the mayor and our county supervisor, I needed to say a few words. I repeat them here (approximately, since I didn’t write them down) because I think you may find them helpful if you are in the beginning, middle, or end of organizing some new venture.

Thank you for this honor. When I was asked to say a few words, I wasn’t sure what to say and decided to get my inspiration after I came here and saw all of you. That’s when I realized I knew hardly anyone! When I was involved in the first fund-raising events, I knew the names and faces of most of the participants. Tonight I recognize only a small handful.

When we began this organization, I wasn’t thinking about what it would look like in twenty years. All I knew was that the community needed a place where cancer patients and their families could get comprehensive social and psychological support.

I had a passion to make that happen. Looking around at all of you, I can see that an organization only continues through the effort of new people who catch the same passion that began it — and then expand it in their own way.

So I am glad to see all of you here, even though I don’t know who you are.

Later in the evening a woman said that my comments reminded her of a speech she had heard on the stages of creating an organization. There was first the recognition of a need, a passion to make a change, a vision for how that could be achieved, the work involved in accomplishment, the need to do something else, and the grief of letting go.

She said, “I think you are in the stage of grief, seeing all these people you don’t know taking part in something that used to belong to you.”

“Good heavens, no,” I replied. “Far from it. I am absolutely thrilled that others also have a passion to make this organization successful.”

Then I told her that, “I believe one of the things that has prevented my grief in moving on is that I have other passions. For example, about thirteen years ago, I co-founded CancerOnline, a non-profit Internet program where I served as pro-bono executive director for five years. With that experience on the web, I later created LearningPlaceOnline, and then Support4Change and ChildhoodAffirmations. Along the way I wrote three books, am actively writing a fourth, and have ideas for two others.”

I continued, “So you see, if one stops an activity, for one reason or another, and there is nothing to fill the void, then I suppose grief is natural. But if you always have something to catch your interest and your passion, you don’t have to grieve. You can let go joyfully, celebrate the involvement of new people, and move on.”

I believe that one cause of grief is our ego’s attachment to what we’ve accomplished. It says, “You are the role you played in making that organization, or activity, successful. Since it was successful, so are you. That organization is you.”

Operating from the true self, however, you can create an identity that says, “You are a person who has accomplished something that makes the world a better place. You are a person who saw a need and met it. You are a person who can see another need and, using the skills you have, can meet those needs with the same passion you gave to other projects.”

Based on my experience, if I were to suggest the steps to creating a successful ongoing organization and then moving on, I think it would be this.

Notice a need that has not been met by anyone else.

Notice whether you have a passion to meet that need.

Find others who can help you accomplish it

Use the passion and skills of all of you to create the best possible solution to the need you are trying to meet.

When you have given all you can give, or when there is something else in your life that needs your focused attention, notice all the people who are still involved in the project you’ve created.

Give them your best wishes, celebrate their efforts, offer whatever advice you can, and let go, knowing they will each bring their best to this venture you helped create.

Embrace your new passion or responsibility with enthusiasm.

FOOTNOTE: Over the years The Wellness Community formed 25 separate facilities across the country. Another organization, Gilda’s Club, also created to meet the needs of cancer patients. Recently the two groups combined to create the Cancer Support Community, the largest organization of its kind. This is an example of how you don’t know what will happen when you begin something new.

So my advice for you who see a need is just to go for it. Don’t try to imagine accolades you’ll receive for your success, for you may not be successful for any of a hundred different reasons. However, your intention to create something of value for the world will become like a snowball rolling down the hill, gathering more momentum as it rolls. The shape it takes will not be entirely in your hands.

Photo credit: IndiaFloristOnline.com

Ask Questions, Make a Difference

April 19, 2010

When people are concerned, curious, courageous, and caring, they can make a difference in the world by asking themselves questions.

Today I’m going to a friend’s house for lunch and visit. She is blind and I enjoy reading to her every day by phone and once-in-awhile seeing her in person. Since she is a colleague who has many excellent ideas, it’s fun to expand my views by talking them over with her. We both benefit from the relationship.

I didn’t have a topic when I started typing this and have a deadline for when I must leave, but a question is beginning to form:

Who helps stretch your mind?

You realize, of course, that when we don’t ask questions or when we just accept what we’re told is true, we are at the mercy of someone else’s opinions and the facts they use to support those opinions. When we don’t ask questions and probe more deeply into how the world works, and how our own lives work, we are like a leaf floating down a river at the mercy of the currents. Life changes around us and we assume there is nothing we can do about it but go along for the ride.

Yet as the theme of the Support4Change website notes, “Change is not a necessity for life. It is life.” So the most basic question you can ask is this: Are you willing to allow others to manage the changes in your life, or do you want to discover how to manage what happens in your life to the greatest extent possible?

I firmly believe that we can make a difference in the world by asking ourselves questions and expanding our thinking. Changing the world will depend in large part on people who are :

Concerned about the direction in which the world, or their life, is moving,

Curious about what they can do to change the world and their life,

Courageous enough to question their most cherished assumptions, and

Caring enough to do something about the answers they discover.

We begin to change the world and to improve our relationships when we are willing to stretch our minds. So again, I ask, who stretches your mind? Do you see that person often enough? What do you do with the insights you receive?

Happy stretching.

Poverty Pulls at the Heart Strings

February 9, 2010

How do you react to evidence of poverty when there is so much in the world?

Ecuador and Peru Travel Report # 12 and Visual Viewpoint: Shoeshine Boy in Plaza Begs for a Customer

See Support4Change for explanation of “visual viewpoints”

Would your reaction to this shoeshine boy in a plaza in Quito be one of guilt because you have more than he has, for you can afford to stay in high class hotels while his home may be on the street or a shack? Or would you feel pity on him for his need to earn money in such a fashion? Or would it be annoyance that he bothers you with his request for a shine or money?

How would you feel if you didn’t want a shine but offered him fifty cents — they use U S  dollars as currency, which makes it easy to evaluate the relative cost of things — just to take his picture. He wanted more. But our guide said that was generous and indicated more money would encourage other children in the area to assume we were an easy target. There are simply too many in need to be generous to all.

There was so much poverty in both Ecuador and Peru that we couldn’t have done any more than scratch the surface if we had given all our money to even a fraction of those who needed help. In the countryside we saw farmers in the high Andes working their land with crude implements no farmer in a more developed country would consider using, for these farmers had no money for gasoline to fuel standard machinery.

As I began writing this blog and chose this picture to illustrate our travels, I thought about the relationship between guilt and charity, between concern and generosity, between gratitude and compassion.

Do CEOs who take in million-dollar bonuses while laying off workers give to charity because they feel guilty, or because they see the other person as worthy of respect? I suspect more the former or they might resist that bonus in order to keep a few more workers in the plant.

As I examine my feelings about this situation, I didn’t give to the young boy because I felt guilty. Rather, I felt blessed to have resources with which I could travel, which is something this young man may never do unless he’s given a better education. And that’s not likely unless the government puts more of its resources into schools.

In Peru as we were driving across the highway that goes through the high Andes, almost everyone walked, including children, who I was told walk three hours a day to school! However, we did see some bicycles and were told that a couple years ago a group of tourists learned of the situation and collected money for ten bicycles. Now the children pick up their friends on the way to school. It’s a little different than our teenagers who give friends a ride in their new car.

I’ve just finished listening to Carolyn Myss‘ Invisible Acts of Power: Channeling Grace in Your Everyday Life, which I heartily recommend. She collected more than a thousand stories of people’s acts of kindness, generosity and compassion and noted that, “Every kind action we do for someone is a reanimation of our own life force–and the other person’s. . . . Each time you reach out to another person, whether you decide to do a small favor or because you feel compelled to help, you perform an invisible act of power that has profound healing effects for you both.”

I’m not sure whether this boy was grateful for what I gave him; He didn’t seem to be, but that doesn’t really matter. If he is able to buy food with it, his stomach will be grateful. And hopefully my contributions to the Global Fund for Children and their work on behalf of educating and  the children of the world will prevent other children from needing to follow in his footsteps.

365 Ways to Save the Earth

February 15, 2007

Discover 365 ways to make the world a better place.

Ordinarily I don’t recommend a book unless I’ve read it, but two days ago I heard an interview on National Public Radio with Terry Gross and Philippe Bourseiller, an award-winning photographer, who has recently written 365 Ways to Save the Earth. After checking it out on Amazon.com, it sounds like a coffee-table book I would like to own.

For more than fifteen years Philippe Bourseiller has:

… recorded the splendors of untamed nature, from the immensities of the ice floe to the fury of the volcano, from the vast open spaces of Patagonia to the aridity of the Sahara. This experience has given him unique insight into both the richness and the fragility of our environment… .

For every day of the year he presents a stunning photograph and a simple, environment-friendly action that enables the reader to participate in the protection of planet Earth. Philippe Bourseiller is a true field photographer whose talents as a climber, caver, and diver enable him to move easily through the extreme environments that he frequents and, as we see in these pages, return with extraordinary images.

A comment by one of the reader-reviewers says that Bourseiller doesn’t follow one of his own suggestions, which is to recycle. But setting that aside, I believe, based on the interview I heard, that in the book you will find many interesting suggestions and projectsfor healing heal the earth and its people that you may not hear about elsewhere.

Here is my gratitude for today.

I give thanks for life.

I give thanks for having work that uses my talents and can make a difference in the world.

I give thanks for the farmer who grows the wheat that becomes part of my breakfast.

For what do you give thanks today?