Party Like It's 1939

ER  hosting Easter egg hunt at White House

     It was my belief that back in the Great Depression there was a lot more generosity going around than at any time in my life.   The 70's were "me" focused and fashion challenged.  The 90's brought the scourge of greed and technology.  The millennium and 9/11--the world's axis shifted, and nothing has been the same since.  

     But whenever my parents, aunts, and uncles--second generation Americans--spoke about the Great Depression in which they grew up, they always mentioned people's generosity.  They didn't gloss over the hardships.  But stories of sharing and invention abounded.  So you can understand why the 1930s, as grueling as they were, still stand out in my mind as kinder days than those I've lived through.  Until now.

     While greed and indifference exist in abundance to be sure, I am heartened by what doesn't make the headlines because, as they say in the news biz, it doesn't bleed.  I am seeing a lot of caring folks in the world who make a difference for the better.  And I try daily to amplify that generosity every chance I get.  Life is beautiful when I do.  I sport a perpetual smile on my face, and other shoppers respond in kind.  I stop and talk to strangers for no good reason other than to connect with them for a moment, and they light up.  I do things I love, saying "yes!" to people ask to use my talents.  It proves to me that how we show up in the world actually affects our environment.  So how do we want to do that?  With cynicism?  Fear?  Suspicion?  Exhaustion?  

     If you read my last blog (you did read it, didn't you?), you know I am imperfect.  But I'm telling you, the extra effort I make to show up as my better angel is paying off.  My friend Audrey Lin echoes this experience.  At a recent conference, she was losing energy.  The trip, the sitting, the shlepping of stuff, all the talk talk talk.  So she and a friend decided to perform random acts of kindness.  As she enthusiastically describes it in a recent blog posting of her own: 

“As we went around giving out snacks, something shifted, in me and in the people we were interacting with. Suddenly, it was as if we were all becoming family. Giving out snacks, giving group hugs, learning each others' names-- there is something powerful about connecting over kindness rather than connecting over a project or ideology or agenda. When you connect with someone over an act of kindness, you make a heart-to-heart connection--a human connection-- that is a reflection and reminder of the human spirit. Of our interconnectedness!”

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     So given all I've told you, you are hereby invited to a virtual party!  I invite you to commit random acts of kindness for the next few days.  You don't have to volunteer in a soup kitchen or write out a check.  Just pay attention!  Yes, that means getting off your devices--and you know I'm all for that.  What is going on around you that allows you to make a moment of positive impact?  Carry little toys in your pocket for restless children in a doctor's office.  In a check-out line turn around and compliment someone on her scarf.   Walk around your street and pick up garbage.  Need more ideas?  Go to HelpOthers.org, a great website!
     Then--THEN--come back here and tell us what you did, and what the experience did for you.  If you do this often enough, you'll notice how you are transforming.  You are becoming a change agent in the world.  But you have to come back and comment about it, or we won't have a party.  And you don't want to be a party pooper, do you?  In fact, forward this posting and bring others along with you.
     Just think.  If this were 1939, you might be sharing sugar rations or tomatoes from your victory garden.  Gee, isn't it swell?  Everything old is new again.  

Pax tecum.