Antagonism… despair, desperation, hostility, doubt. These are just a few of the feelings we humans live with each day of our lives. We pack our minds with the negative side of our perpetual view of the world choosing to subsist each day while protesting the horrible side of humans. However true it may be.

The wars and killing of our own kind,  the hunger; the despair; the ghastly way we neglet our own planet.  We look and look and look some more, until filled with anger we then say… “Humans are SHIT!”   We voice it stridently  for all to hear and without realizing it, we are also giving into the side of the world we so much criticize. I am known for being an optimist… I live as one every day, yet, I too have beared witness to true pain.  I have held him while his seizures have taken over his body with exposive trembles as he foams from the mouth due to his epilepsy…Rick my brother.  I’ve seen the face of madness and have been horrified by his eyes as he is choking my mother….. Gus, my schizophrenic brother. I have shaved the few strands of hair left on her head…my 17 year old niece Heather while she fought cancer.  The lifeless comatose body left us as I held his hand while I said goodbye… Eddy, my brother… he was 32.  This has been my war, my despair.  I loved him so… he was my first true love and the one to receive the gift of my virginity.  My love and the one I found with another man.

If we look deep enough our own friends, family, and neighbors,  we see what we often miss.  We miss the true selves they are. We want to see the world and people as a whole. We don’t concentrate on the one.  I often think of the words of Mother Teresa… “Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.“  Interesting how when we try to do so much with our voice we never have time to do a little with our hands.  Hubert Humphrey said “The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.”

Have you ever seen a neighbor taking grocery bags out of their car and struggle with all of them and you just keep walking on your own way?  Have you ever been asked a favor by someone and even though you said “sure,”  you forgot about it? It just wasn’t that important. Have you ever offered to help a friend or family member with their kids so they can take a break from the craziness? When you say to someone… “If you need to talk, just call me..”  and when they do…. you roll your eyes because you just don’t have the time right now.  Have you ever really watched and listened to those next to you?  Right next to you?

I wanted to write this because I am one to think that by very small (and to some) very insignificant ways, we can somehow make a difference.

If only we begin by “TRULY” looking in the mirror.