Changing The World - A Smile At A Time

I think that there are a number of practical ways I can change the world by being myself and using today. Changing the world can't be left as an abstract ambition high up in the starry heights of the sky. Quite the contrary. If you really want to change the world then you have to get right down among the nitty-gritty details of live. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to act.

So many times I have heard people saying that a smile costs nothing to give but is a treasure to receive. So that's what I have started doing. It is such a small thing to do and really doesn't take up much time. If I'm in a big rush that day and flying from place to place doing errands, then smiling at people is a way you can change the world just a little every time you do it.

I've started meeting the eyes of old ladies who pass me in the street and giving them a big cheerful smile. Sometimes I get met by a blank stare or a look which plainly says how much of an idiot they think I am. One occasion I remember well. I was walking past a small, frail old lady who was walking slowly along, looking sad. I met her eyes and smiled cheerfully and the transformation I then watched has been enough to carry me through all the blank looks and sneering faces I have continued to receive, in the hopes that even if I don't know it, a stray smile will warm someones heart and brighten someones life, even if just for a few minutes. The lady straightened her back, lifted her head and beamed at me before walking on past me. I wasn't just smiling at a passing stranger - I was sharing a glad moment with a fellow human being.

Someone else to smile at is the person behind the counter. So often I'm in hurry, or the person behind me in the line is getting impatient, so I just stuff my receipt in my purse, grab my shopping bags and rush out of the store without a backwards glance. What kind of a thank-you is that for the man or women who just spent time serving you? So now I smile at the person who has just served me, or directed me to the part of the store from which I need to get something. Some of them just look grumpy, but some of them smile back. But maybe later in the day, the person who looked grumpy will smile at someone else!

Smiling at the people who you live with almost always has an immediate reward! Smiling at your family is really no trial at all! Smiling at your family will just bring an extra little bit of sunshine into the house and make the day brighter. Sometimes my sister and I will have an impromptu smiling match! She will smile at me, so I'll smile back, she will keep smiling and so will I, so we will carry on smiling at each other until one of us collapses in laughter, at which point we then laugh until we run out of breath. Now that is fun!!

When you're walking past someone today - smile. If they scowl back, smile extra hard at the next person. You may never know if they appreciate it, but I'm sure that one of your smiles will brighten someones day. If you are brightening someones day, then you are changing the world. A smile at a time.

Grandma's Chocolate Pudding

Last weekend our family had an unexpected family reunion. Grandma cooked a special dinner for everyone and we all managed to squeeze ourselves around the big old table.

Something about the day reminded me of all the times I've played hide-and-go-seek in my grandparent's garden, helped set the table, carry through the dirty dishes, sat on the seat-cushions which Grandma sewed herself and waited in turn to be asked what I wanted for dessert.

I'm grown up now and I have other little cousins who kneel on their chairs so they can reach their plates on the table. Grandma leans down across the table and asks them what they'd like in a Grandma-ish voice and I get asked what I'd like in a grown-up sort of way. Instead of Grandad handing me the place-mats and telling me to be careful not to drop them, I sit across the table from him discussing theology. I no longer wriggle in my seat from excitement and then rest my chin on the edge of the table while Grandma brings in her pink blancmange shaped like a rabbit. Now I take my turn at holding my newest cousin and try to stop him crying.

I am one of the grown-up grandchildren, but last weekend with everyone there, I felt just like a little girl again. Grandma had cooked a chocolate sponge pudding and made chocolate sauce to go with it - a very special treat I first tasted when I sat around Grandma's table as a little girl. As we gathered back together for dessert, I walked into the room as a grown-grandchild, with my baby cousin on my shoulder. A couple of minutes later, having given the baby to someone else, I sat eating chocolate pudding and chocolate sauce, a little girl sitting around Grandma's table.

A Laugh In Time

"If all else fails to boost your spirits - find something to laugh about!"

I was just going through one of my quote files and found this quote. How often do we really laugh? How often do we mope around for a couple of hours before eventually trying to find something to laugh about?

I love to laugh! I love to laugh about anything that strikes me as even vaguely funny. If I can't find anything else to laugh about then I will make something up and laugh at myself! More often then not I end up laughing at myself anyway, or end up making other people laugh at me. As a consequence, I have ended up with some very funny - and some very embarrassing - stories of times when I was doing something silly and someone caught me in the act!

To help you laugh a little today, I'll let you hear about one of my funny stories ...

I was walking in a park with my family. The park had a big hill with many different paths criss-crossing across the slopes. One slope of the hill was just grass, with three paths going across it at different levels. A hill fraught with dangerous possibilities.

My sister was standing on the top path and I was standing on the bottom path. I was irresistibly seized with an impulse to be silly. I decided that this was a good place to act some Shakespeare. Going down on my knees, I quoted a couple of lines, "What light through yonder window breaks? 'Tis the east and Juliet is the sun!" As I wasn't in the habit of memorizing vast tracts of Shakespeare as a child, I ran out of lines almost as soon as I had begun.

I turned to Anne of Green Gables. Just a couple of weeks ago we had been watching Anne of Avonlea and had giggled over Anne's rendition of the song played at Diana's wedding:

"Oh, promise me that someday you and I,
Will take our love, together, to some sky!"

Remaining on one knee, I threw my arms into the air in a dramatic gesture, then clasping my hands and thrusting out my elbows, I broke into full mock-opera-singer song.

I had just got to the part of taking our love to some sky, while my sister collapsed in giggles at the top of the hill, when out of the trees and onto the middle path walked a couple and their two teenage boys.

People say that they leave their words hanging in midair. If ever words hung in mid-air, mine did that afternoon. I stopped mid-warble, kneeling on the grass, one hand clasped to my chest, the other held sky-wards, while the couple and their children walked silently along the path. You could feel their shock, their total lack of comprehension.

No sooner had they disappeared from sight, then I regained use of my limbs, dropping my arms and scrambling hastily to my feet - something I was totally incapable of doing only a moment before.

My voice took a little longer to come back to me. I can't remember what I said when it returned, but I do know that it wasn't anything to do with love or the sky.

One Of The Later Moments In Time

My mind is a total blank. I really have no idea what to write.

At times, all too rarely, inspiration seems to flow freely and the words pour out of the end of your fingers and flow seamlessly into beautiful and articulate sentences.

At other times, which sadly seems to be most of the time, you sit in the front of the computer staring at a blank page, you hum and you haw, you wriggle around on your seat, you scratch your head, you tap your nose (why is it that this action is fixed in our minds as one that will help us to think?), you try to gather ideas from the objects around you. Somehow the paper-clip on the desk and the box on the floor fail to provide the inspiration that you lack and so you remain sitting in front of the computer, tapping out awkward sentences only to erase them a few seconds later as the full force of their stickiness hits you between the eyes. So then you start over again to try and come up with another, and hopefully more pleasing, sentence.

This moment in time is most definitely one of the later moments in time.

Changing The World

I went through the normal list of people that I wanted to be when I grew up. A ballerina, a policewomen, the Queen, a firefighter and a teacher. I had a few tagged on the end that were not quite as normal - for instance, for years I was determined to be an astronaut. I spent hours pouring over books about Space and looking at detailed pictures of Space shuttles and how they worked. This desire out-lasted almost all the other little-girl dreams I had about when I would grow up. Then I flew in an aeroplane and didn't feel so good, so I decided that maybe I wasn't going to be an astronaut. I was also going to be one of those people who wear white suits and helmets and walk around the edges of exploding volcanoes. Volcanoes became a passion and for years I looked at every single book about volcanoes I could get my hands on. Although I still can't resist looking at a picture of a volcano if I see one out of the corner of my eye, at some point along the way I decided that this wasn't really the job for me.

Most of the things that I wanted to do when I was little gradually lost their appeal through the years and other things came to take their place. Anything that survived childhood usually faded into the background and got forgotten one by one as I ticked off each one of the teens and left them behind me. My ideas of what I should be doing now, although some early ideas cling on around the edges, are almost completely different from what they were when I was three.

There is one occupation, however, which has survived all the battering that becoming a 'grown-up' can give it. Although my ideas about how I should do it are definitely different, the principle still remains the same. I want to change the world.

When I was very little, my ideas about how to change the world were a little vague, but were something along the lines of being a mother to every child that didn't have one. Later on, the way I was going to change the world was to be a missionary to Africa or South America. Between being a missionary and my present ideas, it was going to be something very big, but not at all defined.

I still want to change the world. I don't feel called to mother every single motherless child in the world and I'm not as keen as I once was on the missionary idea, but my ideas are a little smaller and a lot more definite then they were a few years ago.

You don't have to be world famous to change the world. You don't have to be a millionaire to change the world. You don't have to trek into the heart of the jungle to change the world. You don't have to be anything, except yourself.

Start working right where you are. God has given us world-changing tools which can be used on every-day life. You don't have to wait until you're 'grown-up', you don't have to wait until you're in a foreign country, you don't have to wait until you're a nurse or a scientist. You just have to wait until today. Today is what you have - so use it!

Bless My Mess

I'm meant to be upstairs, tidying my room. But I'm not. I'm sitting in front of the computer.

Tidying rooms is such a boring thing to do. You're faced with stacks of paper, files, books, little notes that you don't really want but can't really throw away and all the bits and pieces which end up underneath your knee when you reach for something on the other side of the floor. You spend hours sorting through the mess, trying to decided what to keep and what to throw away. You are left with at least a dozen different piles that have to go in an absolute maximum of six different places. At last you get to the end and you are left with three separate items that just don't fit in any of your draws or boxes - and they conveniently form a starting point for your next pile-up of stuff, which will need sorting through in another months time ...

People say that you are either messy or a cleany. Apparently messy people always marry clean people and clean people always marry messy people. I don't think I will ever find out whether or not that's true. You see, I am one of those excessively awkward people who absolutely hates mess and dirt and gets fussed by piles of stuff hanging around, but just can't seem to put things away and has a habit of leaving random bits of paper around in even more random places.

That is my other problem. I end up hording bits of paper. I just might need the 'phone number again ... the envelope has the date on it ... the drawing was very original ... my great-grandchildren might want to read a rhyme written by their great-grandmother decades ago when they still used fountain pens ... one day I might become famous and someone will want to publish my letters ...

The even bigger problem is that it doesn't stop at bits of paper. It includes pictures, photos, paper-clips, presents from friends, bookmarks, pretty bits of wrapping-paper, knick-knacks that I loved as a child and just about anything else that used to have, currently has, or might one day in the future have, any sentimental value. Of course, somehow or other that ends up stretching over a lot of stuff that I would really rather be without.

I am, however, seriously fed up of the mess and the clutter and the dust. So I am going to be ruthless. I have decided. I am going to stick firmly to my resolve. I am going to go upstairs to my room with a trash bag, I am going to sort through every last scrap of paper, every last item and I am going to throw out anything that is not either necessary, genuinely ornamental or has real and sincere sentimental value.

Now, how can I make a second copy of a free, give-away poster of a cow fit into one of those categories?

Thoughts on Randomness

I was sitting here thinking that I would like to write a post - just thought it would be a really neat thing to do.

OK, so I've decided I'm going to write a post, so now I am presented with Problem No.1 - When am I going to write my note?

Question No.1 is answered fairly easily - I've had my meal, I can have some fun time, so now is as good a time as any other.

So now I get to Question No.2 - What am I going to say in my post? Now this is a big question and, so far, a question that I have not yet been able to answer. What do you write in a post? Something that you want everyone else to read? Yeah, I guess that's good, but I'm not sure what everyone else would think of this if they read it. I guess you would also share profound thoughts through a post - the only thing which is profound about this gibberish is it's profound nonsense.

OK, well, now I have established two facts - 1. I don't know what to say in this post. 2. It's not going to be anything profound.

So what shall I say? I'll talk about whatever random thing floats through my brain first - like ... like ... like ... what exactly IS random????

Is random the first thing that pops into your head? Something you do because you can't think of anything better to do? Something you do for no reason at all, except the reason of doing something? Something that no one else is doing? Something that is totally unconnected to anything you could think of? Something that would only occur to you to think of or to do once in a Blue Moon?

Well, I shall end by breaking one of my two rules - I am going to share a Profound Thought.

My profound thought is that being random is not doing something that you think of only once in a Blue Moon. I can give you personal evidence on this: Lizzy talks utter bunkum the whole time, especially when she is tired and bored.

So this little lecture can't be random, because it's the kind of thing I talk about all the time - just carry on reading my blog if you don't believe me.

A Quote From My Quote Collection

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt

C.Q.C. - Confirmed Quote Collector

I've caught it. It's fatal. It's final. It's unstoppable. I'm doomed.

I am a Confirmed Quote Collector.

It started when I came across a couple of quotes which fired my imagine and raised my aspirations to a new level. Then I came across a quote that made me laugh. Quotes, I decided, were something special. You could really gather some great thoughts, with very little trouble, from reading some quotes when they happened to fall in your way.

I needed something nice to say to a friend, but just couldn't quite get to exactly the phrases I wanted, so I could have that nice rounded feeling to my words. I remembered that I had come across this quote about friendship that seemed to say it in a nutshell, but I couldn't remember the whole quote and I couldn't remember where I had seen it. Brilliant Idea Number One. Real problem solver. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a copy somewhere out in cyber-space. It was worth trying.

The first, irrevocable step had been taken.

Not only did I find the quote that I had been looking for, but during the course of my search I found hundreds - literally hundreds - of amazing quotes and all of them were about friendship. Brilliant Idea Number Two. If there were so many good quotes on the Internet about friendship, what about ... say ... being happy?

Goals, Life, Inspiration, Adventure ... the list could go on for as long as you could think of words. I soon found out that the quotes were not all of the best quality. Not only did I find some inspirational thoughts, I also discovered some totally wacky ideas about life. The chaff was sifted out and the wheat left behind was enough to give me fuel for my journey to becoming a Quote Collector of the First Degree.

I don't look quotes up on the Internet every day, every week, or even every month. I don't think I've looked quotes up on the Internet for about five months. No, my method is a little more subtle.

Every time a friend sends me a quote and it captures my imagination - off the quote goes to my special quote collection. Every time I read a good quote on a notice board - out comes pen and paper and as soon as I get home that quote will get stashed away. On a website a quote will catch my eye and then my mind - a couple of clicks on my mouse and the quote is numbered amongst the other quotes I have stored away.

My collection doesn't grow extraordinarily quickly. I don't add to its number just for the sake of getting another quote. I take great pride the in the quality of my quotes. They have to inspire, motivate, encourage, make a good point, make me laugh, say something ordinary in an extraordinary way or capture the essence of a thought which is normally illusive.

My Quote Collection is an exclusive Quote Collection.

My Quote Collection still has a little way to go before it reaches the height of organization. Maybe quite a long way to go. If someone talks about their "collection", I usually think of a glass cabinet full of plates or figurines; a row of hooks with a mug hanging from each hook; a neat book full of stamps; a box with carefully organized postcards from many different countries.

My Quote Collection likes to take the air and be seen - in all kinds of places. Some quotes are stuck up on my bulletin board, others are typed neatly into a computer file, more have been copy and pasted untidily from a website into a document, a good number are stored away in a file full of useful pieces of paper, while another dozen or so have been hand-written into a notebook full of all kinds of jottings and other random thoughts. Nowhere have I got a complete set of all the quotes which form a part of my Collection.

Frustrating though this can sometimes be, this form of storage does hold an attraction which is not to be passed over lightly. At any given time of day, when looking for any given piece of paper, I could come across a quote which I had stored away because of it's inspirational qualities or its ability to make me laugh. Who knows what kind of a day I could be having, or what thoughts could be going though my head? Maybe that quote could be enough to give me a boost in the right direction or bring a little sunshine into my day. Maybe it could spur me on to greater effort or remind me of an important task left undone. Maybe it will give me a much-needed laugh in an otherwise gray day. I'll never know until it happens.

I still need to have a big collection which neatly holds all my quotes in one organized place, but when that happens, I think I will leave all the quotes which are scattered around, in their places where they are, ready for next time I'm looking for something else and come across a quote at just the right time.

Right Now

All my life I have been encouraged to say thank you to God. It's so easy to say please, to ask why and to moan. Saying thank you can be a lot more difficult.

When life is easy, when things are going well, when the sun is shinning and when I am enjoying life, saying thank you comes easily. I just have to open my mouth and it bubbles out.

When life is difficult, when everything is going wrong, when the sun is hidden behind black clouds and when life is a struggle from one difficult moment to the next difficult moment, saying thank you is one of the hardest things in a very hard life. If I even manage to open my mouth in the first place, thank you is buried at the very bottom of a heavy heart.

Once the difficult days have passed, I can look back and see the good points and then I can say thank you, but when I'm right in the middle of the trouble, every fibre in my body rebells against saying thank you. The more I remember somebody saying I should say thank you you in the middle of trials, the more I set my heart against it and the more impossible it seems.

I don't plan on saying something I don't mean. I know there are some people who can sincerely say thank you when life hurts and they really mean it. Right now, I haven't yet worked out how they do that.

Until I have, I'm not going to say thank you and not mean it when life is hurting me. But I'm not going to give up and never say thank you until the sun is shining again. Instead, I'm going to say thank you for the right now.

I'm going to say thank you for 3 minutes of walking on the grass with bare feet, while the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I'm going to say thank you for a kind message from a friend. I'm going to say thank you for 1 minute of laughter over a new joke. I'm going to say thank you for a sister's hug. I'm going to say thank you for a passing stranger's smile.

When the right now is all I have, all I can do is say thank you.