Archives for December 2011

I was watching CBS Sunday Morning as I am wont to do and there was a story about the awesome organization called Operation Gratitude. It was started by a stay-at-home mom right around 9/11 and is going strong 10 years later. The founder, Carolyn Blashek, told the story of how she was inspired to start the group.

One day, as she was working at her volunteer job at the airport, a distraught soldier came in to talk to her. He was home to bury his mother. His wife had left him and his infant daughter had died. He said, “I have nobody who cares about me now. I’m going off to war and I don’t even care if I make it back. No one will care if I don’t.”

Carolyn was struck by this and started Operation Gratitude so that soldiers abroad would know that they had a reason to come home. They had someone out there who cared.

Over the last few days, in tweets I’ve seen and posts I’ve read, the stress of the last year has become almost tangible. It’s holiday time. Is it harder to get your kids all of those presents they want? Is it hard to go without a big tree this year? Is it hard to wonder where you and your family will be at this time next year? Or does it seem like you’ll never get to a place where the holidays can be happy for you? Does it feel like no one out there really cares about you?

I don’t care about being sappy if it makes you smile

In the online world, we are all sort of floating along like those clumps of seaweed you see on the tips of ocean waves. Sometimes we clump together, other times we just float on by.

If there is any time of year when we should clump together, it’s now. If there’s any year when this time of year should be a clump together time, it may be this year. The world is so full of uncertainty. The toll of numerous years of economic turmoil is weighing heavily on people. And 2012? Well, it’s still a great big mystery, isn’t it?

So how do we clump together? Well, I’m reaching out to you here, with this post, and I’m saying that even if you are feeling low right now…even if you didn’t meet even one of your goals for this year…even if you are sure that no one really cares about you…I care. There’s probably not much I can do for you, and that’s frustrating. But I’m here. And other people are here who care about you. And I bet you’re there for someone else who may be feeling the same way.

Sure, this is what some people might call sappy stuff, but if my being sappy lets one person feel a little better for a short period of time, heck, that’s an easy trade, isn’t it?

These are hard times, and many people, to quote Bill Murray in Scrooged, are having a hard time getting their miracle to happen. Now is a great time to reach out to people and say, “You know what, you’re awesome. And I’m proud to know you.”

Hey. You’re awesome. And I’m proud to know you.

Hang in there.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cliph/23730678/ via Creative Commons

As we enter the closing of the year and look forward to the beginning of a new one, it is only natural to reflect on the times and events that are now behind us. For me, 2011 will be remembered as an overall extremely positive and good year. However, as I reflect back on the events that helped define this year, I must sadly mark the passing of people from the online world who are no longer with us on this plane of existence.

And yet…they are still with us in the online world.

I first noticed this phenomenon earlier this year. A friend of mine on Facebook was going on a trip that she normally had made with a friend of hers. This friend had passed away several months ago, but her Facebook page remained active as a living memorial. People were still leaving messages there as if this friend of my friend would randomly come back and start “liking” each wall post. From the last update the woman made to what was then the current time, the Facebook page remained a digital representation of part of who this woman had been. And it continued to represent her, and live, long after she had gone.

I suspect this happens often in the online world. My buddy Bruce Serven still is roaming the Twitter world. His last update is dated 2 days before he did the unthinkable. Many of his last entries on Twitter are tweets of posts I had written. There is his avatar that used to greet me every time I wrote a post. His face looks exactly the same, but his Twitter account is quiet.

Trey Pennington’s Twitter account is also still open and living. If you do a search for his name you find people quoting his blog posts and tweeting his videos, even still. Even though on his blog site it is noted that he has no events booked for now, there is no explanation for why. If you do not know what happened to this man, you may well think he merely is on hiatus from the online world. You might never guess that Trey left this world so tragically, so eerily, 3 months ago.

What do we do with these digital ghosts of ours? It almost seems cruel that they are still there on our screens, smiling in that same avatar pose. It seems cruel that some people who have automated feeds in their accounts still appear active even after they have gone silent in the offline world. And yet it’s kind of comforting too, isn’t it? To see these faces and to remember a time when we could take comfort in the fact that these great people were still with us, if not in our direct sphere of existence at least somewhere on this planet of ours.

What will we do as our online world continues to fill with these digital ghosts? Will the online world become too painful? Will the faces of our now-gone friends haunt us as we tweet and blog? Do we warn people that these folks will not be responding? Do we say why? Or do we let people meet these friends of ours and merely wonder why there is no response back? Which is less cruel? Which is more comforting?

What do you think about this?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/naccarato/8407429/ via Creative Commons

Today marks the 31st anniversary of the killing of John Lennon. It seems hard to believe that John Lennon’s life ended this way, and for no good explicable reason. He did not want to become a martyr for any of his many causes. He was just getting back into writing music and was building his life with Yoko and their son, Sean. It seemed like he was trying to build a relationship with his son Julian, and he was trying to reconnect with his sisters, whom he had mostly run away from since their mother’s death. It does indeed seem strange that withall of that positivity building, John Lennon had to be cut down and cut out of this world by a crazy person.

That being said, his death is probably not what Lennon would want us to think about today. I suspect he would have wanted us to look at his life and see what we could garner from that. There is nothing we can learn from a crazy person’s motivations, after all, except that there is no such thing as “too careful.”

The following are lessons I pull from this man’s life. Maybe you can add some to the list, too.

Take care of yourself first

Although it probably fueled his creativity and music, John Lennon was in anguish for most of his life, and through all of his years of crazy celebrity and his very public life, there was always an immense load of baggage that John carried. A rough childhood led to his mother’s death when John was 18. When he was 21 his best friend died, and then the whirlwind of Beatlemania took over his life. Through it all, until he was in his late 30s, John didn’t really deal with his darkness. Who knows what this may have cost him. John would not find peace in his own life or beyond it until he dealt with his demons, and he was not able to connect with his wife or sons until he found that peace.

Lesson: A person who is drowning cannot save another. 

Take care of the people who love you 

Although you might call to mind songs like Imagine or Give Peace a Chance when you think of John Lennon, his personal life was almost anything but peaceful until his last five years on this planet. Over the last few years, Julian Lennon has expressed his very complex feelings about his father, who was never around and who completely ditched Julian and Cynthia once Yoko came into the picture. John’s relationship with Paul McCartney soured, too, and there were many instances when drugs or drunkenness made Lennon seem like a far cry from a Peace-nik. For some, this tarnishes much of the good that Lennon did in his public life.

Lesson: Practice what you preach with those nearest to you, then bring it out into the world. 

PR for a good cause is good PR indeed

A lot of people thought John and Yoko’s “Bed-ins” were pretty ridiculous, but what they didn’t grasp is that their ridicule, so long as it remained public, accomplished exactly what John and Yoko wanted – it got people to talk about world peace. Supporting a good cause doesn’t always have to mean doing a fundraiser. If you can find a way to bring the issue to people, especially with all of the online tools available, you can accomplish a great deal.

Lesson: Talking about a problem is the first step in solving that problem

You don’t need to throw a parade every time you do something nice

Although Lennon certainly understood how to use media and PR to bring issues into peoples’ homes, there was a lot he did that was completely under the radar. He and Yoko Ono donated thousands of dollars to different organizations, often anonymously (we know now).  Given how much negative feeling the couple attracted, it would have been easy enough for them to say, “Hey, look at this great thing we did!” But they didn’t.

Lesson: Examine your reasons for doing social good. Is it about you or about the people you’re trying to help?

Dreaming isn’t stupid

One part of Lennon’s complexity is that while he was very bitter about a lot of things, he was also, in a lot of ways, an idealist. He really believed that the world could be as one. He really believed race and religion and ethnicity and creed could become irrelevant in terms of judging a person’s character. This did not represent a flaw in Lennon’s character but rather showed the source of his great passion. With enough work, it seemed like his dreams could come true.

Lesson: If everyone starts dreaming the same dream, the world really could be as one.

Use great power for great good

This is what I admire most about John Lennon, for all of his flaws. No one had really experienced the kind of fame that the Beatles experienced in the early to mid-1960s. Elvis and Dylan were up there, but it wasn’t quite the same level of craziness. Lennon, by his own admission, went through what he called his “fat Elvis” period, where he and Paul would sit down to “Write a swimming pool.” But unlike a lot of stars, Lennon realized that he could use this immense power to shine the spotlight on issues that were ripping apart the world. Audrey Hepburn did the same thing, using her fame to give strength to UNICEF. Today, many stars use their power to spread social good, but it doesn’t need to be that kind of power alone. If you have thousands of people following you on Twitter, use that power for good. If you have thousands of blog subscribers, that is power that can be used for good. It’s worth thinking about.

Lesson: With great power comes great responsibility. It’s a privilege to have both.

What lessons do you draw from John Lennon’s life? What do you mark on this anniversary of his death?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heardsy/2006642839/ via Creative Commons