Musings

It is that time of year again – the time when watching It’s a Wonderful Life and bawling your eyes out is not only appropriate, it is darned well expected.

My personal favorite part of the movie has always been when Clarence, the guardian angel, takes George Bailey on a tour of what could have happened if George had never existed. Person by person, neighborhood by neighborhood, Clarence helps George Bailey trace the outline of his life’s footprint until George realizes that he is not only loved by many but that he has played an integral part in the lives of people he has never even met.

In the era of social media, this resonates particularly strongly.

If you are feeling like your social media presence isn’t doing much, or if you are feeling, as some do during the holidays, like you are just not really getting ahead in your life, take a moment to be your own Clarence. What would Clarence tell you about what your online work has meant to others?

If you’re saying, “Yeck yeck, Clarence wouldn’t have anything to say to me, ” I say au contraire. The thing of it is that as soon as you set foot in the online world, you are a perpetual stream of ripple-creating pebbles into a big pond. Every blog post you write, every tweet you send out, every Facebook status update you post, they all are ripples across that glass surface of the enormous pond of the online world. Maybe your ripple reaches a person who needed to hear just that particular message at that particular moment. Maybe your ripple will reach a person who was trying to figure out the problem you so neatly summarized and solved in your post. Maybe your tweet was the last one that was needed to reach a goal. Maybe your Facebook status update changed a person’s frown into a smile.

Pulling a person back from the edge without knowing it

When I was a kid, a story fell into my hands somehow. It makes this point pretty clearly, so I will share it with you here.

Once upon a time, there was a young man who just could not get on track in his life. He was bullied every day at school. Things were going wrong in his family. His grades were falling. He didn’t like the way he looked. Every day, he just kept getting more and more convinced that there was not a person in the world who cared for him or even noticed he existed.

One day, when it was grey and rainy and cold, the young man was walking his big armful of books back home when someone tripped him and he fell down, all of his books spilling on to the ground.

It was the last straw. The young man was convinced that this world had nothing to offer him, and he was equally convinced he had nothing to offer the world.

Suddenly, a stranger leaned down and helped him up. Asked the young man if he was okay. Helped the young man pick up his books. Asked the young man if he needed any other help.

And for some reason, this was enough to give the young man that boost he had so long been looking for. It was that little break in the clouds that showed him hope was still there. There were people who cared, and he could encounter them in the world. That person, who did something any normal human being would do on any given day, made all of the  difference to this struggling young man.

If helping someone who has fallen pick up what they dropped can make that kind of difference, there’s really no telling how many lives you’ve touched in big and small ways.

Think about all of the people you’ve talked to. All of the people who have responded to what you’ve written.

You’re quite the difference-maker, aren’t you?

And you’re rather special.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsueg/4191156523/ via Creative Commons

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Not in my backyard!” It’s an interesting statement. To me, it is meant to indicate that various problems the world experiences won’t be present in your general sphere of living. There shouldn’t be anyone starving in your proverbial backyard. There are no homeless in your backyard. Nobody is sick without ways to get better. Not in your backyard.

A lot of people feel quite fervently about taking care of their own first, then expanding out as people around them become more secure. Take care of the homeless in your neighborhood first, then maybe worry about the whole city, and then maybe, just maybe, take it to a national level. International problems may draw compassion, but priorities remain domestic in nature.

Here’s the thing, though. The online world – this whole “social media” thing I’ve been talking about here on ye olde blog – it has changed the way I look at my world. I talk to people almost every day who are from Canada (various parts), Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Australia, England, Scotland, and many other places too. These people have faces, voices, families, and friends that I know and recognize. If something happened in their city or in their country, I would feel as obligated to help them as I would to help my next-door neighbor. My backyard, my neighborhood, has become expansive.

This represents the framework for the #tweetdiner chat that will happen this week. We are trying a new day – Thursday, but the same time (9 PM EST). We’ll talk about what “backyard” means in this day and age and what the advantages and disadvantages of that kind of “local first” thinking are when it comes to social good in the online world.

Just search for the #tweetdiner hashtag on Twitter and jump in. I’m looking forward to the conversation and I hope you are too 🙂

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15216811@N06/5619617675/ via Creative Commons

Remember the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina? It was a lot of forecasting, a lot of doomsday “this is the storm of the century” kind of reports, but we hear those a lot. Then the storm came and we all saw the aftermath, and we realized the forecast had actually undersold the severity of the storm somehow. In the days that followed, news coverage showed people dying in the streets of New Orleans, people standing on roofs begging to be saved, and many other horrible images that will not leave the memories of those who saw them, not to mention those who witnessed and survived that horrible tragedy.

I don’t know about you, but as I watched all of those images I felt the most utter sense of helplessness. I mean, heck, the people who are responsible for saving people in those kinds of situations couldn’t get to the people who needed them most. What could  I do? Send band-aids? That hardly seemed worth it. How would the situation ever resolve itself? How would New Orleans and the whole Gulf region ever recover? Would they ever recover?

With these thoughts running through my head, I realized I needed to make a run to the grocery store to get a few items. So off I went, thinking about everything I was seeing on the news.

One of the items I needed at this particular time was garbage bags. It’s one of those irritating things that you only realize you’ve run out of when you have a huge mess of food you need to throw away, right? So I was standing in the garbage bag aisle surveying the offerings. I was looking for a particular kind of garbage bag, one I had discovered somewhat recently. It was the “odor shield” garbage bag. Tall, for kitchen trash cans. There it was (top shelf, as all things are that I need). As I held the box of smell-good trash bags in my hands, I was struck by an obscene moment of absurdity. Here I was in a suburban grocery store with a box of garbage bags in my hands – bags that would ensure that my trash, as in, the stuff one throws away, would not smell bad.

Meanwhile, people were trudging through armpit-high water in New Orleans, filled with filth, looking for ways to feed their families.

I wanted to make sure my garbage smelled good.

Kind of out of whack, don’t you think?

Do you really need that?

This is not a post that has the intent of chastising people for buying nice things for themselves when they can. I, by the way, ended up getting those smell-good garbage bags even after being struck by how ridiculous it was. But do you ever think that maybe there are some things that we could sacrifice and not notice it at all? Like, maybe I could take my garbage out 20 minutes earlier and not have to worry about stinky garbage anyway. I could probably live without my streaming Netflix (although I’m so addicted to Breaking Bad right now it would be a bit painful). I probably don’t need a lot of the stuff I have. I love it all, and I don’t really splurge, but there is so much stuff I don’t need that I always look for.

And there are so many people who are just looking for a roof and something to eat.

It is not to self-flagellate. It is merely to say, on the fumes of Thanksgiving here in the US, that there is probably a lot of stuff we take for granted that is totally gratuitous to our every day existence, and we should be cognizant that there are people who wouldn’t even consider that stuff on a must-have list of 1,000 items.

It’s interesting to think about, isn’t it? All of this stuff we accumulate?

Maybe there is another way to channel those funds, at least some of the time.

What do you think?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliemaynor/4497967157 via creative commons

So, as you might have noticed, my big thing is trying to make the world a better place in whatever little ways I can. There are so many groups of people I’m worried about, not the least of which are teenage girls like two of my beloved cousins. Teenage girls have so much to deal with these days – more than I did, I think. The whole online world, with all of its dangers and complexities, is added to academic and athletic expectations, other girls, boys, pressures, fashion, looks, and everything else teenage girls have to deal with.

With all of these pressures on this demographic of our society, imagine my shock when I saw a preview one day for a new sitcom called, “I hate my teenage daughter.”

The show, which is scheduled to air for the first time on Fox on November 30, is described thusly on Wikipedia:

The series follows two mothers who fear their daughters are turning into the kind of girls who tormented them in high school. The fears would come quickly when Annie Watson (Jaime Pressly), who grew up in an ultra-strict conservative family, begins to notice that she has allowed her daughter Sophie (Kristi Lauren) to do what she wants to do, which she takes advantage of by embarrassing and mocking her mother, while best friend Nikki Miller (Katie Finneran), who grew up unpopular and overweight and has reinvented herself as a Southern Belle, begins to notice how manipulative her daughter Mackenzie (Aisha Dee) has become. Even the ex-husbands aren’t very good fathers: Annie’s ex Matt is too clueless, prompting his lawyer brother Jack to step in (and become an object of Annie’s crush) while Nikki’s ex Gary is letting their complicated relationship become more complicated in the parenting department. These situations are among the major challenges Annie and Nikki must face to keep the daughters from turning into the people they were afraid of when they were their daughters’ age.

There are so many things that are wrong and offensive about this concept it’s hard to know where to begin. However, even if the synopsis of the show was less bothersome, why, during this particular tricky time, are we going to put a television show out there called “I hate my teenage daughter?”

It’s really puzzling to me. What could Fox be thinking?

And what can we do about it?

PS, based on a suggestion from my friend Tara Markus, I’ve started a Facebook page called We Support Teenage Girls. Because we do, don’t we?

My first year in the online world, I watched and observed the work Epic Thanks was doing. This year, I’m taking part.

The idea behind Epic Thanks, like so many wonderful ideas, is simple and pure, 100% concentrated power. Its engine is gratitude. Its motivation is getting everyone to be on that same plane of fortune.

This year, Epic Thanks is working to raise money for a new intermediate school for Mama Lucy and her Tanzanian school children, whom the Twitter world helped so marvelously two years ago. A $10 donation buys a brick. How much more tangible can you get?

But this Epic Thanks fundraiser is not just about raising money. It’s about filling the online world with love, hope, and gratitude. And so, before I embed the widget that will enable you to donate if you like, I’m going to tell you some things I’m thankful for. Even if you don’t donate, I would love it if you wrote a post of gratitude yourself. Maybe even include the widget on your site. That would make me grateful indeed.

What I’m thankful for

On a personal level, a dream came true – I got to visit Springfield, Illinois. I got to walk inside Abraham Lincoln’s house. I even got to walk by his outhouse. And yes, that made me feel joyful.

I’m also thankful that I was able to buy my first piece of real furniture, a couch that is difficult to get out of, especially as the weather grows colder.

I’m thankful for the new lives that have entered the world in my little circle of friends and family – Lily, Malcolm, and Leon are all gorgeous and healthy.

I am missing my Bubbin, Rose, but I am thankful that her fear and suffering are over.

I am thankful that I got to talk to amazing people on the phone this year whom I had previously only talked to online – people like Peg Fitzpatrick, Mark Babbitt, Mark Schaefer, Aaron Biebert, John Boyle, Cindy King, Dan Newman, and many others.

I am thankful that I got to meet my darling friends, Sean McGinnis, Lisa Petrilli, and Lisa Diomede for a fun-filled dinner. I am thankful that I got to give Geoff Livingston and Amber Naslund real-time hugs.

I am thankful that I have found a direction for my online presence that I believe can add some light and hope to the world. I am grateful to people like Chris Brogan, Estrella Rosenberg, Marc Pitman, and Stacey Monk who led me down this path.

I am thankful to David McGraw, who planted the idea in my head that gratitude is far too rare a species in the online world.

I am thankful that Gini Dietrich found me, liked me, and introduced me to other fabulous people like Kaarina, Amber-Lee, and Bill.

I am thankful to Jay Baer, who has done so much to support me online over the last year.

I am thankful for 12Most and all of the people associated with it.

I am grateful that my day-to-day existence is not hanging on the edge of a cliff like so many people are experiencing.

I am thankful that my past is merely a foundation for my future.

I am grateful that I can write this post and know that you, yes you, will embrace it and me warmly.

I am sending my gratitude out into the world. This is only the tip of the iceberg. And I use my gratitude to say, Hey, let’s get this school built so that Tanzanian kids can look back and say, “Wow, people really do care and they used social media to prove it.”

What could be better than that?

A thousand times over, I send warm wishes and hopeful thoughts to you and yours. Let’s spread this good word and bask in thankfulness.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eekim/2691580307 via Creative Commons

As some of you may know, I have a very guilty pleasure. I’m ashamed of it really.

*sigh* For the last two years, I’ve been a loyal fan of Biggest Loser.

I’m not really sure what I find so addictive about the show, but lately something has started to bother me about the show, along with many other shows dedicated to losing weight. See, a lot of the people on these shows say things like, “Well, I just didn’t think I could do it because I was too fat.” But as they start to lose weight, they discover that they still are standing in their own way even as their shirt and pant sizes decrease. It wasn’t really their weight that was holding them back. It was their brains.

It all reminds me of a scene from one of my most favorite childhood movies, The Neverending Story. Atreyu, the main hero, needs to pass by a special gate that can determine your true value and worth. If they deem you worthy, you pass. If not, they zap you with their eyeballs and you are fried. Just like in the face of a mirror, even the bravest of warriors start to doubt themselves as they approach this gate, and not surprisingly, they get the wrong end of a laser beam.

Your brain controls what you see in the mirror

How many times do you see people go up to a mirror and say, “Aww yeah, I look GREAT!” Humans tend to pick at ourselves, don’t we? Women put on a little more lipstick or give out a sigh as we notice another gray hair or another wrinkle. We look at our pants which no longer zip so easily across our bellies, or we look at, well, every possible thing that we could find wrong with ourselves. But the mirror doesn’t REALLY magnify that stuff. The mirror doesn’t make us see that we are overweight or that one ear is higher than the other. We approach the mirror like those warriors approach that soul-piercing gate. We are expecting to see something wrong because we do not love ourselves enough.

What should you look for in a mirror?

The next time you go to look at yourself in a mirror, maybe before you go to work or before you go out to dinner, take a moment and ask yourself what you’re hoping to see. Don’t let that thought become negative, like, “Man, I hope my hair looks good.” What do you want to see? Do you want to see a person beaming with happiness? Do you want to see a person who looks like they’re in control and in charge? Do you want to see a person emanating confidence and security?

How can you make the mirror show you those things? Well, you need to look well beyond the stuff the regular mirror shows you. You need to look inside your head, inside your heart, and inside your soul. Your real essence needs to be grabbed from within so that it can show itself to you when you look at yourself. Once you have that core of yourself that you want, the mirror becomes inconsequential. You know what you will see. You know it will be beautiful. Your mind’s eye is what needs to be convinced.

A mirror, after all, is just a piece of glass encased in some hard material. Right?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/3786803863/sizes/m/in/photostream/ via Creative Commons