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video credit: USA Today
Denise Wilson: Bus Drive Extraordinaire
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Tag Archives: optimism
Kristopher Hudson: Always Encourage Others
Mr. Joe
14 Less Traditional Ways To Give Love On Valentine’s Day …or Any Day
Choose one …or a bunch!
- Deliver candy, balloons, or cards to a local disability day care facility.
- Give food to a local food pantry — call first to find out what their pressing needs are.
- Go to a busy building that doesn’t have automatic doors and be the doorman/woman for 30 minutes. Smile at everyone and wish each a good day. If anyone asks why you’re doing what you’re doing, tell them, with a big smile, because it’s Valentine’s Day.
- Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to an elderly couple or individual living in your neighborhood. Make sure you introduce yourself and get their names if you haven’t already. Also, make sure you leave a couple of really big smiles, and a compliment or two.
- Spend 30 minutes visiting someone in a nursing home facility who doesn’t receive regular visitors. Ask the staff, they’ll let you know whom to visit. Don’t go at dinner/supper time.
- Create or buy six Valentine cards and deliver them to a local nursing home. Write some fun, funny, or sentimental things inside. Leave them unsealed and unaddressed. Take them to the administration office or nurse station and ask if they would select six individuals and deliver them. They can add the person’s name and seal the envelope. (they’ll need to look inside envelopes from strangers — even nice strangers)
- Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to the staff at a local DMV or post office. (or, make four dozen and combine numbers 4 and 7)
- Tell someone that you love them — someone that you love very much, but you haven’t actually told them in quite some time.
- Volunteer at a free meal site for a couple of hours. Usually, they can always use additional help.
- Donate some of your valued and useful clothes to a local clothing distribution center that serves struggling individuals and families. Current season clothing is always best.
- Smile and say hello to every person you make eye contact with for the entire day. Hold the eye contact for at least three seconds.
- Help two people who appear to be struggling to accomplish a task (sweep, shovel, load a vehicle, etc., if you looking for the opportunity to help, you’ll find it).
- Refrain from saying ANYTHING negative about ANY individual for the entire day — including YOURSELF.
- Call an elderly relative or individual who has had a positive impact in your earlier life. Choose someone you haven’t talked with for some time, let them know that you were thinking of them, and are grateful for the influence they had in your life.
Note: If you partake in one or more of these love-filled gifts, they’ll be one additional love recipient …you!
Happy Valentine’s Day to all.
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World Cancer Day
WorldCancerDay.org
World Cancer Day on Twitter
A huge shout-out to EVERY single cancer survivor throughout the world,
in our quest to kick cancer’s butt for good! #NoMoreCancer
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National Bird Day (and Trees)
Today is National Bird Day whose purpose is to emphasize the importance of the protection and survival of birds both captive and wild.
In solidarity, a re-post of one of my favorites.
Enjoy!
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graphic credit: unknown
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Thank Yourself
A Very Personal Act Of Thanksgiving
To achieve a life of success, no matter how you define it, gratitude is imperative …we all know this. But, our gratitude must also extend to our self. It’s easy for us to forget that. We shouldn’t.
Like me, you may have heard people express regrets as they approach the winter of their years about their shortcomings and failures. Often they are disappointed that their lives didn’t quite turn out they way they had planned, had expected, or had hoped. Most of us enter adulthood full of ideas, spirit, energy, and grand intentions. It seems at the time that we are eternal, if not immortal.
We eventually discover, however, that while life can be fun and engaging, it also becomes progressively more challenging when dealing with finances, careers, families, responsibilities, losses, and so much more. Most of us do an admirable job navigating the changes and challenges. We work hard and do what we feel is the right thing. We set goals and lay out life plans, but often find it increasingly more difficult to stay on track. We find that the years pass faster than we imagined they could. We learn to grow with our years and deal with our tears. Maybe we feel that we will never be able to make the mark that we had planned.
As I write this, the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus”comes to mind. As Mr. Holland, portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss, approaches the end of his career, seemingly disappointed with his mundane accomplishments in work and life, he is presented with evidence that his work ethic and compassion over the years have made a mark much more meaningful than he thought. This opus ends with quite a crescendo. (If per chance you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend that you do. It is a very moving and uplifting film.)
No matter what you have achieved in life …or haven’t, Max Ehrman, author of “Desiderata,” penned a poem called “A Prayer” that makes it a bit easier for us to accept ourselves for who we are, and to thank ourselves for our efforts in life.
Enjoy, and please do be thankful to yourself for yourself.
A PRAYER
by Max Ehrman
Let me do my work each day;
And if the darkened hours of despair overcome me,
May I not forget the strength that comforted me
In the desolation of other times.
May I still remember the bright hours that found me
Walking over the silent hills of my childhood,
Or dreaming on the margin of the quiet river,
When a light glowed within me,
And I promised my early God to have courage
Amid the tempests of the changing years.
Spare me from bitterness
And from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.
May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit.
Though the world knows me not,
May my thoughts and actions be such
As shall keep me friendly with myself.
Lift my eyes from the earth,
And let me not forget the uses of the stars.
Forbid that I should judge others,
Lest I condemn myself.
Let me not follow the clamor of the world,
But walk calmly in my path.
Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am;
And keep ever burning before my vagrant steps
The kindly light of hope.
And though age and infirmity overtake me,
And I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams,
Teach me still to be thankful for life,
And for time’s olden memories that are good and sweet;
And may the evening’s twilight find me gentle still.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. (even if it’s not a holiday for you today) 🙂
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Former Viking Randy Moss Shows Up At H.S. Graduation
A long journey for one Pelican Rapids, MN High School student reached a milestone Friday night. And former NFL star Randy Moss was there to see it. Moss surprised many in Pelican Rapids by appearing at the graduation ceremony. Moss’ reason for being there was to hand a high school diploma to senior Kassi Spier, said Pelican Rapids Public School District Superintendent Deb Wanek.
Spier developed a friendship with Moss during his playing days with the Minnesota Vikings. Wanek said Spier battled leukemia in her youth. Then, in 2004, Spier’s father died in a car accident. And in 2013, Spier was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Yet through it all, she managed to graduate, and Moss wasn’t going to miss seeing it.
“She’s had many struggles in her life, and he’s been there for her,” Wanek said. “He told her he’d be at her high school graduation.”
An Associated Press story in 2003 mentioned that Spier befriended Moss during his rookie season of 1998, when Moss took the NFL by storm with 1,313 receiving yards and 17 touchdown catches. The story describes how Spier in 2003 followed Moss to lunch nearly every day during the team’s training camp that summer in Mankato, with “her tiny hand tucked inside his.”
The St. Paul Pioneer Press also published a story around that time regarding the friendship between Moss and Spier. It describes how Moss in September 2000 visited Spier, then a 4-year-old, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester after her leukemia diagnosis. Spier told the Pioneer Press that Moss had a hard time saying goodbye during that visit. “He cried because he didn’t want to leave,” she said at the time.
Wanek didn’t know that Moss would be at the graduation ceremony until shortly before it started. “We had heard there was a possibility,” she said. “But we didn’t know.”
________________________________________
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story credit: Inforum/Hayden Goethe
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J. K. Rowling and GYA on Twitter
J.K. Rowling is, financially, one of the wealthiest self-made people in the world.
On one night, not too long ago, someone reached out to her on Twitter for assistance.
Ms. Rowling responded, not with financial assistance,
but with a tweet …and a little bit of her time.
What a world of difference it made!
Regardless of what you have,
it isn’t necessary to have a lot, to give a lot.
Thank you, J. K. Rowling, for being a humble GYA’er.
Enjoy!
video credit: USAToday
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A Small Bouquet
‘Tis better to buy a small bouquet
And give to your friend this very day,
Than a bushel of roses white and red
To lay on his coffin after he’s dead.
—Irish Proverb
Enjoy!
original graphic credit: unknown
GYA today 