One More Day Alive

Let’s start the year off right and realize how incredible all of us are. When push comes to shove, we love more than hate, we help more than hurt, and we care more than we care less about others. Let’s remember all those wonderful people out there who helped all the rest of us wonderful people make it through another year.

I have more of an opportunity than most to see that outpouring of love by writing stories about people reaching out to others, and giving talks to people from all walks of life all over America who tell me their wonderful accounts of those who rose to meet the needs of others.

Like the outpouring of emails and supportive notes I received after my last column when I wrote of the young mother who almost wound up on the streets because of a temporary financial hardship. Not only did so many of you sympathize with her, but one reader even offered her a free house to live in for a few months if she needed to get back on her feet.

Or the young lady who came to one of my talks and spoke passionately about her financial woes after losing her father, her marriage and her job, all within a few months. Within minutes she was embraced by several in the crowd who offered guidance, understanding and job references. Later in the year she showed up at a totally unrelated Catholic gathering brimming with joy – and employment – having found solidarity and support from the many who reached out to help in the Catholic community.

With times tough all over, the cynics would expect self-serving people to be hoarding, not offering, whatever blessings they had to others.

But therein lies the rub. We are independent in America, but by no means selfish. We are constantly looking for ways to help others, especially when the chips are down.

That’s why giving to charity continued to be upwards of $300 billion last year yet again.

That’s why the crime rate is down, even as unemployment and frustrations are up.

That’s why the divorce rate is down, as families realize it’s better to stick together.

And that’s why, despite all the troubles and tribulations, we continue to love each other, to help each other, and to spur each other on as if we were inexorably connected – as if we were all part of something bigger than ourselves.

We are part of something more – it’s called the Body of Christ.

When we remember that, we rediscover our reason for being and our courage to push on amidst the steady stream of pain, suffering and struggle.

So as we continue to fight the good fight, let’s not forget what we are fighting for. Here’s a helpful reminder, a list of five questions to refresh your memory. Fill it out and fill up your life with all the love that’s already there.

Happy New Year!

Road map to happiness

• Who do you love (pick one person) and why are they so special to you?
• What’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for you and how did it inspire or help you?
• What’s the kindest thing you ever did for anybody else that helped to make their day or their life better? How has helping that person enhanced your own life?
• What is something positive that you saw somebody else do yesterday or today to help someone else which filled your heart with happiness? It could be a family member, a friend or even a complete stranger who you felt made somebody happy.
• Who loves you and how do they show it? How has their love changed your life?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Something amazing is happening all around us. As one of the worst economic downturns in history struck this nation last year, the nation has responded not by crumbling under the strain, but by downsizing, reprioritizing and reassessing their values. The results – a nation that saves more, spends less on things they don’t need, while remarkably has continued to give to charity.

That’s amazing and almost too hard to believe, if it weren’t true. And what it says about human nature is nothing less than extraordinary.

Here are the facts. Amidst an economy that saw housing values in many areas drop in half, an unemployment rate that nearly doubled and 54% of human services charities report a rise in human services requests, it was no doubt that people are hurting. We have all felt the hit in one way shape or form.

Yet look at some of these surprising effects.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index – a Gallup poll that rates how Americans feel about the quality of their lives actually went up since last June.

Another Gallup poll shows that Americans have not only cut back on their expenses because of these tough times, something that you would obviously expect, but that that they have come to terms with their new budgets and aren’t that worried anymore. In other words, they have changed their expectations of what they want and they need.

The study showed that 71% saying they are cutting back on their spending and 88% saying they are watching their spending very closely.

But the result of that is that 78% of Americans now say they have enough money to satisfy their basic needs.

That brings up two points in my slightly twisted reality; one is that the situation is not quite as dire as some would have us believe. But secondly, that Americans have a pretty amazing ability to adapt, especially when they realize what and who is important in their lives. And this crisis has apparently helped us to do that.

And that brings me to my third amazing realization – giving.

Despite all the hardships that occurred over the last year, the total amount of charitable giving in the United States exceeded $300 billion for the second year in a row in 2008, according to Giving USA 2009. Donations reached an estimated $307.65 billion in 2008.

Now admittedly and significantly that was a 2 percent drop over 2007, but considering that the economic climate was reduced by a whole lot more, that’s pretty amazing reorganizing and reprioritizing. A caveat to that number is that religious donations soared to $106.89 billion – an increase of an estimated 5.5 percent.

Now let me throw in one more little interesting study for good measure The latest Gallup Values and Beliefs Poll, conducted annually each May, this year found the number of people who say that the moral values of America are getting better to have increased – in fact it doubled since the beginning of the year.

Christ once said that money was the root to all evil. Discussions of the meaning of that phrase about in theological circles, but generally it is believed to mean that the vicious and unrestrained pursuit of money at all costs lead down the primrose path.

So maybe an economy that forces us to slow down in that pursuit and reevaluat what we ant and need isn’t such a bad thing.

That doenst mean that we shouldn’t keep trying to improve, but that maybe fixing our economy isn’t as necessary as fixing our values.

After all if we all can whether this much of an economic hit and still be ok, maybe are perceptions of what we needed weren’t so clear in the first place.

But maybe they will be a whole lot clearer because of it.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites