Acts of Goodness

"If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody."

- Chinese Proverb

Smile thru storms

If you find yourself getting frustrated with the mundanity of life, try focusing on how you can serve others.  This can have an immense impact on your own life.

Cook a neighbor some cookies, buy a meal for someone experiencing homelessness, help someone who is stranded on the side of the road, buy someone's groceries, volunteer at a homeless shelter, donate some of your homegrown vegetables, volunteer at an organization helping refugees, volunteer at an orphanage, those are just a few ideas of how you can help others - if you so desire.  There are probably millions if not billions of ways you can help others.  Get creative with it!

Think about how if a neighbor were to bring you some cookies, how much that would make your day.  Even if you don't like cookies, or if they're terrible or if you don't eat sugar, just the act of them bringing you cookies will still brighten your day.  If it would make your day better, go brighten somebody else's day with it.

When was the last time you actually treated someone experiencing homelessness as a person?  Instead of rolling up your windows and locking your car door, buy them a sandwich or burrito and just sit with them and have an actual conversation - as two human beings tend to do.  Recognize the humanity in them.  They'll appreciate the food and the conversation and if you do this every now and then you will probably be very surprised by how many people who are currently experiencing homelessness used to have a life extremely similar to your own and now they're down on their luck and find themselves stuck.  They are a human being just like you are so treat them as such.  If you were in their shoes, how would you want to be treated?  One day you may be in their shoes.

Food insecurity is a huge issue for quite a lot of people and a lot of communities are intentionally setup to only have access to fast food options which creates a lot of health issues and makes it very hard for those communities to prosper - through no fault of their own.  While you might not be able to directly help people who need it the most across the country, you can certainly help those in your own community.  Donate some of your delicious produce to food banks or organizations that help distribute the food out to those in your community who really need it.

We are all in this world together and we are all the same - it doesn't matter where you are born, what religion you believe, what food you eat, what music you listen to, etc.  Instead of focusing on yourself and how you can prosper more.  Focus on what you can do to help others, this will bring more purpose and focus into your own life along with really putting what matters into perspective.  If you're sitting all alone on a mound of gold bars and everyone around you is living in dire straights and you're ignoring all of them - there is no point to that and you will be absolutely miserable.  If you're able to help others along their own path that not only benefits them but it benefits you too.

Help others - it's simple - we're all in this game of life together!