Well, today certainly turned into a beautiful day. It was shaping up to be a classic icky Monday. It was raining. I was exhausted from a fantastic weekend in Montreal and equally depressed to be back in the states. There wasn’t a lot I was looking forward to.
But here I am on my lunch break with the fall sun still managing to warm my back and I’m realizing today isn’t that bad after all. I just wish I could be on one of those sailboats heading for a trip around the harbor islands instead of back into my office.
I guess I can’t always have it all, but this is certainly enough for now.
Hope you’re enjoying your Monday as much as you can too!
Words are just words until the moment occurs where the figurative lightbulb illuminates up
above your head. You can be told something over and over again, but it isn’t until your brain is able to make a connection from those words to real life that you truly understand.
This moment happend for me the other day when I was moving the trash and the recycling to the street. I was feeling fed up with my apartment building, my neighborhood, my generation, I even went as far as feeling fed up with the world.
“Why is it that nothing ever changes?” I asked myself. ”No one locks our front door. No one takes out the trash or recycles properly. No one takes responsibility for anything.”
I continued to huff and puff, brooding over my dilemma, while dragging recycling bins partially filled with trash and garbage cans that hadn’t seen the curb in weeks down our pseudo driveway.
It wasn’t until I had moved each bucket and retrieved any cans that tried to make a get-away that I realized the real problem.
I wasn’t taking responsibility either.
I was just as guilty as anyone else. I was being just as thoughtless. I was being negligent. I was ignoring problems I knew I could help fix in favor of leaving it for someone else. That’s when the words of Gandhi crept their way into the forefront of my mind.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
The famous words made me think. What is the change that I want to see? At that very moment I wanted to see my neighbors bring the trash down to the street and not let it pile up week after week.
What I failed to consider before was that I am a part of this community and so if I want to see something change I need to initiate, get the ball rolling, lead by example. There are countless colloquialisms to describe what I realized and finally understood completely.
You may not be able to change the world entirely, but you can certainly change your own part of the world by taking those first steps. I’ve started by taking out the trash. My next move is to solve the economic crisis in the United States.
So the latter I may be under-qualified for as of yet, but I’ll work my way up to that level.
I love catching people doing human things. These are the activities we are told not to do by parents at a young age. When you were young you asked “why?” but the older you got, the less you asked. Until one day, you had just accepted these social rules. There was nothing left to question. You had come to understand that this was the way life worked.
The other day, I was walking back from food shopping and heading towards the T. As I was passing the Fairmont Hotel, I came across a older man, probably around 78 years-old, peeking into the hotel through a window.
I couldn’t help but smile to myself. He looked just like a little boy, peering in from outside, not caring at all whether it would be considered rude for him to be watching the diners eating at their fancy candlelit tables. Curiosity got the best of him but he didn’t mind. Had he wanted to be discrete he certainly wouldn’t have picked a window to look through on a busy main drag in Boston.
Seeing him made me ask that question from way back when. “Why not?” Why shouldn’t this man be able to look into the window of a fancy hotel. Why can’t he take a look, see what’s on the other side? Why should he hold back?
Have you ever caught someone playing with their food? Maybe you saw someone pick a flower from a public garden they weren’t supposed to touch. I’m sure you’ve looked over at a coworker’s pad during a meeting and saw drawings lining the margins.
We all do things that our mother’s would tell us not to, whether you recognize it or not. Perhaps what made me smile, looking at that old man, was that he reminded me that we’re not all that different. I see these moments as reminders that no one is perfect and that we shouldn’t always get hung up on trying to be that well mannered citizen your parents have tried to raise you to be.
Because frankly, sometimes manners get in the way. What fun is it to eat spaghetti if you can’t slurp the long noodle into your mouth like Lady and the Tramp? Why shouldn’t I sing at the dinner table if a song pops into my head? If I want to look in a window out of curiosity, why shouldn’t I? What are puddles good for if you can’t splash in them after a heavy rain? If drawing in a meeting gets me through it, why can’t I?
Now, there are obviously things that you learned at a young age that you still shouldn’t do. Picking you nose being one of them, or cutting in line. But try to free yourself a little from the other things. Let society loosen its grip on you. If you feel like taking a nap in the grass on your lunch break, don’t worry about what people walking by will think.
Do what makes you happy. Relax and enjoy life. Eat your desert before your dinner. Stay up late watching movies. You don’t have to make your bed. And never take yourself too seriously.
