Eye of the Storm

While Bermuda is gearing up to withstand the brunt of impact from hurricane Igor, here closer to home a good friend is in the midst of making some major life changes.  I talk to her on the phone and hear the certainty in her voice about what she is doing, but I also hear the anxiety that comes along with making a decision that, in the short run, is difficult for those around her.  She is asking questions that I know I have asked myself... Am I doing the right things for my kids, right now?  Am I making good decisions so that I have the financial security I need to take care of myself and my family?  Will my kids understand all of this someday?  Will anything ever feel "normal" again?

Today, looking at O (and knowing what my friend is going through) I could not help but be thankful for this day...thankful that we have moved past all of the uncertainty, found the right path, moved on.  I felt relief for myself...relief that so many things have been put behind us.  Each day is not ideal, however I feel a strength that I did not feel for many years, and each day feels like it belongs to me...there are not the same uncertainties that used to lurk around every corner.

I also feel so much sadness for my friend... I wish I could somehow show her the future that is there for her...  I wish she could really see that one year from now, two years from now, TEN years from now...her life will be different and she won't feel the same way that she feels today.  I can't promise her that her life will be better, but I know that it will be different, and I know that she will feel even more confident about taking control of her life.  It think it is true that in the eye of the storm we find our strength and our true path...we just have to be brave enough to face our fears and move forward.

Random Acts of Kindness...

Generally speaking I really like the idea of random acts of kindness... that to make the world a better place, you just do something nice for another person.  You do that nice thing not because you want "credit" for doing a nice thing, but because you see an opportunity to make someone's day better, and it also happens to make you feel better for recognizing that chance and seizing the opportunity...

So, this week... A work colleague was struggling through some things and seemed to need a pick up.  I decided to send that person lunch because lunch is the one thing he seems to always miss... It was delivered in an effort to make the act be anonymous because, quite honestly, I just wanted that person to know that someone was thinking of them, but I didn't necessarily want to be recognized as the person doing it.  I just wanted to make a gesture and leave it at that...

Fast forward to lunch delivery... Lunch is delivered, person does not know who sent the delivery so he inquires among the other staff... Rest of the department turns a sandwich delivery into all afternoon speculation and drama.  Seriously... Seriously?  If I had sent the guy a lap dance, maybe we would have something to talk about...it was a SANDWICH people.  Another friend filled me in on some of the gossip...

I have to say, the whole "incident" just really annoys me... This week has been an extraordinarily difficult one at work... it has been announced that branches will close and employees will lose their jobs; it has been splashed on the front cover of our local newspaper.  Don't we have more important things to worry about than who had lunch delivered to someone?  We have associates who depend on the bank to take care of their families... they no longer have the security that they used to because of a poor economy that none of us can control.  It is a helpless feeling to know you can't "fix" that situation.  So, in the scheme of the events that are going on all around us, does it make any sense to spend an afternoon making a huge deal speculating about who decided to show a work friend a small (very small) kindness?

My final thoughts on this... and I promise I will stop thinking about it afterwards...  In a time when there is so much uncertainty all around us, in a time when people are so focused on themselves that they take each other for granted and rarely go out of their way for others, that is a time when we need to stop, look around, and ask ourselves what we can do to make things feel better... So I sent a sandwich this week in an effort to cheer another person up...didn't seem like a big deal to me, but apparently it was.  The bottom line for me, though?  If I could do it all over again, I would not change a thing... This world needs random acts of kindness; our friends need to know that we care about them; we all need to stop for a minute and consider someone other than ourselves.

Fall & Football...