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Friday, December 7, 2012

Be The Candle





Today the news is full of the story of a man pushed in front of a subway train and no one tries to help him get up and back safely onto the station platform.  One man stands near and makes the effort to take 49 pictures of the event in full living (and dying) color.  Perhaps it happened so fast that everyone was “stunned” into non-action.  I can’t even begin to analyze it fairly since I wasn’t there, but it does make me wonder about our willingness to do the right thing in our society.

Conversely, there was another story a few days ago about a police officer in the same city who bought a pair of boots for a homeless man who had no shoes (I wonder if he read the story about the Good Samaritan?)  Positive actions in our society don’t often get coverage, and maybe that is because they don’t happen often. It is the evil in the world that often takes the headlines, and the media does that by choice, I believe.  It grabs our attention and increases ratings (or sales back in the days when printed newspapers ruled.)

I wonder if those positive acts of kindness would bloom if they were covered more often in the news?  Would we be driven to emulate those actions more often?  I suspect so, and it wouldn’t take much to get that kind of movement started.

I still remember a visit I made to the old Eagle Gold Mine in Julian, CA.  This 1870s tunnel bores deep under the town, and at one point in the tour they turn off the non-historic light bulbs that line the shafts.  You stand in darkness blacker than anything you can imagine.  Then the guide lights a small candle in a sardine can reflector, which is all the miner of that time had for illumination.  The glow of that candle in the darkness is unbelievably bright and hugely illuminating.  All it takes is one candle to make that difference.

Be that candle to your world.

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