How We View The World

Christmas This Year..Think Heifer International

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / Leave a comment

Yeah, I know, this post is going to sound like one of those poor-oh-so-whiny and  spoiled American blogs and today that is what is truly is. I know. I get it. But today I will put myself out there and hang my head in shame if it gets just one of you over to the Heifer site to make a donation to this worthwhile organization. Thanks.

Christmas has become a fiasco in this house. Every year the pile of presents seems to get bigger while the actual needs get smaller. The holiday had become grand that no one can remember exactly what they received because there was just too much to process and catalog at one time.

I confess this is all my fault. Unlike my ex-brother-in-law who takes his kids shopping for a new toy every Friday (ugh); I am one of those parents who rarely buys something for my kids unless it is their birthday or Christmas. The rest of the year…forget it.  Yet, I have discovered that this parenting philosophy of mine also works to my disadvantage because I guilt myself into believing I have to make up for all those “NO’S” during the rest of the year and so at Christmas I am like Santa on steroids…disgusting…especially when there are so many children in the world just wanting to have a meal to fill their empty stomachs. Over the years my travels have pressed into my psyche the enormous needs throughout the world and in this country too.Buying toys or providing food…the seriousness of this weighs heavily on my mind during the holiday season and throughout the year. Really a child going hungry should not be happening anywhere in this day and age. But it does all too often and we all suffer because of it because who is to say what that child could have grown up to achieve? Perhaps they would have been the one to provide the missing “ingredient” to make sustainable cold fusion a reality? Or maybe they would have become a person who promotes unity and healing throughout the world? Maybe someone like Gandhi? Or maybe they would have practiced the art of a local healer whose ability to diagnose keeps her community alive? So much potential talent snuffed out and wasted due to weather, politics, poor infrastructure, greedy middlemen or assholes who intentionally starve their citizens while their pockets and bellies grow fat.

While I cannot change all the problems in the world I can change them in my little corner. So after much decision and debate this year we are trying something new. Each child will get four presents; one in each category: SOMETHING I WANT; SOMETHING I NEED, SOMETHING TO WEAR and SOMETHING TO READ. They will also pick out a animal to donate through Heifer International to a family whose life will be changed because they now have a way to sustain themselves and make money as their animals procreate and grow. And if you are interested you can contribute too. Visit Heifer International and learn more about this worthwhile charity. Or do something for your neighbors in need. Whatever we each do we will be making the change that we all want to see and that is the best gift we can give ourselves in a world gone mad.

http://www.heifer.org/

 

Limitations We Place On Ourselves…309 Days To Fix This

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 5 Comments

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I’m not a half-full or half-empty glass kind of girl. I go flowing between the two like water washing over coarse sand as my moods dictate. In stormy weather my glass tends to be half-empty while a walk on the beach on a sunny day makes that half-full glass appear to be the size of a champagne magnum. In this vein, I recently saw a video on Facebook that showed a grandson talking about visiting his grandfather who had just lost his wife of 65+ years. As the old man relates to his grandson the changes he is going through with this wife’s passing, his grandson replies, “Grandpa you always make me see the glass as half-full.” And his grandfather replied, “It is a beautiful glass.”

It was in that moment that I realized that I want to be the person who sees the beauty of the glass itself and not the person who sees the limitations of the vessel and what it can hold. As I reflect over my life a see a person who thought she had to choose between the half-full half-empty scenario and I grew up believing those two ideas (half-full and half-empty) were the only choices available to me. Now I see that there are more options than I ever dreamed possible.

I want to wake up everyday seeing possibilities not possible problems, sunshine not clouds but mostly I want to appreciate the beauty of the glass as it reflects my life within it, including the good the bad and the ugly. I think it is important to realize that there is value in all that makes up this reflection of myself even if the glass sometimes distorts and twists what I see.

The beauty of the glass is really what is important so make it be the glass you want to see with your favorite colors, phrases and shapes. Enjoying the beauty of the glass is what we should strive for while we try to put away the notion that we have to determine whether it is half-full or half-empty. In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway because the glass was always beautiful and what it was holding was irrelevant… unless it was a superb 40-year-old Tawny Port….in which case I would need to empty the glass to see it’s true beauty.

(somehow this post has gone from a life affirming one to a narrative about booze. The hell with the glass…let’s contemplate the bottle!)

https://www.facebook.com/humanthemovie/videos/468301476675049/?pnref=story