When I am tempted to concede that life really sucks
When I fantasize about the possibility of just packing it in
When I feel like I might never ever experience the joy of true victory
When it’s hard to breathe or even sit still,

I close my eyes and I try to remember that:

It’s not over…

I read somewhere once that the word music comes from the Greek word muse which literally means “to make think”. That might explain why it has been said that music makes us more human; that it helps us to get in touch with our humanity. I know that whenever I listen to music I am always surprised at how immediately I am transported somewhere else and how I always immediately feel a little bit more in touch with myself.

Recently, I was talking and talking and talking to Auguste about nothing all that important. I was going on and on and on as I can do, when I looked over at him and something looked terribly wrong. He looked like he was enduring some sort of physical pain:
“What’s wrong”, I said. “Are you O.K.?” I was worried.

“My Dad. All of a sudden I’m just missing my Dad”, he answered.

Auguste’s Dad died not too long ago and he is still working through the grief.

As I stood next to him silently, trying quietly to provide whatever support I could, I noticed that James Taylor’s “Shower The People You Love With Love” was playing softly in the background…

It is the expression of a particular philosophy for living and it translates to suggest that:

“I am because you are”.

It is Ubuntu.

Much more than a word, Ubuntu is in fact for many…

I remember the butterflies in my stomach when I read the brochure on the bulletin board, the one that described the trip to Europe that was being offered by the school – London, Paris, Amsterdam… As a tenth grader I had been dreaming of going to Paris for at least one third of my life…

I received a comment recently, in response to something that I had included in Dana Delivered! about how my attitude toward humanity had been elevated because of an act of kindness that I witnessed. The comment was from someone who reads regularly and he shared with me how he himself had “felt the beauty of kindness”.

He wrote to me about a man that he saw near a busy intersection as he slowed for a red light on his way to work. It was 8:15 in the morning. The man was holding a sign that read “Dreaming of a cheeseburger”.

Busy man, in his Mercedes Benz, on his way to work – a cheeseburger didn’t seem like a dream that should be out of reach for anyone so he doubled back and found a Burger King, ordered a double cheeseburger with fries and a coke and went back to find the man holding the sign.

He found him in the same spot. He stopped, rolled his window down and handed the man the bag and was instantly uplifted by his own simple act of kindness that supported someone else in fulfilling a dream.

The man thanked him, put his sign down and walked off “with an air of anticipation”.

I really appreciated that he shared this story with me and I wondered what the world could be like if more of us wouldn’t talk ourselves out of making a small difference in someone else’s life — because we can make a difference. It can feel sometimes like the contribution we can make is probably too small.

But –

it is not.

When someone is hungry, a double cheeseburger can mean the world…