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<\/a>What do you do when you can\u2019t do anything?<\/p>\nI have so many friends who are watching the horrendous violence unfold in Syria.\u00a0 We feel helpless, voyeurs to massacre on the other side of the world, but as close as our hi-def big-screen TVs.\u00a0 What can we do?\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 What can anyone do?<\/p>\n
This is always the question.\u00a0 I saw hungry children in Africa.\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 I watched a story about child prostitutes in Thailand.\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 I saw Israeli tanks blasting chunks out of a building in Gaza and rolling over olive groves.\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 I saw starving dogs rescued from a puppy mill.\u00a0 What can I do?<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t always do something.\u00a0 Sometimes we can.\u00a0 My family has been able to donate some money to worthy causes, like famine relief in Africa or earthquake relief in Pakistan.\u00a0 We certainly can\u2019t do anything \u201con the ground\u201d.\u00a0 We can\u2019t hop on an airplane and fly to Africa or India or Syria and drag people away from chaos and disaster.\u00a0 We can\u2019t shut down an abortion clinic in Calcutta or swoop down to rescue orphans from hard labor in some village somewhere else.\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 Can I call my congressman?\u00a0 Can I write a blog post to raise awareness?\u00a0 Can I take my Starbucks money and send it to an orphanage instead?\u00a0 What can I do?<\/p>\n
This feeling of helplessness is not fun.\u00a0 I know I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING, anything to help those poor starving people in Africa, or the besieged citizens of Homs, or those unwanted girls in the villages of India, or the child slaves or the mentally ill being abused or the abused animals or the polluted land.\u00a0 Pick a disaster; unfortunately there are plenty from which to choose.<\/p>\n
So what can I do?\u00a0 What can you do?\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m a big advocate of \u201cthink globally, act locally\u201d.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t help a person halfway across the world, then maybe you can help someone a little closer to home.\u00a0 You can volunteer in your community and make a big difference in someone\u2019s life.\u00a0 You can work at a food pantry.\u00a0 You can go out into the community to feed the homeless.\u00a0 You can start a coat drive.\u00a0 You can teach youngsters how to grow food in a small garden.\u00a0 You can tutor a homeless child.<\/p>\n
Well, but I\u2019m not saving a LIFE, you say.\u00a0 I might be helping reduce misery in the world just a little bit, but I\u2019m not feeding a starving child, merely a hungry homeless guy who might be a drunk or a drug addict anyway.\u00a0 I\u2019m not keeping a destitute woman from dying of exposure, but only setting up a cot to make a street person more comfortable.\u00a0 I\u2019m not stopping a tyrant from killing an entire village, I\u2019m just knitting hats for preemie babies at the hospital.\u00a0 I\u2019m not doing much of anything, so why do anything?\u00a0 I\u2019m not saving a life.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t know the result of any good deed that you do.\u00a0 That bowl of soup you hand out to the homeless guy may be less important than the kind smile you offer him.\u00a0 He might see that smile and finally realize he\u2019s still a human being.\u00a0 That smile might propel him to toss away his bottle of booze, get clean and sober, and get off the street.<\/p>\n
You might not be saving the life of the homeless woman in the shelter when you set up that cot, but she might see the effort you make, the compassion in your eyes, and muster the courage to make it through one more day.\u00a0 She might see that you picked up her child\u2019s fallen toy and carefully dusted it off before giving it back, and realize that she can dust herself off as well and keep going for her sake.<\/p>\n
You might not be saving the life of the poor family that needs to come to the food pantry to get enough groceries to make it to the end of the month, but the father who is ashamed to not be able to feed his kids might feel the pat on the back that you give him and realize that he has the strength to go on and keep looking for work because there are people who care about him and he is not alone.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be grateful that you put in a box of cookies for the kids along with the practical pasta and beans.<\/p>\n
You might not be saving the life of the middle schooler who looks to you to teach her remedial math, but she might realize that there\u2019s an adult who believes in her and she might then come to believe in herself, and to learn to love school, and to not get pregnant and drop out and end up on the dole.<\/p>\n
Saving a life is not always about saving a life.\u00a0 Saving a life is not always about saving a physical body.\u00a0 Saving a life is often about saving a soul, helping a person who is not in immediate danger of death, but whose soul is dying bit by bit and in need of revival.\u00a0 By offering a compassionate smile, a kind word, a warm coat, a bowl of soup, a hand up, a lesson, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, you might save a soul today and a life twenty years on down the line.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t pretend it\u2019s not frustrating to look at all the chaos and death going on in the world and not be doing anything about it.\u00a0 I won\u2019t pretend that children won\u2019t die in Syria because of what I\u2019m doing in Virginia.\u00a0 I won\u2019t pretend that it doesn\u2019t hurt to see a frail child on TV looking out at me on what may be the day of his death due to starvation.\u00a0 We are human and we are compassionate and yes, we should shed tears at such sights.\u00a0 And if we can help, we should.\u00a0 If we can give up that venti mocha latte and send the money to Somalia, or Pakistan, or to our poor cousin in Egypt who needs an operation, we should indeed do that.\u00a0 We are not totally helpless and some of us can do a little, and some can do more.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t let our inability to help over there paralyze us so we don\u2019t do anything over here.\u00a0 And just because we live in the \u201cfirst world\u201d and it may seem that our people in need are not in as desperate straits as people who are literally living on the edge of death, that doesn\u2019t mean that what we do here is less important.\u00a0 EVERY act of compassion is important.\u00a0 So find out what the needs are in your community and then do what you can to help.\u00a0 Whether you are a professional businessman or a stay at home mom, there is something you can do.\u00a0 Money or no money, there is help you can give.\u00a0 You have a talent, an ability, a thing that you do that is uniquely you that you can use to help benefit someone else.\u00a0 Figure out what it is and then go do something.\u00a0 Just do something.\u00a0 You might be saving a life and not even know it.\u00a0 Even if you\u2019re just serving a bowl of soup or knitting a hat.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What do you do when you can\u2019t do anything? I have so many friends who are watching the horrendous violence unfold in Syria.\u00a0 We feel helpless, voyeurs to massacre on the other side of the world, but as close as our hi-def big-screen TVs.\u00a0 What can we do?\u00a0 What can I do?\u00a0 What can anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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