It’s gloomy today in Lansing, Michigan, USA. I’m staying in all day, working in the silence… just me and the click of the keyboard. It’s time to ponder the world and community around me.

I find good everywhere. It amazes me though… people share news of good encounters and acts, as if they were an unusual thing. People are good all over the world. (Here is a photo of a dance friend, Najida, dancing at New Aladdin’s restaurant with her daughter. Good, yes? Totally adorable and loving, if you ask me.)

For example, I lose things pretty regularly. My mind is always on the next thing and I leave creative “rubble” behind me.

Sometimes I leave behind a travel mug, sometimes it’s a handspun/ handwoven scarf from a trip to Mexico (returned to me from a train in Montreal and a park in St. Petersburg, Florida). I had a friend get her SUITCASE back from a subway train in Toronto years ago. And this is just the lost-and-found news in this paragraph.

I follow Twitter and Facebook, sometimes too much and sometimes not much at all. However this week I found three videos through them that are pretty inspiring.

Mitchell’s Day

A high school basketball player passes the ball to a developmentally-disabled kid who is on the other team, with seconds to go. On the OTHER team. I dare you to keep the tears back on this one. Short, but very sweet (click to see video… thanks to C B S Television:

Willing to Work

An 18-year-old boy was willing to walk 10 miles in icy conditions, to try and get a minimum-wage job. Got a job with twice the wages, by a restaurant owner who noticed the boy’s determination and intent quite accidentally. Everybody wins.

Photo by Fox59, story by the Daily Mail (UK)

The two above stories came to me thanks to my Facebook friend Annie Sisk. She’s a website specialist, and you can find her at Stage Presence Marketing.

Saving Lives Quietly

And below is another tear jerker. This man (now Sir Nicholas Winton) arranged trains and homes in England for Czech kids (mostly Jewish) who were certainly going to otherwise be sent to Nazi Death Camps. Most of them lost their parents at Auchwitz.

He saved 669 children and kept logs of their names. He said nothing about it afterward.

His wife found his log book, apparently. In 1988 there was a reunion of sorts. Here he gets to meet a few dozen of the kids he rescued, after they grew up. He did not expect or know this was coming. Wonderful.

You must watch at least the first 2 – 1/2 minutes. Really, you must.

Don’t be content in your life just to do no wrong.
Be prepared everyday to try and do some good.
Sir Nicholas Winton

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2013 at 3:04 amand is filed under quotations, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.