Friendship. People need to figure out how this works. It’s not about YOU. It’s about others. If you take care of your friends, your real friends are going to take care of you. Friends are not accessories, friends are people living just like us and everyone needs someone at some point…it’s our job to be there for our friends.
Our lives are summed up as strings of moments, strung together and daily intertwined with other people’s strings of moments.
I offer- the biggest flaw of society today is: we think we’re too busy.
We hustle around like we have dozens of plates in the air and if our focus shifts from ourselves for the slightest moment – CRASH!
We lose our plates and will incur some penalty and will lose the game. By the way you just lost the game…
There is so much self-involvement that is completely unwarranted. Our minds are beautiful creations, regardless of who or what you attribute the miracle of our minds, to or at. I’ll maintain that God did a splendid job crafting each of my wrinkles.
But theology aside – we’re too self-involved for the good of society.
Take a moment to picture your life as a series of moments.
Wake up
Urinate
Stretch
Brush your teeth
Get dressed
Pack a bag of some sort- full of oddities you will use throughout your day
Leave your house
Choose a mode of transportation
Travel via that mode
I will venture to guess that most of your days will start like that. Interspersed between the moments I just listed, are other moments. Moments of thought, moments of remembering, moments of forgetting, moments built from leftover thoughts from yesterday – moments. Moments, strung together.
Imagine for a minute that everyone else’s life starts about just about the same way. The difference is that in one of their moments; someone died, someone’s spouse left them, an investment went bad, car got repossessed, they don’t have money for food…their moments are just like yours…only in so much as they are moments. But, their moments contain heartache, mind-ache, soul-ache.
Your moments collide with people who are having terrible moments every day. Two moments smashing into one another – one monotonous and one devastating.
Is there ever a pause, where you might consider another’s moment?
Maybe you are asked to consider another’s moment. Someone throws themselves into your moment and exclaims, “I’m suffering right now and could really use one of your moments…”
How do you handle that? Do you quickly scan your current moment, maybe try and anticipate the next couple of moments? How do you prioritize your moments? Is your number one priority: self preservation? Dummy.
We aren’t cavemen. We don’t hunt for our daily sustenance. We aren’t physically taxed – leading to exhaustion to maintain our livelihoods.
This is how you should look at your moment: Am I alive? Check. Are my windpipes uninhibited and allowing me to breath? Check. Is all of my blood in my body and not escaping through any major arteries? No, Okay. Check. Am I conscious? Check. Have I eaten within the last 24hours? Check.
It should take you about 1/2 a second to determine the status of your faculties and arrive at the conclusion that you have a moment to spare. Sparing a moment for someone isn’t going to put your life in jeopardy. Take a moment. Help out a friend. Hell, help out a stranger.
Nine out of 10 times – your life will remain intact if you take a moment to talk to someone and help them out.
I’m not sure where this fear of immediate discord befalling our lives if we stop for a second to help out someone came from.
There are people all around us, everyday, all the time who are in bad places. Really bad places; compared to where we are day in and day out.
I was just recently talking to my friend: Artemis Quickness about people’s reactions to going through hard times.
He mentioned a typical reaction he’s experienced to a friend’s recent passing – the reaction was one of half-hearted interest and an immediate jump to resolution.
Wake-up people and realize that you might be that gateway to resolution people are searching for. When someone admits to going through a hard time; respond with genuine care. Don’t sympathize and jump directly to “But, you’re doing okay, right?”
Before I suggest that you care and lend a couple of moments to someone – ensure you actually care. Please don’t feign interest, because doing that may create more of a problem. Someone confiding in you as they go through a hard time – really need help, uplifting words and encouragement. They don’t need empty drivel meant to boost you and your esteem. They need genuine care and compassion.
Realize, everyone around us, all the time, everyday, without fail is going through something. Going through something that prevents them from sleeping, eating, being healthy, having calm or peace. If you get an opportunity to minster to one of these people – Do It.
You never know – you might be saving a life.
In this day and age suicide is becoming more and more prevalent and I think this is mainly due to people who only see themselves and whatever is going on with them. Despite what’s going on around them…they are staunchly focused on themselves.
Food for thought. What do you guys think?
Much love,
WP
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