|
YELLOW STICKIES REDUX
Friday Dec. 9, 2011
There are measuring tools to detect rumblings deep in the earth, or in composition of air we breathe or water we drink or any compound you can imagine.
Science can detect any little nuance. But science isn’t so good at measuring the spirit.
How do you measure someone’s feeling, or resolve? Or the impact of an action, word or effort. It seems, so often, the minute we do something it is lost, gone, forgotten and of no lasting impact. Right! So why do it?
So easy, to see those without hope or direction, or living in the margins of society, or out there on the edge of it all – hanging in, and hanging on – with disdain. So easy to say ‘it’s their own fault they are where they are’. Easy. Easy to dismiss those who are on, or who have fallen over, the edge.
And, can we detect who they are?
It isn’t the clothes, having a fine roof (or none at all) over our heads or enjoying success as society defines it that measures us or indicates how we are doing. It isn’t how often we see each other, or talk, or catch-up on old times.
Frankly, that has little to do with anything, or anyone, worth knowing.
This time of year we vacillate, don’t we? Between being swept up, and into, merriment of the season vis-à-vis facing reality, whether that is our own reality or circumstances of strangers who are down on their luck.
How do we measure whether someone is better off, or worse, than before – or how they feel about you, or me, or life, or their prospects?
Give me a device that measures that, please scientists, and that would be a breakthrough.
As I see it, we cannot see. How do I know?
Because I know how surprised I am when someone proves to me that I haven’t seen them, or that they haven’t seen me. Or when they have.
I’m not talking in circles now – but I want to convey an idea in a few words that would take a book chapter to properly explain.
I received a gift yesterday – a note from someone I’d lost track of in recent years – an invitation to attend a function where she now works. And in that note that included this phrase ‘so the stickies on the mirror would never have put me where I am’ . . .
Those words took me back, to time I spent with her over coffee one afternoon trying to help someone find direction using a tool I’ve often used when confused, something I’ve written about from time to time in this column – a method I’ve used to sort and rank priorities of ideas, issues, problems and initiatives in my life.
I’ve graduated you know – from yellow-sticky-notes to full sheets of typed columns and bullet points that litter my office/bathroom mirror. I took them down the other day, for packing and re-installation in my new place. When I took them down I didn’t think about the many times I’ve stood in front of that mirror, perplexed and unable to see myself for all the sticky notes . . . but I realize, right now, how important those notes have been.
Amazing isn’t it, how someone you reach out to in a crowd, someone you connect with in the most unusual way can one day reach out in return, to give back a gift that strikes to the heart of what matters most in this world, and in this season.
Reaching out to help, in whatever way we try, is its own reward.
Most often we won’t get an email years later making reference to our efforts to help.
Which is not a reason not to try.
So easy to do it. Again, or to make a fresh start.
Mark Kolke
307,484
column written/ published from Calgary; morning walk: -5 C/22 F , clear and calm as we trudged over slippy-moonscape of freeze/thaw remnants; I laughed out loud when Gusta found some kids half-sandwich castoff frozen into the muck, so tempting, but impossible to get it out . . .
Comments Received:
GOOD DAY
Hi Mark. I just wanted to congratulate you on your sobriety anniversary. And are congratulations in order for the move as well? Hope things work out well for you in your new location, LJ, Calgary, AB
Congratulations on your anniversary yesterday! It looks good on you, LG, Calgary, AB
| 
