doing good; doing nothing

There was a bit on NPR last year during their "This I Believe" series on Monday mornings (I've downloaded the best of NPR 2005 on Podcasts). The premise of the five minute spots is to allow famous, and unknowns alike, a chance to pass on life's nuggets of wisdom. Some of the pieces can be a little overwrought for my taste but others are more pertinent to everyday life. I've been rolling a phrase around in my head for many a moon, trying to get it perfect, as a phantom response to an unknown person asking why I might be doing something: bringing bags to the grocery store, not driving a SUV, recycling...that sort of stuff. It's not perfect yet but it goes something like, "I may not be the solution, but I'm certainly not part of the problem." The way I riddle the issues of the world is that we may not know the answers to the ills of every neighborhood or country, but we can certainly avoid adding our own flames to the fire. Diedre Sullivan was the contributor and her take concerned funerals and the lessons she had learned from her father. She was a teen at the time and remembered her father telling her that she needed to attend a viewing of her fifth-grade teacher. She didn't want to, though she'd been to funerals before, because it just seemed a bother. She was the only child at the viewing, passed some lame words to the widow, and later came to know her better. The widow never forgot that she'd been there, and how thankful she was to see one of his former students. It mattered. Ms. Sullivan later realized that sometimes there are things in life that we don't want to do: attend funerals, help people, visit someone in the hospital when we don't seem to have enough time, and any other 'time-consuming' functions that show even a little side of us. Lessons learned...and an idea that her life isn't a battle between good and evil, she says that's too dramatic; but a tug-o-war between doing good and doing nothing. The things we don't do don't make us evil, or lazy, or lost...they just aren't done. The stuff we do has an effect on everyone around us. Such a simple idea.

If you have the mind, and the ability, to listen to online music, I'll throw out the Flogging Molly instudio performance at the Current in Minneapolis. They're a lovely 'irish' band with fantastic tunes.

Flogging Molly in studio

(scroll down to Flogging Molly)

xxx

T