random acts of kindness

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”

It's no hidden secret to my dearest friends that I'll find any reason to quote my favorite movie, Love Actually, like I did above. However I found that quote running through my head yesterday over and over when my sisters and I were stranded in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire on our way to a family Christmas party.

My two sisters, Hannah and Meredith, 18 and 16, and I were a few hours behind my parents on our way to our Aunt and Uncle's house to celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family. It's a pretty short drive, only about 2 hours. Twenty minutes into the trip, as soon as we crossed the Delaware state line, we heard a small pop. We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, it didn't seem like anything was wrong. 

About an hour later, when we were deep into "slower lower" my sisters and I were cruising a cool 75 mph and singing along to Taylor Swift oblivious to any problems whatsoever. I could see a car driving parallel with us in the left hand lane yelling at Hannah, who was driving. The woman was screaming "flat flat flat."

Great, we thought, flat tire. 

We pulled over and examined that my sister's car did, in fact, have a flat tire on the back wheel of the drivers side. I've had flats before, I wasn't concerned, it wasn't a big deal. I called my dad to get his advice and he said that if we drove a few more miles there would be a wawa. We could fill up our tire with air and pop back onto the highway and get to my uncles. 

Perfect plan. 

We went to the wawa, and hooked up the air into the tire. Now, this next statement may bring about judgmental laughs, as it did with my father, uncles and cousins when we recounted the story, but understand that neither of us three girls have ever put air into tires before -- therefore, we didn't know what an air pump was suppose to look like. After 15 minutes of trying to put air into the tire and not understanding why it wouldn't fill up, an older man, around 65 years old pulled up and told us that the pump we were using didn't work -- half of the parts were missing. Great. He tried to think of places that had air pumps, but couldn't. But, he had a solution. 

He said that he was a fireman, and if we followed him off the highway and into town, he could use the firehouse's air and send us on our way. Perfect! 

So, we followed him. We pulled into the Symrna Delaware firehouse and parked the car, the man pulled out the air and started to fill our tire.

"You have a nail in it," he told us. Oh boy. "How far do you think you traveled with the nail in this tire.... an hour? You girls are very very lucky." 

He told us that he would plug it for us, but the fire house had no tire plugs. By this point, all the firemen who were at the firehouse, about 5 of them, were out looking at our tire. One guy said that he had a plug at his house and he would go back and get it. 

So he left, as he was gone, my sisters and I got a private tour of the Symrna firehouse and got all of their awards and trophies explained to us in detail. 

The man with the plug came back, they got on their backs, plugged the tire, filled all four tires up with air and told us we were good to go. 

I went to go give the man -- who had originally found us trying to use a broken air pump to put air into a tire with a nail at wawa -- a deep and sincere thank you, shake his hand and and get his name. As I put my hand out, the man bypassed my extended hand and gave me a hug.

So we were back on the road after spending 45 minutes with the firemen who had helped us with more than we had ever asked from them. And the man who found us and made sure we were safely back on the road, never even told us his name. 

Moments and stories, like the one my sisters and I experienced yesterday, remind me of how special random acts of kindness can be. These moments give me hope in the human population, that somewhere, deep in our core -- people care about people. 

We're called to love one another, yes, but love doesn't always come in the form of giving gifts to your family, or bringing canned items to a soup drive, sometimes it can be selflessly helping out three girls with a flat tire. 

Maybe it was because it's Christmas, or maybe it was because the man has three daughters himself, no matter what his reasoning was - he helped us, and asked nothing in return. 

So, whenever I am feeling particularly gloomy with the stand of the world, I may not think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport (sorry, Hugh Grant) but I'll think of the five men who fixed our tire. They way they helped us wasn't newsworthy -- but it was love. 

And I too have a feeling that if we look for it, love actually is all around. 

i love sundays

I love Sundays for a few reasons, but one of the main reasons is because postsecret.com updates their website every Sunday. Post secret is my favorite blog to follow, of all time. The concept of the site is simple but what can be found there can be funny, heartbreaking, beautiful, sad and moving. People from all over create a post card, and write their secrets on it and mail it in anonymously. The post cards get published in books, but also updated on postsecret.com. Sometimes the "secrets" are actual secrets, but sometimes they are just things that people are afraid to say out loud.

The creator of the website, a man named Frank Warren, spoke at Penn State my freshman year. He told the audience that he went through a time in his life where he was depressed and had decided to kill himself, however it was knowing that he wasn't alone, from the secrets, stories and confessions of other people, that saved him. He started the site as an attempt to 'pay it forward' and help other people by making it public that everyone goes through things they are afraid to say out loud.

The site is more than a blog, it's been a sort of a cultural phenomenon. The site is extremely popular and the kind of art on the front of the post cards has started a new form of art, appropriately called "mail art," I even was quizzed on this art form, and post secret, in one of my college art classes. The site has also achieved the purpose that Frank intended it too, it has saved lives and let people know that they are never alone. Every few weeks, there is a card posted that says "I was going to kill myself, until I read this secret....(insert older post secret here)."

Just two weeks ago, this secret was posted:

Within a few HOURS of the secret being posted, there were facebook groups, having almost 60,000 members by the end of the week, that were supporting and encouraging whoever wrote this secret not to give up, not to do it, and that he or she was not alone. Then, the following week, followers of this story organized a rally against suicide on the Golden Gate, the place where most suicides occur.


Click to read the article in TIME

My friends can affirm, I love this website. I have one of the books on my night stand and save the images of my favorite secrets every week, resulting in a "P.S" picture folder on my computer that most likely takes up more memory than I would like to admit.

If you haven't visited the site before, you should try it out. So simple, but so powerful. There are also tons of youtube videos out there that show case 'stand-out' secrets, and I could watch them for hours (and have on one or two occasions, shh). This is one of my favorites, I hope you enjoy and can see why people love this website. 

gives me hope

A recent trend in the website/blogging world over the past few years is one that you are no doubt familiar with if you spend any kind of time on the internet. It is websites with user submitted content, anonymously sharing little blurbs about their lives with the rest of the world. However, it isn't just random life stories and happenings, they are all "themed" according to the respective site.

The first website, the grandfather of all it's website branch-offs, is FML or fmylife.com. I'm sure you can figure out what it means. On this site, users submit small stories and life events that they thought, well, sucked. Everything posted on the site is something that has had a negative affect in the user's life. An example of something you may find on the site would be: Today I woke up, got dressed, commuted an hour to my job, and realized it was Saturday. FML. Or, sometimes, they are much more serious: I Just found out my finacee cheated on me with my maid-of-honor, it's the night before our wedding. FML.

So, as you can see, these life happenings that people are sharing with the world are only things that have made negative, and potentially catastrophic impacts on people. At first glace, the website can seem funny. People sharing with the world all the little mistakes we make day-in and day-out that really piss us off. But looking closer, this website is sad. People hating their lives or their circumstances so much that they need to put it on a website just so they can find humor in their pain. Now, the commuting to work one -- not so serious. But there are many that are similar to the wedding one, posts where people are traumatized.

I started out being a huge fan of this website, visiting it almost daily for laughs for over a year, however in the past few years, I've become a little bit disturbed by its concept. Since when is dwelling on the negative ever a useful thing? When has that ever improved any circumstance?

Since I love cliches, I'm going to quote the Dave Matthews Band, "celebrate we will, because life is short, but sweet for certain." We should be trying to love and absorb every second of our ever-so-temporary lives. Yes, bad things happen, but it's celebrating the good things that matter. So these trendy websites, that are essentially haters on life, get me upset.

Like I said FML is the grandfather, the site that started the internet craze, but it is not to be out-done by it's offspring, textsfromlastnight.com, a horrible excuse for entertainment where people submit raunchy and disgusting text messages they have received/sent out. Then there is mylifeisaverage.com, think fml with less drama. For example: today I watched 5 hours of TV with my cat. my life is average. 

However, there has been a small shift in these popular sites, with the creation and rising popularity of a different kind of website; This website was born as a direct result of the popularity of the aforementioned sites. It's called givesmehope.com, its tagline is "FML for the optimist." And that is exactly what it is. The idea is the same, users submit anonyomous life happening, but ones that give them hope for the future, that remind them that the world is not always such a bad place.

The results of this site are pretty remarkable, and I feel so challenged to look at all the good things in my life that give me hope. Like the unconditional love of my parents and sisters give me hope, the power of life-long friendships give me hope, and people who always say hold open the door for someone behind them give me hope.

We all struggle, and we are all dealt those times where things really feel like they suck -- be it commuting an hour to work on a Saturday or a heart-shattering revelation the night before your wedding -- regardless, we all have more than enough to be thankful and it is possible to see good in our lives even in the midst of a less-than-ideal situation. It's my hope that we can always be able to find the things in our lives that give us hope.

Here are a few examples from the website,  please let them warm your heart as they did mine.

I am a third grade teacher. Most kids come in with notes or messages written by their mothers in their lunch sacks. One little girl's dad left, and her mother abuses drugs. But her 12 year old brother never fails to write "I love you" on her brown paper bag. He GMH.

I was at the mall the other day when I saw an old couple sitting together. The man looked over at the woman and said, "Jane, we did it. We grew old together." The look in her eyes GMH. 

Today my 7 year old daughter gave my 5 year old son a kiss on the cheek. After she walked away, I saw him rubbing the spot where she had kissed him. I asked if he was wiping the kiss off. He said "no, I'm rubbing it in so it gets to my heart faster." Siblings that truly love each other GMH!

A guy I knew in high school would bring two dozen roses to school every Valentines Day. He would give one rose to each girl he knew that didn't have a valentine. He felt that every girl deserved to feel special. I was one of those girls. We've been married 3 years. Stand up guys in a world of flakes GMH.

I have suffered from an eating disorder for quite a long time. When I was 17, I was sitting in a diner that I always go to to fiddle with my food. When my cheeseburger came there was a tiny flag in the bun. The young waiter had written "Please eat" onto the flag. People who notice the little things GMH.

I was on the bus on my way to the mall, when a homeless man sat next to me. He saw that I was looking at the bouquet of flowers he held, and told me that they were for his wife because today is her birthday. As he got off the bus, he walked into the cemetery and placed the flowers on his wife's grave.
A love that never dies GMH. 

Today was my cousins Kaylee's fifth birthday, and a little girl with Dwarfism was at her party.
Kaylee came up to me holding her hand and said, "This is my best friend Elena, and she can't grow. She's special, God made her that way." My baby cousin's blind love for others GMH.

I attended my friend's wedding a few months after my husband passed away. Watching her father/daughter dance brought me to tears thinking about how my daughter will never get that chance. My husband's friend came up to me and said she may not have her daddy but she will have a line of 'uncles' waiting for their first dance with her. GMH