Last night in an Uber ride, the driver struck up conversation that eventually lead to how he was bullied in middle and high school; how he was picked on, physically and verbally, and tormented on enough occasions that he decided to leave school and be home schooled. He eventually went back to public schools after he "stopped caring" what everyone else thought and is now in college pursuing computer science and driving for Uber as his job.
"What did your friends think about all of that? Did they help you through it?" I asked him inquisitively.
"Well, I didn't have any friends. There was nobody that I had as a friend except for one guy, but he was only in one of my classes one year so I didn't see him but for a brief time each day."
He literally had no friends.
And said even now, as an adult, he doesn't do much but school and driving; that most of his friends are only online.
I happily exchanged numbers with the stranger of an Uber driver and invited him to come out with me and my friends sometime if he wanted; because why NOT invite someone out with a group of people you love and that may love him?!
Between that experiential story last night, and the heartbreaking & devastating news of Manchester's bombing, I can't help but think that these two stories are connected; simply by a lack of love and an abundance of carelessness and hatred.
I write this post not to pat myself on the back for inviting someone that didn't have friends out to spend time with mine, but rather I write this in desperation that if we DONT care or go out of our way in these tiny instances to show more love and more care and more softness, that the world will continue to harden. It will continue to be filled with more and more people that stop caring, and literally start killing. The stories are endless in the last years of bombings and shootings, y'all. ENDLESS.
But they don't have to be. More love, more care, more awareness, CAN end, or at least diminish these happenings.
What if someone had shown that man that made that bomb a little more love in his life... Maybe he was in a dark place and maybe he did go to someone in desperation, and maybe that someone was too busy in their own lives to talk that day, too busy to respond to his text, to busy to give a damn about someone other than themselves... and because of that, millions of lives everywhere were sacrificed and changed forever.
We think we're not able to make a difference as one person, but my goodness how we can. We SO can.
Moving into the rest of this week and the rest of our lives rather, think on this. Think on the idea of more love and more care for others rather than ourselves sometimes. It's something I'm trying to work on more and more every day. But with the littlest effort, it becomes more habitual, and more common, and more people experience it, and more people begin to do it as well.
Ripple effect of love: let's be a part of it. ❤
"What did your friends think about all of that? Did they help you through it?" I asked him inquisitively.
"Well, I didn't have any friends. There was nobody that I had as a friend except for one guy, but he was only in one of my classes one year so I didn't see him but for a brief time each day."
He literally had no friends.
And said even now, as an adult, he doesn't do much but school and driving; that most of his friends are only online.
I happily exchanged numbers with the stranger of an Uber driver and invited him to come out with me and my friends sometime if he wanted; because why NOT invite someone out with a group of people you love and that may love him?!
Between that experiential story last night, and the heartbreaking & devastating news of Manchester's bombing, I can't help but think that these two stories are connected; simply by a lack of love and an abundance of carelessness and hatred.
I write this post not to pat myself on the back for inviting someone that didn't have friends out to spend time with mine, but rather I write this in desperation that if we DONT care or go out of our way in these tiny instances to show more love and more care and more softness, that the world will continue to harden. It will continue to be filled with more and more people that stop caring, and literally start killing. The stories are endless in the last years of bombings and shootings, y'all. ENDLESS.
But they don't have to be. More love, more care, more awareness, CAN end, or at least diminish these happenings.
What if someone had shown that man that made that bomb a little more love in his life... Maybe he was in a dark place and maybe he did go to someone in desperation, and maybe that someone was too busy in their own lives to talk that day, too busy to respond to his text, to busy to give a damn about someone other than themselves... and because of that, millions of lives everywhere were sacrificed and changed forever.
We think we're not able to make a difference as one person, but my goodness how we can. We SO can.
Moving into the rest of this week and the rest of our lives rather, think on this. Think on the idea of more love and more care for others rather than ourselves sometimes. It's something I'm trying to work on more and more every day. But with the littlest effort, it becomes more habitual, and more common, and more people experience it, and more people begin to do it as well.
Ripple effect of love: let's be a part of it. ❤
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