Happy Monday morning, everyone.
I hope that you are all off to a fantastic start to the week! By the time most of you begin to read this I will have finished a venti latte, be elbow deep in Monday morning paperwork and getting prepared to strap on the back-pack vacuum and clean my wonderful store like a crazy woman.
As much as I truly LOVE work, Sundays off have become my favorite day of my week. On Sundays, everyone in my family is off from work and we all get to hang out together. To be honest, my family needed some time to adapt to the new time with my energy on Sunday mornings. Yesterday, however, dad and I spent the day together. After long run, dad took me out in his Corvette. He tricked me though, and we ended up at a car cruise. I would have been mad, but we went out for ice cream afterwards.. so, I can't really complain. We tried to sit on the deck for dinner, but after a few short minutes my ginger dad thought that he was going to get sunburned. So, that was that.
After dinner, my family and I watched 60 Minutes and the featured story was based on a poverty-stricken area in Florida. All of the subjects in the feature were young kids that lived in their parent's cars. Their parents were all jobless, and the kids lived in the cars with multiple family members and, often times, with their pets. As the story unraveled, it became a realization to me that this phenomenon was an epidemic in Seminole, FL. The children brushed their teeth at random gas stations before they went to school each day. Other kids at school knew that they lived in a car, and some of the kids at their school also lived in cars. In one elementary school, 15 students talked about what it was like to live in a car; it was simply a commonality.
One of the girls lived in her father's van, and told the 60 Minutes' anchor that she wanted to go college to be a lawyer. When asked about what it was like to live in a car, she said, "You do what you have to do, it's only life."
After the episode of 60 Minutes aired, over one million dollars was raised for the homeless in children in Seminole, FL in just one year. The previously mentioned girl was granted a full four-year scholarship to a college in Florida.
All of this got me thinking....
In America, there are millions of homeless people. MILLIONS. Very few people are willing to help those individuals. However, after just ONE news story about the homeless children in Florida, ONE MILLION DOLLARS were raised.
Why did it take a news story to get the non-homeless to help out the homeless?
In a world where so many bible-thumpers are quick to donate 10% of their annual salary to their church and brag about it; I'm wondering how many of those same people pass the homeless on the side of the road every day and don't take a second look.
With some many different beliefs to chose from, why have so few people chosen to believe in humanity?
Last Wednesday, I bought a group of homeless men dinner. When I passed them in downtown Pittsburgh on my PM commute, I pulled my car over and gave them a slew of prepared food from the Market District. I've never seen a more grateful group of individuals than I did that day.
Every week, I buy the latte of the stranger behind me at Starbucks. Sure, they have the money to buy their own latte, but kind gestures are so rare that they can truly make someone's day. To me, any opportunity to give another human being something (especially when they are in dire need of it), is an opportunity worth taking.
I can certainly tell you that buying food for the homeless was not a one-time occurrence for me.
I'm not independently wealthy, I don't have an abundance of extra money and I have a great deal of expenses of my own. If I can buy the homeless a meal once a week, so can you.
Here's to exhibiting generosity to complete strangers, all for the love of humanity.
Xoxo
View the 60 Minutes story, here!
