priceless smiles

when you think about the best moments you have frozen in time on film, most of them probably involve a smile. my favorite smiling photo is above, in the very first moments of being husband and wife. our smiles in this picture say something that words just can't.

tweetmysmile, brought to you by the same people as tweetmystyle and tweetmybag which you might remember from the rebecca minkoff bag giveaway, is asking everyone to take just a moment to upload a photo of yourself smiling. for each smiling photo the site receives, $1 will be donated to the smile train , a charity which funds cleft lip and palate surgeries in developing nations. you will also be entered to win stuff!

really, there's just no reason not to do this. spread your smile! go to tweetmysmile for instructions. all you need is a twitter account which takes literally three seconds to set up. you only have until friday!

the gift

i heard the nicest thing that i just had to share with you. i rode home the other day with a woman i know from the train, and she was telling me about her daughter's upcoming birthday party. for the second time in this little girl's young life, the family has requested that in lieu of birthday gifts, guests bring non-perishable food items to be donated to a local hunger charity.

my friend told me how the first year they did it, it was her suggestion to her daughter and came along with assurances that she would still get plenty of birthday gifts from her family. but this year, her daughter came to her about it...the idea came from a little girl turning eight. i thought this was the most beautiful thing. not only for the good her thoughtfulness will do, but for the promise that is born when a child is exposed to ideals of kindness and generosity.

i love that they decided to forgo presents to benefit people with so much less. and i love that my train friend shared it with me - i am considering it an introduction to possibilities in generosity that i haven't yet discovered, courtesy of a soon-to-be-eight year old girl.

photo from http://www.theyesyoucanshow.com/

picking up the pieces

something really cool happened last friday night as i was headed home for the weekend, and i thought it was such a nice way to enter a few days off that i waited all week to share it with you, my wonderful readers.

there was a lot of activity in the crosswalk right outside grand central station - not unusual, but just enough of a flurry to catch my attention. and what i saw made me feel warm all over. a bike messenger had been knocked over and lost hold of his bag, which was apparently full of thousands of pieces of paper, and they were blowing all over the place - some were already several blocks away. my heart immediately sunk, realizing there was no way he'd recover them all. i wanted to cry for him. and for everyone and everything, because it was that kind of mood i was in, as you might remember.

but there in the crosswalk in midtown manhattan in rush hour on a friday night, a dozen passersby were running around picking up the pieces. literally.

and it hit me like a ton of bricks - unsink your heart and get moving. i joined the passersby, and i picked up the pieces i could catch up to, and the messenger's face as each person handed him the windblown, crumpled slips of paper spoke volumes.

some people would say "only in new york," but i disagree - i think people everywhere are good and kind and giving. now the bike messenger being knocked over by a rushing pedestrian? THAT might be only in new york

we're all in this together.

shed a little light

do you ever have the feeling that you feel all the sadness of the world? it's hard to explain, but it's something i feel sometimes - it's like i'm very in touch with all the anguish and pain and sadness that exists, like i'm wearing it on my skin. relax, don't call a hotline or anything, i'm okay. it's just a feeling i have sometimes, and this past week or so has been one of those times.

it might be the post-holiday blues, the cold middle of winter, uncertainty about the future, an economy that brings so much struggle. truly, there's a lot of sadness in the world every day, and especially right now. so much suffering here and abroad, and i feel like so many faces i see on the train, on the bus, on the news, in the bank, at the grocery store...they all look tired and worried, and every glimpse of it i see makes me tear up.

i want to believe that 2010 will bring only good things, only progress and happiness and health. i want those things so badly. but i'm not a child, and i know that no year brings only good things. in many ways, the state of the world right now and our double-edged sword ability to see and experience it all on tv, online, always streaming, always there, makes it impossible to pretend otherwise.

so i'm faced with it: this is one of those times where happiness is a choice. it's one of those times we have to choose to look up, as my dad has always said, because really, what's the alternative? and sometimes we just feel what we feel - no explanation, no excuse, no apologies. it just is. that being said, despair without action doesn't do anything at all. so being a planner like i am, i feel i have to operate on two fronts.

one front is the feelings - and there's no medicine for feelings (well there is, but that's another post entirely). i know i have to just allow myself to feel these feelings and be sensitive to the world right now - no sense in trying to tamp it down. but the other front is a plan (always have to have a plan). my plan is to do all i can to supersize one of my resolutions - the one about having nothing but a positive impact on everything i touch. because i know with each positive action i take and thought i have, i am easing a little bit of the sadness and strife in the world. it's the most i can do, and it feels good.

i hope i haven't depressed you today (well, i'm almost sure i have, but let's try and move forward). all of your insights and thoughts make me feel like i can share these thoughts with you, my readers, and from what i can tell, we're similar in lots of ways so you might be able to relate. i figure this is also a good time to share a few organizations with you that i so admire and support, because god knows there is a lot of need out there right now.

first, i think everyone is aware of the need in haiti and so many people have already donated, which is amazing. there are the two different text methods (text "haiti" to the number 90999 to donate $10 to the red cross, or text "yele"to the number 501501 to donate $5 to the yele haiti campaign). also, unicef is a great place to donate. aren't these photos, taken in haiti last spring, amazing? i am so happy i came across on naturally nina, a really sweet blog i read, taken by flickr user millzes, but it chills me to wonder about the welfare of these children today.

kiva is a micro-lending organization which allows you to make a loan of $25 or more "to a specific entrepreneur, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.” if there was ever a living example of “teaching a man to fish,” this is it. it's such a proud way for people in need to receive help while putting money into their local economies and improving their own situations. best of all, as each loan gets repaid, you can reloan the money to another person in need. mitchell and i made our first loan in my grandfather’s memory when he passed away, and we have since reloaned the same money twice, thereby helping three people in need to help themselves, which makes me so proud. here they are:

silvia martinez-calderon borrowed and repaid $800 from kiva lenders to purchase inventory for and air-condition the grocery store she and her daughter were left to run when her husband died.

this is the riziki group who borrowed and repaid $1,350 from kiva lenders to help increase a salon business in tanzania, which was profiting only $136 a month.

and this is carla delfina pineda, an elementary-school teacher in nicaragua, who borrowed and is repaying $750 from kiva lenders to build a bathroom in her home so that she and her children can live in a cleaner and safer home.

another organization that truly touches my heart is the fruit tree planting foundation, a non-profit which plants edible, fruitful trees in needy populations, improving the surrounding environment. i love the idea of planting trees for lots of things - gifts, philanthropy, neighborhood clean-ups - because they beautify, they nourish the community that they inhabit, from the soil in which they're planted to the betterment of the air to the nutrition they provide.

which leads me to this beautiful james taylor song which is all about today...martin luther king day and all it represents about us as a people. i am listening to it today, as i hope you will (listen here), and thinking very deeply about the words, because they are true as they come. we have a responsibility as people to take care of our world and the people who live in it. i talk a lot about taking good care of ourselves - treating ourselves nicely, giving ourselves pleasure and comfort where we can. and i do believe that's incredibly important. but the flip side of that coin is to direct equal shares of that love and attention outward as well. i really think we all want the same things in this world and this life and i think it's that belief that pulls me out of this sadness each time i get into it. and a little james taylor always helps.

shed a little light

by james taylor

oh, let us turn our thoughts today to martin luther king

and recognize that there are ties between us

all men and women living on the earth

ties of hope and love

sister and brotherhood

that we are bound together

in our desire to see the world become

a place in which our children can grow free and strong

we are bound together

by the task that stands before us

and the road that lies ahead

we are bound and we are bound

there is a feeling like the clenching of a fist

there is a hunger in the center of the chest

there is a passage through the darkness and the mist

and though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

shed a little light, oh lord

so that we can see just a little light, oh lord

wanna stand it on up stand it on up, oh lord

wanna walk it on down

shed a little light, oh lord

can't get no light from the dollar bill

don't give me no light from a tv screen

when i open my eyes i wanna drink my fill

from the well on the hill

do you know what i mean?

shed a little light, oh lord

so that we can see just a little light, oh lord

wanna stand it on up stand it on up, oh lord

wanna walk it on down shed a little light, oh lord

there is a feeling like the clenching of a fist

there is a hunger in the center of the chest

there is a passage through the darkness and the mist

and though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

oh, let us turn our thoughts today to martin luther king

and recognize that there are ties between us

all men and women living on the earth

ties of hope and love

sister and brotherhood

top photo from http://www.wikimedia.org/, "today is awesome" from etsy seller the small object, all other photos from linked sites.