Feel the Love?

Plug your ears when the haters talk and feel the warmth of so many other people who create and share good feelings. Right finally prevails. Good IS more powerful than bad—or at least it can be. Permit me to demonstrate with a small, personal example:

I was depressed that my attempts to publish my latest novel THEY’RE IN YOUR MIND using my own formatting skills weren’t working. Rather than looking professional and competent, the manuscript looked awkward and decidedly odd. Those who had previously been there for me—including Create Space—were unavailable. I couldn’t bear to ask for more sacrifice from my family. I started researching what I would need to pay to self-publish through a service. The costs didn’t fit my budget. Two years of work writing would stay in my computer. Not only would I miss having my story in the public eye for the shopping season, I wouldn’t ever see this novel in print unless I dedicated the next year or more of my life to struggling to find an agent and subsequently a publisher. I felt despair.

Then friends came to my rescue—not because I asked them. In fact, I insisted they couldn’t give me money I hadn’t yet earned. They insisted harder—not because they thought I had written the greatest tome ever to appear in the English language (one hadn’t even read the manuscript) but because they wanted to help. Even though I’m not dying or starving, they gave me money they could have used for themselves. I was humbled. I was gob-smacked.

With their example before me, a fresh, eternal aspect of the world appeared. Sure, there are plenty of terrible examples of greed, selfishness, and abject cruelty around. People are mocked, displaced, injured and killed. Yet on another plane—not an ethereal plane but on a plane that exists here in plain sight—people take care of one another. My neighbor goes from long days of exhausting, physically demanding work to serve food to those down on their luck. A woman who works in town carries ten dollar bills to pass out to anyone who seems to need cash. Local store owners collect and distribute clothing for the homeless from boxes outside their stores. None of this is tied solely to the holidays. These are simply acts of goodness that happen day by day. You must know of many more.

We don’t spend much time talking about the masses of exquisitely good people out there. They don’t demand attention by spilling blood or hoarding profits or victimizing people who are vulnerable. They watch IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE each year and don’t think it’s corny to be kind or generous or to honor a stranger’s welfare as important. Look around. They’re out there. You may be one of them. They make the space around them beautiful in many colors. I’m grateful to share the world with them.