Sunday, May 06, 2007

Altruism

I'm into finding different words instead of always using the same ones, so there you have the title of this post. When I worked as a student at Nortel in the summers we used to do the newspaper crossword at lunch and on Monday we'd pick one of the words and use it all week. Yeah, we were geeks, but it was fun anyway. In fact, it often meant a lot of laughter over the course of the week. But I digress, as that's not the purpose of my post...

Funny. The other day I was talking to a physician I call on about traveling (he travels a lot and is always interested in hearing about my plans). I told him about the idea of a trip where I can give back. Something about the poverty in Panama put that idea in my head I guess. He cautioned me about crime and disease with a couple of stories of other physicians who have traveled to really crazy places to help. I said that I guess in some ways I'm still pretty idealistic. I'm often conflicted with being pretty jaded, having had some tough experiences in life, and still being a little on the idealistic side deep down. I wanted to share something with whomever reads here, because it touched my soft side. It reminds us that when you do nice things, it does make the world a better place because people are reminded of the fact that we are all human. These days people frequently forget that. Like aggressive drivers, and bad cyclists (I had to add that - don't worry, I'm not holding on to it - I'm laughing as I write that part).

So check this out, and be sure to read the post on the Breakfast Fairy and the follow up post.

1 comment:

jag said...

I, too, was really moved by Steve's post... sorta got all teary eyed as I read about his parents' Breakfast Fairy.

It's just so easy to make someone's day... so I wonder what stops us?

See you soon!
PAX,